E's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 09:03:00 -0700 60 E's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Sleeping Beauty 33574493 44 Walt Disney Company E 3 picturebooks 4.00 1959 Sleeping Beauty
author: Walt Disney Company
name: E
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1959
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: picturebooks
review:

]]> Good Material 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story�

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 E 3 novels 3.85 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: E
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World]]> 216524259 “A glorious, revelatory book.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World

“A beautiful, transformative book about being a parent in a world that rejects frailty and weakness.”—Rachel Aviv, staff writer at the New Yorker

A paradigm shifting look at the landscape of disabled parenting—the joys, stigma, and discrimination—and how disability culture holds the key to transforming the way we all raise our kids
In Unfit Parent, Slice debunks the exclusionary myths that deem disabled people “unfit� to care for their children, instead showing how disabled parents and disability culture provide valuable lessons for rejecting societal rules that encourage perfectionism and lead to isolation.

Combining her personal experiences with interviews, research-backed evidence, and disability studies, Slice shares insight into what the landscape is like for disabled parents—one that is scattered with unpredictable obstacles and inaccessible barriers. In overcoming these challenges, she describes how disabled parents are oftentimes more prepared to adapt to the demanding nature of parenthood, including the uncertainty of losing control over bodily autonomy.

Uplifting and powerful, Unfit Parent illuminates how disabled bodies and minds give us the hopeful perspectives and solutions we need for transforming a societal system that has left parents exhausted, stuck, and alone.]]> 216 Jessica Slice 0807013242 E 0 to-read 4.57 Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World
author: Jessica Slice
name: E
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles E 0 to-read 4.28 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: E
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Vera, or Faith 220239019 A poignant, sharp-eyed, and bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country that's rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous ten-year-old daughter, by the bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Our Country Friends

"In its swirls of emotion, its humor and its pathos, the unsparing humanity of its vision, Vera, or Faith is like some fabulous, hitherto-unknown creature that’s been let out of its bottle and set free. It begins to seem that there’s nothing Gary Shteyngart can’t do."—Michael Cunningham

The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love each other deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage give him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.

Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.

Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, "one of his generation's most exhilarating writers."]]> 256 Gary Shteyngart 0593595092 E 0 to-read 4.48 2025 Vera, or Faith
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: E
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Caucasia 33795 䲹ܳ�Danzy Senna's extraordinary debut novel andnational bestseller—Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: Birdie appears to be white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness. Then their parents' marriage falls apart. Their father's new black girlfriend won't even look at Birdie, while their mother gives her life over to the Movement: at night the sisters watch mysterious men arrive with bundles shaped like rifles.

One night Birdie watches her father and his girlfriend drive away with Cole—they have gone to Brazil, she will later learn, where her father hopes for a racial equality he will never find in the States. The next morning—in the belief that the Feds are after them—Birdie and her mother leave everything behind: their house and possessions, their friends, and—most disturbing of all—their identity. Passing as the daughter and wife of a deceased Jewish professor, Birdie and her mother finally make their home in New Hampshire.

Desperate to find Cole, yet afraid of betraying her mother and herself to some unknown danger, Birdie must learn to navigate the white world—so that when she sets off in search of her sister, she is ready for what she will find. At once a powerful coming-of-age story and a groundbreaking work on identity and race in America, "Caucasia deserves to be read all over" (Glamour).]]> 413 Danzy Senna 1573227161 E 0 to-read 4.07 1998 Caucasia
author: Danzy Senna
name: E
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Shakespeare Requirement 38885815 A Washington Post notable book of the year.

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune keep hitting beleaguered English professor Jason Fitger right between the eyes in this hilarious and eagerly awaited sequel to the cult classic of anhedonic academe, the Thurber Prize-winning Dear Committee Members.

Once more into the breach...

Now is the fall of his discontent, as Jason Fitger, newly appointed chair of the English Department of Payne University, takes arms against a sea of troubles, personal and institutional. His ex-wife is sleeping with the dean who must approve whatever modest initiatives he undertakes. The fearsome department secretary Fran clearly runs the show (when not taking in rescue parrots and dogs) and holds plenty of secrets she's not sharing. The lavishly funded Econ Department keeps siphoning off English's meager resources and has taken aim at its remaining office space. And Fitger's attempt to get a mossbacked and antediluvian Shakespeare scholar to retire backfires spectacularly when the press concludes that the Bard is being kicked to the curricular curb.

Lord, what fools these mortals be! Julie Schumacher proves the point and makes the most of it in this delicious romp of satire.

Don't miss Julie Schumacher's new novel, The English Experience, coming soon.]]> 312 Julie Schumacher 0385542356 E 0 to-read 3.74 2018 The Shakespeare Requirement
author: Julie Schumacher
name: E
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 E 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: E
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Less Is Lost (Arthur Less, #2)]]> 60021216 In thefollow-up to the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning Less, the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip across America.

“Go get lost somewhere, it always does you good.�

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US.

Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,”throughthe South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo � a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hatcostume of a true “Unitedstatesian�... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a “bad gay.�

We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts,bayous,and coastlines.From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book,Less IsLostis a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way.]]> 272 Andrew Sean Greer 0316498904 E 0 to-read 3.64 2022 Less Is Lost (Arthur Less, #2)
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: E
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions]]> 216752439 An Abundance of Caution is a devastating account of the decision-making process behind one of the worst American policy failures in a century—the extended closures of public schools during the pandemic. David Zweig shows how some of the most trusted members of society repeatedly made fundamental errors in their assessment and presentation of evidence.

All along, kids throughout Europe had been learning in person since the spring of 2020. Even many peers at home—in private schools, and public schools in mostly "red" states—were in class full time from fall 2020 onward. Whatever inequities that existed among American children before the pandemic, the selective school closures exacerbated them, disproportionately affecting the underprivileged. Deep mental, physical, and academic harms were endured for no discernible benefit. As the Europeans had shown very early, after they had sent kids back to class, there was never any evidence that long-term school closures would reduce overall cases or deaths in any meaningful way. The story of American schools during the pandemic serves as a prism through which to approach fundamental questions about why and how individuals, bureaucracies, governments, and societies act as they do in times of crisis and uncertainty. Ultimately, this book is not about Covid; it's about a country ill-equipped to act sensibly under duress.]]> 464 David Zweig 0262549158 E 0 to-read 4.25 An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions
author: David Zweig
name: E
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—And How You Can, Too]]> 70240478
In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society. In Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, she discussed the ways in which white male supremacy has had an impact on our systems, our culture, and our lives throughout American history. But now that we better understand these systems of oppression, the question is this: What can we do about them?

With Be A Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too, Oluo aims to show how people across America are working to create real positive change in our structures. Looking at many of our most powerful systems—like education, media, labor, health, housing, policing, and more—she highlights what people are doing to create change for intersectional racial equity. She also illustrates various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live.

This book aims to not only be educational, but to inspire action and change. Oluo wishes to take our conversations on race and racism out of a place of pure pain and trauma, and into a place of loving action. Be A Revolution is both an urgent chronicle of this important moment in history, as well as an inspiring and restorative call for action..]]> 256 Ijeoma Oluo 0063140225 E 0 to-read 4.38 2024 Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—And How You Can, Too
author: Ijeoma Oluo
name: E
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World]]> 201626960 To save democracy in America and around the world, we need to understand the real source of the thread: the reactionary spirit.

From America to India, a distinct style of far-right politics � one that pays lip service to democratic ideals but seeks to undermine democracy from within � is on the brink of overthrowing some of the world’s oldest and most established democracies. Why?

In The Reactionary Spirit, journalist Zack Beauchamp traces the roots of this crisis back centuries to a conflict at the very heart of democracy. By grounding politics in the idea that no person has a right to rule any other, democracy encourages challenges to hierarchies of wealth and power. But those at the top won’t give up without a fight.

Beauchamp exposes how the need to oppose equality and protect hierarchy has powered anti-democracies for centuries. He reveals how, over time, antidemocratic reactionaries have learned to mask their authoritarian politics as a form of democracy � an insidious style of authoritarianism that began in the United States but has since spread globally.

This book presents a revolutionary new explanation for why our democracy seems so imperiled, but it also offers hope � telling readers what they can do to stop the reactionary spirit’s global rise before it’s too late.]]> 263 Zack Beauchamp 154170441X E 0 to-read 3.97 2024 The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World
author: Zack Beauchamp
name: E
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World]]> 28446162 “This is the best book about the Beatles ever written”� �Mashable

Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them.

Dreamingthe Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn’t another exposé about how they broke up. It isn’t a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music on their parents� stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after they broke up?

As he did in his previous books, Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. This time, he focuses on the biggest pop culture phenomenon of all time—The Beatles. In his singular voice, he explores what the Beatles mean today, to fans who have learned to love them on their own terms and not just for the sake of nostalgia.

Dreaming theBeatlestells the story of how four lads from Liverpool became the world’s biggest pop group, then broke up—but then somehow just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesn’t belong to the past—it belongs to right now. This book is a celebration of that music, showing why the Beatles remain the world’s favorite thing—and how they invented the future we’re all living in today.]]> 368 Rob Sheffield 0062207679 E 0 currently-reading 4.08 2017 Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World
author: Rob Sheffield
name: E
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> I’m Glad My Mom Died 59366244
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died , Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!�), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 304 Jennette McCurdy 1982185821 E 5 biographies 4.42 2022 I’m Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: E
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: biographies
review:
As long as you're not grieving the loss of a parent or struggling with an eating disorder, you will be amazed at what a good writer McCurdy has become despite the odds she faced. She impressively normalizes what the reader recognizes as dysfunction through the innocent lense of childhood, and then whips through her young adult healing process with much wit and not a whiff of defensiveness. She demonstrates the difference between constructive self-compassion and wallowing self-pity. A very impressive book.
]]> Woodworking 217311813 An unforgettable and heartwarming debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: one of her students.

Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.

Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others� expectations.

As their unlikely friendship evolves under the increasing scrutiny of their community, both women—and those closest to them—will come to realize that sometimes there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you really are.

Detransition Baby meets Fleishman is in Trouble in this remarkable debut novel from an incisive contemporary voice. A story about the awkwardness of growing up and the greatest love story of all, that between us and our friends, Woodworking is a tonic for the moment and a celebration of womanhood in all its multifaceted joy.]]> 351 Emily St. James 163893147X E 0 to-read 4.42 2025 Woodworking
author: Emily St. James
name: E
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cruelty Is the Point: Why Trump's America Endures]]> 61240277
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR � “No writer better demonstrates how American dreams are so often sabotaged by American history. Adam Serwer is essential.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates

Featuring additional essays on how the Supreme Court undermines justice, and a new epilogue that connects the post-reconstruction narrative with today’s political discourse

To many, our most shocking political crises appear unprecedented—un-American, even. But they are not, writes The Atlantic� s Adam Serwer in this prescient essay collection, which dissects the most devastating moments in recent memory to reveal deeply entrenched dynamics, patterns as old as the country itself. The January 6 insurrection, anti-immigrant sentiment, and American authoritarianism all have historic roots that explain their continued power with or without President Donald Trump—a fact borne out by what has happened since his departure from the White House.

Serwer argues that Trump is not the cause, he is a symptom. Serwer’s phrase “the cruelty is the point� became among the most-used descriptions of Trump’s era, but as this book demonstrates, it resonates across centuries. The essays here combine revelatory reporting, searing analysis, and a clarity that’s bracing. In this new, expanded version of his bestselling debut, Serwer elegantly dissects white supremacy’s profound influence on our political system, looking at the persistence of the Lost Cause, the past and present of police unions, the mythology of migration, and the many faces of anti-Semitism. In so doing, he offers abundant proof that our past is present and demonstrates the devastating costs of continuing to pretend it’s not. The Cruelty Is the Point dares us, the reader, to not look away.]]> 432 Adam Serwer 0593230825 E 0 currently-reading 4.48 2021 The Cruelty Is the Point: Why Trump's America Endures
author: Adam Serwer
name: E
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Grand Union 43608928 A dazzling collection of short fiction, more than half of which have never been published before, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and Swing Time

Zadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically-respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. With ten extraordinary new stories complemented by a selection of her most lauded pieces for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Granta, GRAND UNION explores a wide range of subjects, from first loves to cultural despair, as well as the desire to be the subject of your own experience. In captivating prose, she contends with race, class, relationships, and gender roles in a world that feels increasingly divided.

Nothing is off limits, and everything--when captured by Smith's brilliant gaze--feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced, and utterly original, GRAND UNION highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.]]> 246 Zadie Smith 0525558993 E 2 short-stories 3.27 2019 Grand Union
author: Zadie Smith
name: E
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 E 4 novels
And we need more bad-ass women glaring, "Don't gender my child."]]> 3.52 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: E
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: novels
review:
Readers who can only take so much of self-absorbed artist-types will find their patience tried, but it was still worth it for the humor and the dedication to the topic. I don't know if I agree there was as much revelation as there was build-up to one, but it was fun to be along for the ride.

And we need more bad-ass women glaring, "Don't gender my child."
]]> <![CDATA[The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On]]> 60147181 From acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds--past, present, and future. Choi's third book features poems about historical and impending apocalypses, alongside musings on our responsibilities to each other and visions for our collective survival.

Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples and calls us to imagine what will persist in the aftermaths.

With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time. They look into the collective psyche of our years in the pandemic and in the throes of anti-racist uprisings, while imagining other vectors, directions, and futures. Stories of survival collide across space and time--from Korean comfort women during World War II to children wandering a museum in the future. These poems explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. Throughout, Choi grapples with where the individual fits within the strange landscapes of this apocalyptic world, with its violent and many-layered histories. In the process, she imagines what togetherness--between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest--could look like. Bringing together Choi's signature speculative imagination with even greater musicality than her previous work, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On ultimately charts new paths toward hope.]]> 144 Franny Choi 0063240084 E 0 currently-reading 3.98 2022 The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
author: Franny Choi
name: E
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Behind These Doors (Radical Proposals, #1)]]> 40190173 Lucien Saxby is a journalist, writing for the society pages. The Honourable Aubrey Fanshawe, second son of an earl, is Society. They have nothing in common, until a casual encounter leads to a crisis.

Aubrey isn’t looking for love. He already has it, in his long-term clandestine relationship with Lord and Lady Hernedale. And Lucien is the last man Aubrey should want. He’s a commoner, raised in service, socially unacceptable. Worse, he writes for a disreputable, gossip-hungry newspaper. Aubrey can’t afford to trust him when arrest and disgrace are just a breath away.

Lucien doesn’t trust nobs. Painful experience has taught him that working people simply don’t count to them. Years ago, he turned his back on a life of luxury so his future wouldn’t depend on an aristocrat’s whim. Now, thanks to Aubrey, he’s becoming entangled in the risky affairs of the upper classes, antagonising people who could destroy him with a word.

Aubrey and Lucien have too much to hide—and too much between them to ignore. Rejecting the strict rules and closed doors of Edwardian society might lead them both to ruin� but happiness and integrity alike demand it.

An Edwardian Romance.]]> 393 Jude Lucens 1912734001 E 0 to-read 4.12 2018 Behind These Doors (Radical Proposals, #1)
author: Jude Lucens
name: E
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Why We're Polarized 52098718
Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, it offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Donald Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture.]]> 336 Ezra Klein 147670032X E 5 politics-history 4.19 2020 Why We're Polarized
author: Ezra Klein
name: E
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: politics-history
review:
Just as relevant 5 years after its publication - which is kind of incredible, considering what's gone down since then. A must-read for anyone wanting to diagnose the state of the nation.
]]> <![CDATA[On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century]]> 33917107
On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.

Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.�

Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.]]> 127 Timothy Snyder 0804190119 E 4 politics-history 4.24 2017 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
author: Timothy Snyder
name: E
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: politics-history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Breakfast at Tiffany's: Fremdsprachentexte]]> 9890
It is New York in the l940s. ln the expensive jewelry store Tiffany's, Holly Golightly feels calm and safe. The rest of her life is very different Every night is party night in her apartment. Men come and go; everything is possible. But Holly is searching for her place in the world.
Can any of these men offer her happiness?
Can she ever belong?]]> 160 Truman Capote 3150092418 E 3 novels 3.73 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's: Fremdsprachentexte
author: Truman Capote
name: E
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2006/04/01
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dwarfism Arts and Advocacy: Creating Our Own Positive Identity]]> 213295272 Dwarfism Arts and Creating our own positive identity brings together the voices of people with dwarfism challenging ableist representations of the condition.


Disability arts and the media are important tools in challenging problematic stereotypes of disability, as well as giving disabled people a platform for creating their own representations. However, whilst there is growing literature on the subject, there is scarce literature specifically focusing on people with dwarfism in the arts or within advocacy roles. General society, including the disability community, are not fully aware of the push people with dwarfism are trying to make to challenge and change cultural representations of the condition. Erin Pritchard brings together leading academics and practitioners to raise awareness within academia and society through providing a collective voice and contributing new knowledge to Disability Arts.


Dwarfism Arts and Creating our own positive identity is ideal reading to academics, researchers, and policy makers with an interest in disability studies.]]> 302 Erin Pritchard 1837539243 E 4 politics-history 4.00 Dwarfism Arts and Advocacy: Creating Our Own Positive Identity
author: Erin Pritchard
name: E
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: politics-history
review:

]]> Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) 199798868 New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work, twenty years later.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.

Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis� life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost.]]> 294 Colm Tóibín 1476785112 E 1 novels
And the repression never rang true to any of the characters - instead of understanding their feelings and the society that kept them from expressing those feelings, they simply came off to me as frustratingly opaque. Yes, there is such a thing as the oppression of the middle class lid screwed tightly on suburbia that robs people of their ability to handle crisis, but the author didn't show or tell us anything about it. The result was a story that felt disjointed and characters who made little sense to me. I'm happy for those who found beauty in it, but I struggled every page of the way through. ]]> 3.68 2024 Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2)
author: Colm Tóibín
name: E
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: novels
review:
I can appreciate understatement, nuance and metaphor, but this just seemed stifled. Everyone - nearly everyone - comes off as severely repressed, which does not jive at all with my love and understanding of my Long Island and Irish heritage. Granted no culture is monolithic, but Long Island is probably the last place I would set a story with high family drama experienced by characters who say pretty much nothing about it. It's as if the author had the cast of Downtown Abbey dumped on the South Shore with almost none of their wealth intact.

And the repression never rang true to any of the characters - instead of understanding their feelings and the society that kept them from expressing those feelings, they simply came off to me as frustratingly opaque. Yes, there is such a thing as the oppression of the middle class lid screwed tightly on suburbia that robs people of their ability to handle crisis, but the author didn't show or tell us anything about it. The result was a story that felt disjointed and characters who made little sense to me. I'm happy for those who found beauty in it, but I struggled every page of the way through.
]]> <![CDATA[Walt Disney Bambi (Disney Classic Series)]]> 6438543 Disney Bambi 95 Walt Disney Company 0831706813 E 2 picturebooks 3.71 1900 Walt Disney Bambi (Disney Classic Series)
author: Walt Disney Company
name: E
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1900
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: picturebooks
review:

]]> The Salt Path 38085814
They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.

