Devina's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 13 Apr 2025 05:58:34 -0700 60 Devina's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)]]> 43587154 JADE CITY is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu.

The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.

The Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion--but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection.

When the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself.]]> 540 Fonda Lee 0316440884 Devina 0 to-read 4.06 2017 Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)
author: Fonda Lee
name: Devina
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cloud Cuckoo Land 56783258 When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:
An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:
An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:
With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.]]> 626 Anthony Doerr 1982168439 Devina 0 to-read 4.24 2021 Cloud Cuckoo Land
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Devina
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pachinko 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Devina 0 to-read 4.35 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Devina
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> There Are Rivers in the Sky 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.�]]> 464 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Devina 0 to-read 4.39 2024 There Are Rivers in the Sky
author: Elif Shafak
name: Devina
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)]]> 58416952 At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic � the Hierarchy � may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus � what they call Will � to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.]]> 639 James Islington 1982141190 Devina 0 to-read 4.61 2023 The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)
author: James Islington
name: Devina
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beach Read 52867387 A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.]]> 400 Emily Henry 1984806734 Devina 0 to-read 3.99 2020 Beach Read
author: Emily Henry
name: Devina
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The River Has Roots 211004176 Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.�

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters� bond but also their lives will be at risk…]]> 133 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341086 Devina 0 to-read 4.20 2025 The River Has Roots
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Devina
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water]]> 59808037
Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz’s most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.]]> 195 Angie Cruz 1250208459 Devina 0 to-read 3.87 2022 How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water
author: Angie Cruz
name: Devina
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lighthouse Witches 59220917 Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found–but she’s still the same age as when she disappeared. The secrets of witches have reached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Nesting.


When single mother Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100-year-old lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, it’s an opportunity to start over with her three daughters–Luna, Sapphire, and Clover. When two of her daughters go missing, she’s frantic. She learns that the cave beneath the lighthouse was once a prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings who mimic human children, created by witches for revenge. Liv is told wildlings are dangerous and must be killed.


Twenty-two years later, Luna has been searching for her missing sisters and mother. When she receives a call about her youngest sister, Clover, she’s initially ecstatic. Clover is the sister she remembers–except she’s still seven years old, the age she was when she vanished. Luna is worried Clover is a wildling. Luna has few memories of her time on the island, but she’ll have to return to find the truth of what happened to her family. But she doesn’t realize just how much the truth will change her.

]]> C.J. Cooke 0008354723 Devina 0 audible
Nope. The characters were annoying at best (Finn was nice though), there were plotholes that boggled my mind ([spoilers removed])

There were atmospheric parts, definitely, but honestly, I was just frustrated by the end.]]> 3.86 2021 The Lighthouse Witches
author: C.J. Cooke
name: Devina
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: audible
review:
I'm quite frustrated; I really thought I'd love this book. Witches. A Scottish island. Folklore. [spoilers removed]

Nope. The characters were annoying at best (Finn was nice though), there were plotholes that boggled my mind ([spoilers removed])

There were atmospheric parts, definitely, but honestly, I was just frustrated by the end.
]]> Antarctica 200533999
In 'House Calls', Cordelia wakes on the last day ofthe twentieth century and sets off along the coast road to keep a date with her lover that has been nine years in the waiting. In 'The Singing Cashier', a local postman visits two sisters bearing fishy gifts in the hope that his favour will be returned in kind.

One of the most moving and disturbing stories in the collection, 'Passport Soup', features Frank Corso, who sits alone eating green tomatoes and bacon, mourning the disappearance of his nine-year-old 'At one point in that late evening, she was there, and then she wasn't.'

Keegan's characters inhabit a world where dreams, memory and chance can have crippling consequences for those involved. Compassionate, witty and unsettling, Antarctica is a collection to be savoured.]]> Claire Keegan Devina 0 currently-reading, audible 3.55 1999 Antarctica
author: Claire Keegan
name: Devina
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: currently-reading, audible
review:

]]> Hotel Silence 35412376 Hotel Silence is a delightful and heartwarming new novel from Auour Ava Olafsdottir, a writer who "upends expectations" (New York Times). Told with grace, insight, and humor, this is the story of one man's surprising mid-life adventure of self-discovery that leads him to find a new reason for being.

Jonas Ebeneser is a handy DIY kind of man with a compulsion to fix things, but he can't seem to fix his own life. On the cusp of turning fifty, divorced, adrift, he's recently discovered he is not the biological father of his daughter, Gudrun Waterlily, and he has sunk into an existential crisis, losing all will to live. As he visits his senile mother in a nursing home, he secretly muses on how, when, and where to put himself out of his misery.

To prevent his only daughter from discovering his body, Jonas decides it's best to die abroad. Armed with little more than his toolbox and a change of clothes, he flies to an unnamed country where the fumes of war still hover in the air. He books a room at the sparsely occupied Hotel Silence, and there he comes to understands the depths of other people's scars while beginning to see his wounds in a new light.

A celebration of life's infinite possibilities, of transformations and second chances, Hotel Silence is a rousing story of a man, a community, and a path toward regeneration from the depths of despair.]]> 214 AuĂ°ur Ava Ă“lafsdĂłttir 0802127509 Devina 0 currently-reading 3.73 2016 Hotel Silence
author: AuĂ°ur Ava Ă“lafsdĂłttir
name: Devina
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Still Alice 2153405 Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...]]> 292 Lisa Genova 0595440096 Devina 5 4.32 2007 Still Alice
author: Lisa Genova
name: Devina
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:
I couldn't put this book down, even when I was crying as I read it. The depiction of early onset Alzheimer's disease was done through the narrative of the character going through it... so it's a blurred perspective, perhaps even an inaccurate one in terms of the incidents going on around her, but it's all the more stronger for it.
]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 125168721 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 498 Rebecca Yarros 0349437009 Devina 0 currently-reading 4.55 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Devina
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Mrs England 56089437
When newly graduated nurse Ruby May takes a position looking after the children of Charles and Lilian England, a wealthy couple from a powerful dynasty of mill owners, she hopes it will be the fresh start she needs. But as she adapts to life at the isolated Hardcastle House, it becomes clear there's something not quite right about the beautiful, mysterious Mrs England. Ostracised by the servants and feeling increasingly uneasy, Ruby is forced to confront her own demons in order to prevent history from repeating itself. After all, there's no such thing as the perfect family - and she should know.

Simmering with slow-burning menace, Mrs England is a portrait of an Edwardian marriage, weaving an enthralling story of men and women, power and control, courage, truth and the very darkest deception. Set against the atmospheric landscape of West Yorkshire, Stacey Halls' third novel proves her one of the most exciting and compelling new storytellers of our times.]]> 424 Stacey Halls 1838772863 Devina 0 to-read 3.86 2021 Mrs England
author: Stacey Halls
name: Devina
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)]]> 36965054
The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.

Now four women embark on the twelfth expedition into the unknown.]]> 208 Jeff VanderMeer Devina 4
2014 review: Creepy book, which I suppose was its aim, but mired in riddles which don't have much of a conclusion. I was fairly frustrated by the end.]]> 3.88 2014 Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Devina
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, the-old-library
review:
2025: DEFINITELY enjoyed this on the