The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.]]> 288 Raynor Winn 0241349648 E 0 to-read 3.97 2018 The Salt Path
author: Raynor Winn
name: E
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Long Island Compromise 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?�

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives� successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 E 5 novels 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: E
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: novels
review:
Rarely is so much unhappiness rendered so enjoyable. Funny, witty, and caring while keeping her characters at arm's length, the author got me deeply interested in a family I only had a bit of sympathy for. No one here is particularly likable, but they are all engaging. And like all great family epics, there is no taking one side or the other here. A great feat and lots of fun. Particularly, if like me, you hail from that mysterious phenomenon known as Long Island.
]]> <![CDATA[How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom]]> 208580597 The long-awaited essay collection from one of the most influential voices in disability activism that detonates a bomb in our collective understanding of care and illness, showing us that sickness is a fact of life.

In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots, and sick with a chronic condition that rendered them housebound, Johanna Hedva turned to the page to How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? It was not long before this essay, “Sick Woman Theory�, became a seminal work on disability, because in reframing illness as not just a biological experience but a social one, Hedva argues that under capitalism—a system that limits our worth to the productivity of our bodies—we must reach for the revolutionary act of caring for ourselves and others.

How to Tell When We Will Die expands upon Hedva’s paradigm-shifting perspective in a series of slyly subversive and razor-sharp essays that range from the theoretical to the personal—from Deborah Levy and Susan Sontag to wrestling, kink, mysticism, death, and the color yellow. Drawing from their experiences with America’s byzantine healthcare system, and considering archetypes they call The Psychotic Woman, The Freak, and The Hag in Charge, Hedva offers a bracing indictment of the politics that exploit sickness—relying on and fueling ableism—to the detriment of us all.

With the insight of Anne Boyer’s The Undying and Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, and the wit of Samantha Irby, Hedva’s debut collection upends our collective understanding of disability. In their radical reimagining of a world where care and pain are symbiotic, and our bodies are allowed to live free and well, Hedva implores us to remember that illness is neither an inconvenience or inevitability, but an enlivening and elemental part of being alive.]]> 384 Johanna Hedva 163893116X E 0 to-read 3.87 How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom
author: Johanna Hedva
name: E
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In Search of Berlin: The Story of A Reinvented City]]> 136319025 Ever since John Kampfner was a young journalist in Communist East Berlin, he hasn't been able to get the city out of his mind. It is a place tortured by its past, obsessed with memories, a place where traumas are unleashed and the traumatised have gathered.
Over the past four years Kampfner has walked the length and breadth of Berlin, delving into the archives, and talking to historians and writers, architects and archaeologists. He clambers onto a fallen statue of Lenin; he rummages in boxes of early Medieval bones; he learns about the cabaret star so outrageous she was thrown out of the city.
Berlin has been a military barracks, industrial powerhouse, centre of learning, hotbed of decadence - and the laboratory for the worst experiment in horror known to man. Now a city of refuge, it is home to 180 nationalities, and more than a quarter of the population has a migrant background. Berlin never stands still. It is never satisfied. It never believes it has the answer. But it is now the irresistible capital to which the world is gravitating.
In Search of Berlin is an 800-year story, a dialogue between past and present; it is a new way of looking at this turbulent and beguiling city on its never-ending journey of reinvention.]]> 447 John Kampfner 183895483X E 0 to-read 4.19 2023 In Search of Berlin: The Story of A Reinvented City
author: John Kampfner
name: E
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Intimacy Idiot 23492710
In this uproariously funny debut collection, award-winning writer and performer Isaac Oliver serves up a comedic cornucopia of sketches, vignettes, lists, and diaries from his life as a young, fanciful, and extremely single gay man in New York City. Whether he’s hooking up with a man who dresses as a dolphin, suffering on airplanes and buses next to people with Food From Home, or hovering around an impenetrable circle of attractive people at a cocktail party, Oliver captures the messy, moving, and absurd moments of urban life as we live it today.

Since moving to New York a decade ago, Oliver has pined for countless strangers on the subway, slept with half the people in his Washington Heights neighborhood, and observed the best and worst of humanity from behind the glass of a Times Square theater box office. He also rode the subway during Breastfeeding Awareness Week and lived to tell the tale. Culled from years of heartbreak, hook-ups, and more awkwardness than a virgin at prom and a whore in church (and he should know because he’s been both), Intimacy Idiot chronicles Oliver’s encounters with love, infatuation, resilience, and self-acceptance that echo our universal desire for intimacy of all kinds.]]> 288 Isaac Oliver 1476746664 E 0 to-read 3.83 2015 Intimacy Idiot
author: Isaac Oliver
name: E
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Marriage Book: Centuries of Advice, Inspiration, and Cautionary Tales from Adam and Eve to Zoloft]]> 22609464
When and whom do you marry? How do you keep a spouse content? Do all engaged couples get cold feet? How cold is so cold that you should pivot and flee? Where and how do children fit in? Is infidelity always wrong? In this volume, you won’t find a single answer to your questions about marriage; you will find hundreds.

Spanning centuries and cultures, sources and genres, The Marriage Book offers entries from ancient history and modern politics, poetry and pamphlets, plays and songs, newspaper ads and postcards. It is an A to Z compendium, exploring topics from Adam and Eve to Anniversaries, Fidelity to Freedom, Separations to Sex. In this volume, you’ll hear from novelists, clergymen, sex experts, and presidents, with guest appearances by the likes of Liz and Dick, Ralph and Alice, Louis CK, and Neil Patrick Harris. Casanova calls marriage the tomb of love, and Stephen King calls it his greatest accomplishment. With humor, perspective, breadth, and warmth, The Marriage Book is sure to become a classic.]]> 560 Lisa Grunwald 1439169659 E 0 to-read 3.63 2015 The Marriage Book: Centuries of Advice, Inspiration, and Cautionary Tales from Adam and Eve to Zoloft
author: Lisa Grunwald
name: E
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Body in Question 39735213
Two of the jurors: Hannah, a married fifty-two-year-old former Rolling Stone and Interview Magazine photographer of rock stars and socialites (she began to photograph animals when she realized she saw people “as a species�), and Graham, a forty-one-year-old anatomy professor. Both are sequestered (she, juror C-2; he, F-17) along with the other jurors at the Econo Lodge off I-75. As the shocking and numbing details of the crime are revealed during a string of days and courtroom hours, and the nights play out in a series of court-financed meals at Outback Steak House (the state isn’t paying for their drinks) and Red Lobster, Hannah and Graham fall into a furtive affair, keeping their oath as jurors never to discuss the trial. During deliberations the lovers learn that they are on opposing sides of the case. Suddenly they look at one another through an altogether different lens, as things become more complicated . . .

After the verdict, Hannah returns home to her much older husband, but the case ignites once again and Hannah’s “one last dalliance before she is too old� takes on profoundly personal and moral consequences as The Body in Question moves to its affecting, powerful, and surprising conclusion.

Listening length: 5 hours, 26 minutes]]> 6 Jill Ciment 198488980X E 0 to-read 3.53 2019 The Body in Question
author: Jill Ciment
name: E
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity]]> 34017009 Mating in Captivity Esther Perel returns with a provocative look at relationships through the lens of infidelity.
Affairs, she argues, have a lot to teach us about the human heart—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They offer a unique window into our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment. Through examining illicit love from multiple angles, Perel invites readers into an honest, enlightened, and entertaining exploration of modern marriage in its many variations.]]> 336 Esther Perel 0062322583 E 0 to-read 4.31 2017 The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
author: Esther Perel
name: E
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories]]> 52046946 Single, Carefree, Mellow is that rare and wonderful thing: a debut that is superbly accomplished, endlessly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Gwen pines for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tells her that her palm is sweaty. And Sasha agrees to have a drink with her married lover’s wife and then immediately regrets it. These are the women of Single, Carefree, Mellow, and in these eleven sublime stories they are grappling with unwelcome houseguests, disastrous birthday parties, needy but loyal friends, and all manner of love, secrets, and betrayal.

In “Cranberry Relish� Josie’s ex—a man she met on Facebook—has a new girlfriend he found on Twitter. In “Blue Heron Bridge� Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living in her garage will hear her kids swearing than about his finding out that she’s sleeping with her running partner. And in “The Rhett Butlers� a teenager loses her virginity to her history teacher and then outgrows him.

In snappy, glittering prose that is both utterly hilarious and achingly poignant, Katherine Heiny chronicles the ways in which we are unfaithful to each other, both willfully and unwittingly. Maya, who appears in the title story and again in various states of love, forms the spine of this linked collection, and shows us through her moments of pleasure, loss, deceit, and kindness just how fickle the human heart can be.


RUNNING TIME � 7hrs. and 9mins.

©2015 Katherine Heiny (P)2015 Random House Audio]]> Katherine Heiny E 0 to-read 4.00 2015 Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories
author: Katherine Heiny
name: E
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows (Feminine Pursuits, #2)]]> 46041449
Penelope Flood exists between two worlds in her small seaside town, the society of rich landowners and the tradesfolk. Soon, tensions boil over when the formerly exiled Queen arrives on England’s shores—and when Penelope’s long-absent husband returns to Melliton, she once again finds herself torn, between her burgeoning love for Agatha and her loyalty to the man who once gave her refuge.

As Penelope finally discovers her true place, Agatha must learn to accept the changing world in front of her. But will these longing hearts settle for a safe but stale existence or will they learn to fight for the future they most desire?]]> 271 Olivia Waite 0062931806 E 0 to-read 3.82 2020 The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows (Feminine Pursuits, #2)
author: Olivia Waite
name: E
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Evenings 209891406 From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, a piercing novel that envisions modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience, as he struggles with class and race, art and sexuality, love and violence.

Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.

Dave Win, the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he’s never met, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities lie before Dave, even as he is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates, above all that of Giles Hadlow, whose worldly parents sponsored the scholarship and who find in Dave someone they can more easily nurture than their brutish son.

Our Evenings follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.

Moving in and out of Dave’s orbit are the Hadlows. Estranged from his parents, who remain close to Dave, Giles directs his privilege into a career as a powerful right-wing politician, whose reactionary vision for England pokes perilous holes in Dave’s stability. And as the novel accelerates towards the present day, the two men’s lives and values will finally collide in a cruel shock of violence.

This is “one of our most gifted writers� (The Boston Globe) sweeping readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.]]> 496 Alan Hollinghurst 0593243064 E 0 to-read 3.92 2024 Our Evenings
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: E
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Film in Which I Play Everyone: Poems]]> 65215795
Mary Jo Bang’s brilliant poems might be the soundtrack to such a movie, where the first-person speaker plays herself and everyone she’s ever met. She falls in and out of love with men, with women, and struggles to realize her ambitions while suffering crushing losses that give rise to dark thoughts. She’s drawn to stories that mirror her own those of women who struggle to speak in a world that would silence them. Embedded in these poems are those minor events that inexplicably persist in the memory and become the time she lied and had her mouth washed out with soap; the time someone said she wasn’t his “original idea of beauty but something. / Something he couldn’t quite // put his hands on�; the time she stood in indifferent moonlight on a pier as a cat lapped at the water. Tinged with dark humor and sharpened with keen camerawork, A Film in Which I Play Everyone stars Bang at her best, her most provocative.]]> 96 Mary Jo Bang 1644452472 E 0 to-read 3.56 A Film in Which I Play Everyone: Poems
author: Mary Jo Bang
name: E
average rating: 3.56
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Snow White and Rose Red (Well Loved Tales)]]> 509901 51 Vera Southgate 0721405932 E 3 picturebooks 3.91 1827 Snow White and Rose Red (Well Loved Tales)
author: Vera Southgate
name: E
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1827
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: picturebooks
review:

]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 E 4 novels 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: E
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Barney's Sand Castle (First Little Golden Book)]]> 1835318 24 Stephanie Calmenson 0307681300 E 3 picturebooks 4.41 1983 Barney's Sand Castle (First Little Golden Book)
author: Stephanie Calmenson
name: E
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves: picturebooks
review:

]]> <![CDATA[De Profundis and Other Writings]]> 5304 252 Oscar Wilde 014043089X E 4 philosophy-criticism
"...the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are."

"...a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."

"The Decay of Lying" is classic Wilde philosophy, albeit Decadence ironically spoken by two characters named after his own sons. It is best read when one is in a Decadent mood.

"De Profundis" struck me as potentially interesting for those concerned with the political implications that enshrouded Wilde personally, but having already seen the biopic Wilde, it merely read to me like notes for the screenplay. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" manifests a more concise, impressive intersection of his jarring personal experience with his poetic gift.]]> 4.23 De Profundis and Other Writings
author: Oscar Wilde
name: E
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2010/12/13
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: philosophy-criticism
review:
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism" is pure genius. Rarely are politics and poetry so beautifully entwined, yet Wilde presents them as inherently so. Two jewels that shone particularly bright in the lattice:

"...the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are."

"...a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."

"The Decay of Lying" is classic Wilde philosophy, albeit Decadence ironically spoken by two characters named after his own sons. It is best read when one is in a Decadent mood.

"De Profundis" struck me as potentially interesting for those concerned with the political implications that enshrouded Wilde personally, but having already seen the biopic Wilde, it merely read to me like notes for the screenplay. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" manifests a more concise, impressive intersection of his jarring personal experience with his poetic gift.
]]> <![CDATA[The Atheist's Guide to Christmas]]> 8493485
When the Atheist Bus Campaign was first launched, over £150,000, was raised in four days � enough to place the advert 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life' on 800 UK buses in January 2009. Now dozens of atheist writers, comedians and scientists are joining together to raise money for a very different cause.

The Atheist's Guide to Christmas is a funny, thoughtful handbook all about enjoying Christmas, from 42 of the world's most entertaining atheists. It features everything from an atheist Christmas miracle to a guide to the best Christmas pop hits, and contributors include Richard Dawkins, Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown, Ben Goldacre, Jenny Colgan, David Baddiel, Simon Singh, AC Grayling, Brian Cox and Richard Herring.

The full book advance and all royalties will go to the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust.]]> 272 Ariane Sherine 0007389825 E 3 politics-history
Scientists argue the beauty of rationalism and comics share childhood stories of feeling confused and/or indifferent to the religiosity of their playmates in December. (I laughed out loud upon hearing of the girl who sent Christmas cards to both God and the Devil.) Some gems stumbled upon amongst the philosophy and the jokes:

"Just because you don't understand something, doesn't mean I can't."
- Adam Rutherford

"They had plucked out their eyes and now berated others for what they could not see."
- Robin Ince

"For the fire-and-brimstone crowd, one suspects that, for them, heaven would function like an Executive Box at Old Tafford, allowing them to look down upon hell's tormented from a comfortable vantage point. That for them would be the fun. Can you see hell from heaven?"
- David Stubbs

"Shouldn't we, if we're going to ignore the 'Christ' part of Christmas, find something else to call it? This has been a divisive issue... But if only practising Christians can use the word 'Christmas,' then only Vikings can use the word 'Thursday.'"
- Mitch Benn

]]> 3.52 2009 The Atheist's Guide to Christmas
author: Ariane Sherine
name: E
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/12/24
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: politics-history
review:
Not every essay is as erudite as the others, and some authors overlap in their arguments, but this compendium is a delight for any Skeptic who craves different perspectives, especially when the holidays roll around and the Christian "reason for the season" is reiterated by believers and Linus. Almost no one in the book supports the widespread myth that atheists want to destroy Christmas; on the contrary, nearly everyone praises the secular delights of food and family and love, while admitting the day on which to celebrate such things is of course arbitrary. Instead of surrendering the joy of the holidays to the religious, the authors point to the thousands of pre-Christian roots intrinsic to our Western Christmas traditions. (I wonder how far one could get arguing on Fox News that Christianity co-opted the pagan solstice celebrations of Europe long before secularism and multiculturalism came along...) In keeping with the works of Dawkins and the current humanist movements, the book puts forth little effort in converting the religious and focuses almost entirely upon simply letting the Skeptics, Agnostics, Atheists, Secularists and Humanists know that they are not alone. Christmas is ours as much as it is anyone's.

Scientists argue the beauty of rationalism and comics share childhood stories of feeling confused and/or indifferent to the religiosity of their playmates in December. (I laughed out loud upon hearing of the girl who sent Christmas cards to both God and the Devil.) Some gems stumbled upon amongst the philosophy and the jokes:

"Just because you don't understand something, doesn't mean I can't."
- Adam Rutherford

"They had plucked out their eyes and now berated others for what they could not see."
- Robin Ince

"For the fire-and-brimstone crowd, one suspects that, for them, heaven would function like an Executive Box at Old Tafford, allowing them to look down upon hell's tormented from a comfortable vantage point. That for them would be the fun. Can you see hell from heaven?"
- David Stubbs

"Shouldn't we, if we're going to ignore the 'Christ' part of Christmas, find something else to call it? This has been a divisive issue... But if only practising Christians can use the word 'Christmas,' then only Vikings can use the word 'Thursday.'"
- Mitch Benn


]]> <![CDATA[The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel]]> 199798115
Through deep and perceptive dispatches from tourist spots around the globe—from Hawaii to Saudi Arabia, Amsterdam to Angkor Wat� The New Tourist lifts the veil on an industry that accounts for one in ten jobs worldwide and generates nearly ten percent of global GDP. How did a once-niche activity become the world’s most important means of contact across cultures? When does tourism destroy the soul of a city, and when does it offer a place a new lease on life? Is “last chance tourism� prompting a powerful change in perspective, or driving places we love further into the ground?

Filled with revelations about an industry that shapes how we view the world, The New Tourist spotlights painful truths but also delivers a message of that the right kind of tourism—and the right kind of tourist—can be a powerful force for good.]]> 288 Paige McClanahan 1668011778 E 0 to-read 3.80 The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel
author: Paige McClanahan
name: E
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Male Gazed 62337366
Manuel Betancourt has long lustfully coveted masculinity—in part because he so lacked it. As a child in Bogotá, Colombia, he grew up with the social pressure to appear strong, manly, and, ultimately, straight. And yet in the films and television he avidly watched, Betancourt saw glimmers of different possibilities. From the stars of telenovelas and the princes of Disney films to pop sensation Ricky Martin and teen heartthrobs in shows like Saved By the Bell, he continually found himself asking: Do I want him or do I want to be him?

The Male Gazed grapples with the thrall of masculinity, examining its frailty and its attendant anxieties even as it focuses on its erotic potential. Masculinity, Betancourt suggests, isn’t suddenly ripe for deconstruction—or even outright destruction—amid so much talk about its inherent toxicity. Looking back over decades� worth of pop culture’s attempts to codify and reframe what men can be, wear, do, and desire, this book establishes that to gaze at men is still a subversive act.

Written in the spirit of Hanif Abdurraqib and Olivia Laing, The Male Gazed mingles personal anecdotes with cultural criticism to offer an exploration of intimacy, homoeroticism, and the danger of internalizing too many toxic ideas about masculinity as a gay man.]]> 208 Manuel Betancourt 164622146X E 0 to-read 3.49 2023 The Male Gazed
author: Manuel Betancourt
name: E
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight]]> 121561903
� The Country of the Blind is about seeing—but also about marriage and family and the moral and emotional challenge of accommodating the parts of ourselves that scare us. A warm, profound, and unforgettable meditation on how we adjust to new ways of being in the world.� —Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves

We meet Andrew Leland as he’s suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be he’s midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in, such that he now sees the world as if through a narrow tube. Soon—but without knowing exactly when—he will likely have no vision left.

Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, politics, and customs. He negotiates his changing relationships with his wife and son, and with his own sense of self, as he moves from his mainstream, “typical� life to one with a disability. Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland’s determination not to merely survive this transition but to grow from it—to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening.

Thought-provoking and brimming with warmth and humor, The Country of the Blind is a deeply personal and intellectually exhilarating tour of a way of being that most of us have never paused to consider—and from which we have much to learn.]]> 368 Andrew Leland 1984881426 E 0 to-read 4.09 2023 The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight
author: Andrew Leland
name: E
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Talk 61796675 Winner of the NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Graphic Novels
Winner of an Alex Award from the American Library Association
Winner of the Libby Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel of the Year
Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Nonfiction
Nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Graphic Memoir
Nominated for an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel
Named The Year's Best Graphic Novel by Publishers Weekly
Named one of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Best Books of 2023
Named one of NPR's Books We Love
Named one of Kirkus ' Best 2023 Books
Named one of the Washington Post's 10 best graphic novels of 2023
One of TIME Magazine's Must-Read Books of the Year
Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 2024
Booklist Editors' Choice: Graphic Novels, 2023
New York Public Library's Best New Comics of 2023 Top Ten Pick
Chicago Public Library's Best Books of 2023 Top Ten Pick
Named one of School Library Journal's Best Graphic Novels of 2023
Named one of The Guardian's Best Graphic Novels of 2023

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn’t have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are.

Through evocative illustrations and sharp humor, Bell examines how The Talk shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood. While coming of age in Los Angeles—and finding a voice through cartooning—Bell becomes painfully aware of being regarded as dangerous by white teachers, neighbors, and police officers and thus of his mortality. Drawing attention to the brutal murders of African Americans and showcasing revealing insights and cartoons along the way, he brings us up to the moment of reckoning when people took to the streets protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And now Bell must decide whether he and his own six-year-old son are ready to have The Talk.]]> 352 Darrin Bell 1250805147 E 0 to-read 4.64 2023 The Talk
author: Darrin Bell
name: E
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It]]> 61783798 A hilarious and poignant memoir grappling with family, disability, and coming of age in two closets—as a gay man and as a man living with cerebral palsy

Greg Marshall’s early years were pretty bizarre. Rewind the VHS tapes (this is the nineties) and you’ll see a lopsided teenager limping across a high school stage, or in a wheelchair after leg surgeries, pondering why he’s crushing on half of the Utah Jazz. Add to this home video footage a mom clacking away at her newspaper column between chemos, a dad with ALS, and a cast of foulmouthed siblings. Fast forward the tape and you’ll find Marshall happily settled into his life as a gay man only to discover he’s been living in another closet his whole life: he has cerebral palsy. Here, in the hot mess of it all, lies Greg Marshall’s wellspring of wit and wisdom.

Leg is an extraordinarily funny and insightful memoir from a daring new voice. Packed with outrageous stories of a singular childhood, it is also a unique examination of what it means to transform when there are parts of yourself you can’t change, a moving portrait of a family in crisis, and a tale of resilience of spirit. In Marshall’s deft hands, we see a story both personal and universal—of being young and wanting the world, even when the world doesn’t feel like yours to want.]]> 304 Greg Marshall 1419763601 E 0 to-read 3.94 2023 Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It
author: Greg Marshall
name: E
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> How to Say Babylon 62919742 Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.']]> 352 Safiya Sinclair 1982132337 E 0 to-read 4.43 2023 How to Say Babylon
author: Safiya Sinclair
name: E
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World]]> 123021558 400 Claire Jean Kim 1009222252 E 0 to-read 3.92 Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World
author: Claire Jean Kim
name: E
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jovita Wore Pants 39834364 Aida Salazar E 0 to-read 4.18 2023 Jovita Wore Pants
author: Aida Salazar
name: E
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Head Has a Bellyache: And More Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups]]> 63251756 This hilarious follow-up to theNew York Timesbestselling poetry bookI'm Just No Good at Rhymingis full ofsurprising twists of wit and wordplay that will have readers rolling on the floor laughing!

“Highly recommended, it gets 5 stars and 8 moons and a chef's kiss and a tip of the hat and a jump in the lake from me.”—Bob Odenkirk, award-winning actor, writer, and comedian

I'm Just No Good at Rhyming is this century's most acclaimed comedic poetry collection so far, described as "a worthy heir to Silverstein, Seuss, and even Ogden Nash" (PublishersWeekly), "wildly imaginative...inspired and inspiring" (Kirkus), and as "everything a book for kids should be" (B.J. Novak). Now, Chris Harris delivers all that and more with dazzling new heights of creativity, kooky conundrums, witty wordsmithing, and of course, wacky laugh-out-loud fun!

There's a whole new cast of characters to meet, from the Nail-Clipping Fairy (who delivers teeth at night), to Orloc the Destroyer (who can be defeated only by his mommy), to the Elderly Caveman (who complains about the younger generation obsessed with playing with fire). There are more mind-bending verbal and visual riddles, plus there's plenty of hilarious hijinks hiding around every corner, whether it's a buffalo that escapes one poem and roams through others or a meteor threatening to land on the book and obliterate everything. There's even a mini book-within-a-book! In between it all, cartoonist Andrea Tsurumi’s diverse range of exuberant people, creatures, and anthropomorphic objects ripple through the pages with playful energy.

If your head has a bellyache as you read this book, it will only be because you're laughing WAY. TOO. HARD!]]> Chris Harris 1668628643 E 0 to-read 4.33 My Head Has a Bellyache: And More Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups
author: Chris Harris
name: E
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Berlin 62050489 When Daphne Ferber arrives in Berlin for a fresh start in a thrilling new city, the last thing she expects is to run into more drama than she left behind.

Of course, she knew she'd need to do the usual: make friends, acquire lovers, grapple with German and a whole new way of life. She even expected the long nights gorging alone on family-sized jars of Nutella, and the pitfalls of online dating in another language. The paranoia, the second-guessing of her every choice, the covert behaviours? Probably come with the territory.

But one night, something strange, dangerous and entirely unexpected intervenes, and life in bohemian Kreuzberg suddenly doesn't seem so cool.

Just how much trouble is Daphne in, and who - or what - is out to get her?

Channelling the modern female experience with razor-sharp observation and witty flair, Berlin announces Bea Setton as an electrifying literary voice for her generation.]]> 256 Bea Setton 014313762X E 0 to-read 3.55 2022 Berlin
author: Bea Setton
name: E
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice]]> 16766949 201 Susan Bassnett 1280330554 E 3 language-linguistics 3.40 1998 Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice
author: Susan Bassnett
name: E
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2002/11/01
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: language-linguistics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran & Oscar and the Lady in Pink (Le Cycle de l'Invisible #2-3)]]> 4726 Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran is about a troubled Jewish boy, Moses, or Momo, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a solitary Muslim shopkeeper named Monsieur Ibrahim. Momo's hilarious yet heart-wrenching story begins when he loses his virginity in a bordello at the age of 11. Ibrahim offers Momo his ear and advice and gradually teaches the precocious boy that there is more to life than whores and stealing groceries. When Momo's father, a passive-aggressive lawyer who neglects his son's well being, disappears and is found dead, Ibrahim adopts the orphaned boy. The two decide to make a trip across Europe to the birthplace of Monsieur Ibrahim that brings them to the most important crossroads of their lives. As this deeply funny and exquisitely crafted plot unravels, it reveals how we learn the most essential lessons of life and death when we expect them the least.

Oscar and the Lady in Pink gives us an entirely different tale of love and courage. Oscar is ten years old and dying of leukemia. He knows that his bone marrow transplant has failed, but the only person in the hospital who will talk to him about dying is his beloved Mamie-Rose, an elderly volunteer who visits the sick children. When it becomes clear that Oscar's time is growing short, Mamie-Rose gives him an idea: he should pretend that every day he lives represents the passage of ten years, and at the end of each day he should write down his experiences as a letter to God so that he might feel less alone. With Mamie-Rose as his guide, Oscar begins an uplifting journey through days made fuller by the richness of his imagination and spirit.

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt has given us two illuminating tales about suffering, love, compassion, and faith in both God and humanity. These stories are guaranteed to make readers laugh, cry, and stop to reflect on the grace and wonder that can be found in every heart.]]> 117 Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt 1590510917 E 4 short-stories 4.06 2001 Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran & Oscar and the Lady in Pink (Le Cycle de l'Invisible #2-3)
author: Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
name: E
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2006/08/01
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> Who? 17563394 24 Kathie Billingslea Smith E 3 picturebooks 3.86 1985 Who?
author: Kathie Billingslea Smith
name: E
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/03/30
shelves: picturebooks
review:

]]> I Am Not Sidney Poitier 6080748

An irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America

I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier.

Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation.

Percival Everett’s hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney’s tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: “What’s your name?� a kid would ask. “Not Sidney,� I would say. “Okay, then what is it?�

]]> 234 Percival Everett 1555975275 E 0 to-read 3.97 2009 I Am Not Sidney Poitier
author: Percival Everett
name: E
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett E 0 to-read 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: E
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Fraud 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith E 3 novels 3.25 2023 The Fraud
author: Zadie Smith
name: E
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2024/02/06
shelves: novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The List of Things That Will Not Change]]> 44900082
When Dad tells Bea that he and his boyfriend, Jesse, are getting married, Bea is thrilled. Bea loves Jesse, and when he and Dad get married, she'll finally (finally!) have what she's always wanted—a sister. Even though she's never met Jesse's daughter, Sonia, Bea is sure that they'll be "just like sisters anywhere."

As the wedding day approaches, Bea will learn that making a new family brings questions, surprises, and joy.]]> 224 Rebecca Stead 1101938099 E 0 to-read 4.22 2020 The List of Things That Will Not Change
author: Rebecca Stead
name: E
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Attack of the Black Rectangles]]> 59806035 The Devil's Arithmetic and finds some words blacked out, he thinks it must be a mistake. But then when he and his friends discover what the missing words are, he's outraged.

Someone in his school is trying to prevent kids from reading the full story.

But who?

Even though his unreliable dad tells him to not get so emotional about a book (or anything else), Mac has been raised by his mom and grandad to call out things that are wrong. He and his friends head to the principal's office to protest the censorship... but her response doesn't take them seriously.

So many adults want Mac to keep his words to himself.

Mac's about to see the power of letting them out.

In Attack of the Black Rectangles, acclaimed author Amy Sarig King shows all the ways truth can be hard... but still worth fighting for.]]> 258 Amy Sarig King 1338680528 E 0 to-read 4.18 2022 Attack of the Black Rectangles
author: Amy Sarig King
name: E
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems]]> 55298387

Meticulously orchestrated and musical in its forms, Playlist for the Apocalypse collects a dazzling array of voices: an elevator operator simmers with resentment, an octogenarian dances an exuberant mambo, a spring cricket philosophizes with mordant humor on hip hop, critics, and Valentine’s Day. Calamity turns all too personal in the book’s final section, “Little Book of Woe,� which charts a journey from terror to hope as Dove learns to cope with debilitating chronic illness.


At turns audaciously playful and grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to catastrophic failures of the human soul. Listen up, the poet says, speaking truth to power; what you’ll hear in return is “a lifetime of song.”]]> 114 Rita Dove 0393867773 E 4 poetry 4.07 2021 Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems
author: Rita Dove
name: E
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma 61685822 From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble, a passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of #MeToo, and of the link between genius and monstrosity.

In this unflinching, deeply personal book that expands on her instantly viral Paris Review essay, What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? Claire Dederer asks: Can we love the work of Hemingway, Polanski, Naipaul, Miles Davis, or Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss? She explores the audience's relationship with artists from Woody Allen to Michael Jackson, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.]]> 257 Claire Dederer 0525655115 E 5 philosophy-criticism 3.75 2023 Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
author: Claire Dederer
name: E
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/06
date added: 2024/01/06
shelves: philosophy-criticism
review:

]]> The Joy Luck Club 563002
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.]]> 332 Amy Tan 0804106304 E 4 novels 3.88 1989 The Joy Luck Club
author: Amy Tan
name: E
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 1998/01/01
date added: 2024/01/02
shelves: novels
review:
One of the few cases in which both the film and the book are equally fabulous and never faltering in comparison to another. It was daring of her to try to keep the read afloat in the stories of seven different women, but I love how their differences are in fact more subtle than they first seem.
]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 E 0 to-read 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: E
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Y/N 61105578 Y/Na novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction.

It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on live streams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boyband, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic—in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star.

Then Moon suddenly retires, vanishing from the public eye. As Y/N flies from Berlin to Seoul to be with Moon, our narrator, too, journeys to Korea in search of the object of her love. An escalating series of mistranslations and misidentifications lands her at the headquarters of the Kafkaesque entertainment company that manages the boyband until, at a secret location, together with Moon at last, art and real life approach their final convergence.

Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant, Y/N is a provocative literary debut about the universal longing for transcendence and the tragic struggle to assert one’s singular story amidst the amnesiac effects of globalization. Esther Yi’s prose unsettles the boundary between high and mass art, exploding our expectations of a novel about “identity� and offering in its place a sui generis picture of the loneliness that afflicts modern life.]]> 224 Esther Yi 1662601530 E 0 to-read 3.00 2023 Y/N
author: Esther Yi
name: E
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blackouts 65215321 From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collective.

Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay--playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized--has a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories--moments of joy and oblivion--and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?

Inspired by Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pedro Páramo, Voodoo Macbeth, the book at its own center and the woman who created it, oral histories, and many more texts, images, and influences, Justin Torres's Blackouts is a work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have made--a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth.]]> 306 Justin Torres 0374293570 E 0 to-read 3.76 2023 Blackouts
author: Justin Torres
name: E
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Laughter 61145400 An aging white male college professor develops a dangerous obsession with his new Pakistani colleague in this modern, iconoclastic novel that is as powerful, riveting, and disturbing as Lolita, Disgrace, and A Little Life.

Dr. Oliver Harding, a tenured professor of English, is long settled into the routines of a divorced, aging academic. But his quiet, staid life is upended by his new colleague, Ruhaba Khan, a dynamic Pakistani Muslim law professor.

Ruhaba unexpectedly ignites Oliver’s long-dormant passions, a secret desire that quickly tips towards obsession after her teenaged nephew, Adil Alam, arrives from France to stay with her. Oliver becomes a mentor to Adil, using his friendship with the boy to draw closer to his aunt. Getting to know them, Oliver tries to reconcile his discomfort with the worlds in which they come from, and to quiet his sense of dismay at the encroaching change they represent—both in background and in Ruhaba’s spirited engagement with the student movements on campus.

After protests break out on campus demanding diversity across the university, Harding finds himself and his beliefs under fire, even as his past reveals a picture more complicated than it seems. As Ruhaba seems attainable yet not, and as the women of his past taunt his memory, Harding reacts in ways shocking and devastating.

Sonora Jha has created a complex character both in tune and out of step with our time, an erudite man who inspires and challenges our sympathies. As the novel reaches its astonishing conclusion, Jha compels us to reexamine scenes in a new light, revealing a depth of loneliness in unlikely places, the subjectivity of innocence, and the looming peril of white rage in America.

An explosive, tense, and illuminating work of fiction, The Laughter is a fascinating portrait of privilege, radicalization, class, and modern academia that forces us to confront the assumptions we make, as both readers and as citizens.]]> 320 Sonora Jha 0063240254 E 0 to-read 3.85 2023 The Laughter
author: Sonora Jha
name: E
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin]]> 58311952 416 Kip Wilson 0358448905 E 0 to-read 3.90 2022 The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin
author: Kip Wilson
name: E
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Such a Fun Age 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 E 5 novels
Read this instead of watching the TV adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere

Read this if you believe we can handle honestly talking about racism and classism of the present, not just the past. If you want humor wrapped around characters who nevertheless avoid turning into caricatures. If you want true love shining through the biting satire. If you just want a really good story, but are ready to have your own conscience poked at. If you want to hear from someone who clearly knows what she's talking about.

(Mini-spoiler alert: I was delighted but not at all surprised to find out the author worked as a long-term babysitter.)]]> 3.76 2019 Such a Fun Age
author: Kiley Reid
name: E
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/06
date added: 2023/09/06
shelves: novels
review:
Read this and not The Help.

Read this instead of watching the TV adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere

Read this if you believe we can handle honestly talking about racism and classism of the present, not just the past. If you want humor wrapped around characters who nevertheless avoid turning into caricatures. If you want true love shining through the biting satire. If you just want a really good story, but are ready to have your own conscience poked at. If you want to hear from someone who clearly knows what she's talking about.

(Mini-spoiler alert: I was delighted but not at all surprised to find out the author worked as a long-term babysitter.)
]]> I Have Some Questions for You 61053829
But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.]]> 438 Rebecca Makkai 0593490142 E 3 novels 3.57 2023 I Have Some Questions for You
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: E
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/30
date added: 2023/09/03
shelves: novels
review:

]]> Alfie Gives a Hand 1299685
One day Alfie came home from Nursery School with a card in an envelope. His best friend, Bernard, had given it to him.

When Alfie is invited to Bernard’s birthday party he is a bit nervous about going on his own so he takes his special blanket with him. But Alfie has so much fun that he finds he doesn’t need his blanket after all � and he even makes a new friend too.]]> Shirley Hughes 0099927209 E 5 picturebooks 4.00 1983 Alfie Gives a Hand
author: Shirley Hughes
name: E
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/08/23
shelves: picturebooks
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love]]> 17601
In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it’s hard for men to not comply—but hooks wants to help change that.

With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves—and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. A brave and astonishing work, The Will to Change is designed to help men reclaim the best part of themselves.]]> 208 bell hooks 0743456084 E 0 to-read 4.38 2003 The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
author: bell hooks
name: E
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Happy Couple 63834978 An intimate, sharply funny novel about a couple heading toward their wedding, and the three friends who may draw them apart

Meet Celine and Luke--for all intents and purposes the happy couple. Luke (a serial cheater) and Celine (more inter­ested in piano than in domestic life) plan to marry in a year. Archie (the best man) should be moving on from his love for Luke and up the corporate ladder, but he finds himself utterly stuck. Phoebe (the bridesmaid and Celine’s sister) just wants to get to the bottom of Luke’s frequent unexplained disappearances. And Vivian (a wedding guest), as the only one with any emotional distance, observes her friends like ants in a colony. As the wedding approaches and these five lives intersect, each will find themselves looking for a path to their happily ever after--but does it lie at the end of an aisle?]]> 240 Naoise Dolan E 4 novels 3.34 2023 The Happy Couple
author: Naoise Dolan
name: E
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/14
date added: 2023/08/14
shelves: novels
review:
Epitomizing the quarter-life-crisis culture at its center, this story is 90% dialogue. And the dialogue is 90% psychoanalysis - every character calling out each other and themselves, convinced they've got it down. It makes for some fun reading that tricks the reader into thinking it's simpler than it is. At times the dialogue and non-stop telling leaves you wishing there had been a bit more showing - quieter moments or descriptions of actions rather than words to help the characters feel a bit more realistic. But late twentysomethings like these guys are rarely interested in that and they make every line worth your while.
]]> Milkman 41086837 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780571338757.

In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes 'interesting'. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous.

Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.]]> 352 Anna Burns E 4 novels 3.59 2018 Milkman
author: Anna Burns
name: E
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/04
date added: 2023/08/04
shelves: novels
review:
I would have absolutely loved this in college. It's a poem, not a novel, with a six-page-long paragraph to prove it. Fortunately, this style matches the theme. Highly recommend it to those who enjoy a challenge or a new look at a well-known topic. Not for those in search of snappy dialogue. Or proper nouns.
]]> <![CDATA[Capitale de la douleur suivi de L'amour la poésie]]> 117486 André Pieyre de Mandiargues.]]> 256 Paul Éluard 0686559665 E 2 poetry 4.14 1926 Capitale de la douleur suivi de L'amour la poésie
author: Paul Éluard
name: E
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1926
rating: 2
read at: 2003/03/01
date added: 2023/08/03
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There's an Alligator under My Bed (There's Something in My Room Series)]]> 724174 32 Mercer Mayer 0803703740 E 4 picturebooks 4.15 1987 There's an Alligator under My Bed (There's Something in My Room Series)
author: Mercer Mayer
name: E
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: picturebooks
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There's a Nightmare in My Closet (There's Something in My Room Series)]]> 760205 32 Mercer Mayer 0140547126 E 4 picturebooks 4.24 1968 There's a Nightmare in My Closet (There's Something in My Room Series)
author: Mercer Mayer
name: E
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: picturebooks
review:

]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X E 0 to-read 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: E
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tales from the Fatherland: Two Dads, One Adoption and the Meaning of Parenthood]]> 60379316
In 2018, after the introduction of marriage equality in Germany, Ben Fergusson and his German husband Tom became one of the first same-sex married couples to adopt in the country. In Tales from the Fatherland Fergusson reflects on his long journey to fatherhood and the social changes that enabled it. He uses his outsider status as both a gay father and a parent adopting in a foreign country to explore the history and sociology of fatherhood and motherhood around the world, queer parenting and adoption and, ultimately, the meaning of family and love.

Tales from the Fatherland makes an impassioned case for the value of diversity in family life, arguing that diverse families are good for all families and that misogyny lies at the heart of many of the struggles of straight and queer families alike.]]> 352 Ben Fergusson 1408714299 E 4 biographies 4.30 Tales from the Fatherland: Two Dads, One Adoption and the Meaning of Parenthood
author: Ben Fergusson
name: E
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/11
date added: 2023/06/12
shelves: biographies
review:
An absorbing dive into both modern adoption and they ways in which being one of Germany's first legally recognized gay fathers enlightens the author to the inequality of the "traditional" family model most couples experience. The style flows as an open, honest, unpretentious memoir, but it is jam-packed with sociological facts and figures that lay bare just how complex our world of starting families really is.
]]> <![CDATA[When Boys Become Boys: Development, Relationships, and Masculinity]]> 18637244


Based on a two-year study of boys aged four to six, When Boys Become Boys offers a new way of thinking about boys� development. Chu finds that behaviors typically viewed as “natural� for boys reflect an adaptation to cultures that require boys to be emotionally stoic, competitive, and aggressive if they are to be accepted as “real boys.� Yet even as boys begin to reap the social benefits of aligning with norms of masculine behavior, they pay a psychological and relational price for hiding parts of their authentic selves.



Through documenting boys� perceptions of the obstacles they face and the pressures they feel to conform, and showing that their compliance with norms of masculine behavior is neither automatic nor inevitable, this accessible and engaging book provides insight into ways in which adults can foster boys� healthy resistance and help them to access a broader range of options for expressing themselves.





Judy Y. Chu is Affiliated Faculty in the Program in Human Biology at Stanford University and co-editor of Adolescent Boys: Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood (NYU Press 2004).



Carol Gilligan is University Professor of Applied Psychology and the Humanities at New York University. She is the author or editor of many books, including In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development and Joining the Resistance.]]> 242 Judy Y. Chu 0814764800 E 3 psychology 3.59 2014 When Boys Become Boys: Development, Relationships, and Masculinity
author: Judy Y. Chu
name: E
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/28
date added: 2023/05/28
shelves: psychology
review:

]]> Happy-Go-Lucky 58989873
But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.

As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.

In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.]]> 272 David Sedaris 0316392456 E 4 short-stories 4.15 2022 Happy-Go-Lucky
author: David Sedaris
name: E
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/12
date added: 2023/05/12
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> Right-Wing Women 377163 � From the reverse cover.]]> 255 Andrea Dworkin 0399506713 E 0 to-read 4.39 1983 Right-Wing Women
author: Andrea Dworkin
name: E
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals]]> 54785515 The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless battle against distraction; we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,� Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.]]> 271 Oliver Burkeman 0374159122 E 3 philosophy-criticism 4.20 2021 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: E
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/11
date added: 2023/04/11
shelves: philosophy-criticism
review:

]]> The Great Believers 45304101 A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

The Great Believers has become a critically acclaimed, indelible piece of literature; it was selected as one of New York Times Best 10 Books of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Buzzfeed Book of the Year, a Skimm Reads pick, and a pick for the New York Public Library's Best Books of the year.]]> 421 Rebecca Makkai 073522353X E 5 novels, favorites
Having seen Angels in America, Pride and several documentaries about the AIDS crisis, I simply could not fathom being this surprised by one story. But that's what great novels do. Get you to adore many characters, want to throttle others, and appreciate how even - or perhaps especially - your favorites are called out on their own flaws and are forced into self-doubt.

Many novels describe death from the visitor's chair in the hospital room, from the hospital bed, from the memorial and the dividing up of belongings, from the lives that go on, but not all of them do it in a way that conjures up every one of your own personal experiences in such places until you can't hold back the tears. And few novels get you to realize - fully realize - that people you love really lived through all this and this is what they meant when they said they never expected to live past 40. A photo of me as an infant next to these loved ones was a moment of joy and innocence captured just a month after HIV had been identified in Paris.

It's like the moment you look at your child and truly realize he's the very same age his grandfather was when he was forced to literally run from bombs. We doom scroll constantly past death and destruction. But books like these stop you in your tracks, leaving you wondering how you really managed to skim past it before.]]> 4.26 2018 The Great Believers
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: E
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/06
date added: 2023/04/11
shelves: novels, favorites
review:
One of the most heart-wrenching novels I've ever read. If you don't feel the same way, don't talk to me about it.

Having seen Angels in America, Pride and several documentaries about the AIDS crisis, I simply could not fathom being this surprised by one story. But that's what great novels do. Get you to adore many characters, want to throttle others, and appreciate how even - or perhaps especially - your favorites are called out on their own flaws and are forced into self-doubt.

Many novels describe death from the visitor's chair in the hospital room, from the hospital bed, from the memorial and the dividing up of belongings, from the lives that go on, but not all of them do it in a way that conjures up every one of your own personal experiences in such places until you can't hold back the tears. And few novels get you to realize - fully realize - that people you love really lived through all this and this is what they meant when they said they never expected to live past 40. A photo of me as an infant next to these loved ones was a moment of joy and innocence captured just a month after HIV had been identified in Paris.

It's like the moment you look at your child and truly realize he's the very same age his grandfather was when he was forced to literally run from bombs. We doom scroll constantly past death and destruction. But books like these stop you in your tracks, leaving you wondering how you really managed to skim past it before.
]]> I Know You Know Who I Am 45889905
In I Know You Know Who I Am, Kispert deftly explores deception and performance, the uneasiness of reconciling a queer identity with the wider world, and creates a sympathetic, often darkly humorous, portrait of characters searching for paths to intimacy, desperate for connection.]]> 240 Peter Kispert 0143134280 E 0 to-read 3.31 2020 I Know You Know Who I Am
author: Peter Kispert
name: E
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems]]> 50212161 Together we are looking up
into all we do not own
and we are listening.

Everything Comes Next presents Naomi Shihab Nye’s most acclaimed, most popular, most inspiring, most life-changing poems of the past forty-five years, together in one volume. Including such favorites as “Famous,� “Valentine for Ernest Mann,� “Kindness,� "Arabic Coffee," and “Gate A-4,� as well as new poems and an introduction by bestselling poet and author Edward Hirsch, this is an essential collection for all readers.]]> 241 Naomi Shihab Nye 0063013452 E 0 to-read 4.23 2020 Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems
author: Naomi Shihab Nye
name: E
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland]]> 56769525 Angela’s Ashes, Fintan O’Toole, one of the Anglophone world’s most consummate stylists, continues the narrative of modern Ireland into our own time. O’Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government—in despair, because all the young people were leaving—opened the country to foreign investment. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity.


Weaving his own experiences into this account of Irish social, cultural, and economic change, O’Toole shows how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a Catholic “backwater� to an almost totally open society. A sympathetic-yet-exacting observer, O’Toole shrewdly weighs more than sixty years of globalization, delving into the violence of the Troubles and depicting, in biting detail, the astonishing collapse of the once-supreme Irish Catholic Church. The result is a stunning work of memoir and national history that reveals how the two modes are inextricable for all of us.]]> 616 Fintan O'Toole 1631496530 E 0 to-read 4.31 2021 We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland
author: Fintan O'Toole
name: E
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Loneliest Americans 58145392 A riveting blend of family history and original reportage by a conversation-starting writer for The New York Times Magazine that explores--and reimagines--Asian American identity in a Black and white world

In 1965, a new immigration law lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigrants to the United States. Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country's demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang's parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of "Asian America" that was supposed to define them.

The Loneliest Americans is the unforgettable story of Kang and his family as they move from a housing project in Cambridge to an idyllic college town in the South and eventually to the West Coast. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Asian America, as millions more immigrants, many of them working-class or undocumented, stream into the country. At the same time, upwardly mobile urban professionals have struggled to reconcile their parents' assimilationist goals with membership in a multicultural elite--all while trying to carve out a new kind of belonging for their own children, who are neither white nor truly "people of color."

Kang recognizes this existential loneliness in himself and in other Asian Americans who try to locate themselves in the country's racial binary. There are the businessmen turning Flushing into a center of immigrant wealth; the casualties of the Los Angeles riots; the impoverished parents in New York City who believe that admission to the city's exam schools is the only way out; the men's right's activists on Reddit ranting about intermarriage; and the handful of protesters who show up at Black Lives Matter rallies holding "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power" signs. Kang's exquisitely crafted book brings these lonely parallel climbers together amid a wave of anti-Asian violence. In response, he calls for a new form of immigrant solidarity--one rooted not in bubble tea and elite college admissions but in the struggles of refugees and the working class.]]> 272 Jay Caspian Kang 0525576223 E 0 to-read 3.70 2021 The Loneliest Americans
author: Jay Caspian Kang
name: E
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Biography of X 60784729 From one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.

When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.

A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows a grieving wife seeking to understand the woman who enthralled her. CM traces X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. And when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined.

Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey, one of our most acclaimed literary innovators, pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.]]> 416 Catherine Lacey E 0 to-read 3.83 2023 Biography of X
author: Catherine Lacey
name: E
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 E 3 novels 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: E
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/25
date added: 2023/03/25
shelves: novels
review:

]]> Gender: A Graphic Guide 45014042 Join the creators of Queer: A Graphic History (‘Could totally change the way you think about sex and gender� VICE) on an illustrated journey of gender exploration.

We’ll look at how gender has been ‘done� differently � from patriarchal societies to trans communities � and how it has been viewed differently � from biological arguments for sex difference to cultural arguments about received gender norms. We’ll dive into complex and shifting ideas about masculinity and femininity, look at non-binary, trans and fluid genders, and examine the intersection of experiences of gender with people’s race, sexuality, class, disability and more.

Tackling current debates and tensions, which can divide communities and even cost lives, we’ll look to the past and the future to ask how might we approach gender differently, in more socially constructive, caring ways.]]> 176 Meg-John Barker 1785784528 E 3 politics-history 4.26 2019 Gender: A Graphic Guide
author: Meg-John Barker
name: E
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/08
date added: 2023/03/18
shelves: politics-history
review:

]]> Intimations: Six Essays 54313380 Deeply personal and powerfully moving, a short and timely series of reflective essays by one of the most clear-sighted and essential writers of our time

Written during the early months of lockdown, Intimations explores ideas, feelings and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality � or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?

Suffused with a profound intimacy and tenderness in response to these extraordinary times, Intimations is a slim, suggestive volume with a wide scope, in which Zadie Smith clears a generous space for thought, open enough for each reader to reflect on what has happened � and what might come next.]]> 97 Zadie Smith 073524118X E 4 philosophy-criticism 3.95 2020 Intimations: Six Essays
author: Zadie Smith
name: E
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/29
date added: 2023/03/18
shelves: philosophy-criticism
review:

]]> We Had to Remove This Post 61147211 The Perfect Nanny or Ling Ma's Severance: a tight, propulsive, chilling novel by a rising international star about a group of young colleagues working as social media content monitors—reviewers of violent or illegal videos for an unnamed megacorporation—who convince themselves they’re in control . . . until the violence strikes closer to home.

Kayleigh needs money. That’s why she takes a job as a content moderator for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed. It’s grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s ever-changing terms of service while a supervisor sits behind them, timing and scoring their assessments. Yet Kayleigh finds a group of friends, even a new love—and, somehow, the job starts to feel okay.

But when her colleagues begin to break down; when Sigrid, her new girlfriend, grows increasingly distant and fragile; when her friends start espousing the very conspiracy theories they’re meant to be evaluating; Kayleigh begins to wonder if the job may be too much for them. She’s still totally fine, though—or is she?]]> 137 Hanna Bervoets E 3 novels 3.03 2021 We Had to Remove This Post
author: Hanna Bervoets
name: E
average rating: 3.03
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2023/03/18
shelves: novels
review:

]]> Rubyfruit Jungle 165395 246 Rita Mae Brown 0553146963 E 0 to-read 3.92 1973 Rubyfruit Jungle
author: Rita Mae Brown
name: E
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Vladimir 57846324 A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own...

“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.�

And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding.

With this bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured debut, author Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Propulsive, darkly funny, and wildly entertaining, Vladimir perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.]]> 238 Julia May Jonas 1982187638 E 5 novels 3.41 2022 Vladimir
author: Julia May Jonas
name: E
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/12
date added: 2023/03/12
shelves: novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Holy Bible: New Student Bible: New Revised Standard Version]]> 6113263 1216 Anonymous 0310923859 E 2 politics-history 4.00 393 Holy Bible: New Student Bible: New Revised Standard Version
author: Anonymous
name: E
average rating: 4.00
book published: 393
rating: 2
read at: 1997/12/01
date added: 2023/03/07
shelves: politics-history
review:

]]> Really Good, Actually 60775173 ‘Monica Heisey’s observations on men, women, friendship, love and sex are equal parts hilarious and profound� Dolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love

‘Wildly funny and almost alarmingly relatable� Marian Keyes, author of Again, Rachel

'Hilarious, heart-warming, wise' Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

One of the most hotly anticipated, hilarious and addictive debut novels of 2023, from Schitt’s Creek screenwriter and electric new voice in fiction, Monica Heisey.

I feel like when you get a divorce everyone’s wondering how you ruined it all, what made you so unbearable to be with. If your husband dies, at least people feel bad for you.

Maggie’s marriage has ended just 608 days after it started, but she’s fine � she’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s alone for the first time in her life, can’t afford her rent and her obscure PhD is going nowhere . . . but at the age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new status as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée�.

Soon she’s taking up ‘sadness hobbies� and getting back out there, sex-wise, oversharing in the group chat and drinking with her high-intensity new divorced friend Amy. As Maggie throws herself headlong into the chaos of her first year of divorce, she finds herself questioning everything, including: Why do we still get married? Did I fail before I even got started? How many Night Burgers until I’m happy?

Laugh-out-loud funny, razor sharp and painfully relatable, Really Good, Actually is an irresistible debut novel about the uncertainties of modern love, friendship and happiness from a stunning new voice in fiction, Monica Heisey.

‘A smart, funny and warm debut with such a strong voice� Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of Everyone Is Still Alive

‘Monica Heisey makes me laugh hard and often� Rob Delaney]]> 377 Monica Heisey 0008511748 E 4 novels 3.34 2023 Really Good, Actually
author: Monica Heisey
name: E
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/05
date added: 2023/03/05
shelves: novels
review:

]]> Sexuality: A Graphic Guide 54785417 From the dream team creators of Queer: A Graphic History and Gender: A Graphic Guide

Sex can seem like a house of horrors � full of monsters and potential pitfalls. We often live with fear, shame and frustration when it comes to our own sexuality, and with judgement when it comes to others�. Sex advice manuals, debates over sex work and stories of sexual ‘dysfunction� add to our anxiety.

With compassion, humour, erudition and a touch of the erotic, Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele shine a light through the darkness and unmask the monsters in this illustrated guide. From sexual identities to having sex, to desire, consent and relationships, we’ll explore the invention of sex as we know it and imagine sex as it could be. Along the way, we’ll move past thinking of sex as meaning just one thing, defined by the genders of those doing it, instead making space for lots of different types of attraction, desire, relationship and act.]]> 176 Meg-John Barker 1785786539 E 4 politics-history, psychology 4.18 2021 Sexuality: A Graphic Guide
author: Meg-John Barker
name: E
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/18
date added: 2023/02/27
shelves: politics-history, psychology
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020]]> 57190774
If it’s navel-gazing you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place; ditto treacly self-examination. Rather, his observations turn outward: a fight between two men on a bus, a fight between two men on the street, pedestrians being whacked over the head or gathering to watch as a man considers leap­ing to his death. There’s a dirty joke shared at a book signing, then a dirtier one told at a dinner party—lots of jokes here. Plenty of laughs.

These diaries remind you that you once really hated George W. Bush, and that not too long ago, Donald Trump was just a harm­less laughingstock, at least on French TV. Time marches on, and Sedaris, at his desk or on planes, in hotel dining rooms and odd Japanese inns, records it. The entries here reflect an ever-changing background—new administrations, new restrictions on speech and conduct. What you can say at the start of the book, you can’t by the end. At its best, A Carnival of Snackery is a sort of sampler: the bitter and the sweet. Some entries are just what you wanted. Others you might want to spit discreetly into a napkin.]]> 576 David Sedaris 0316558796 E 4 biographies 4.17 2021 A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020
author: David Sedaris
name: E
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/27
date added: 2023/02/27
shelves: biographies
review:

]]>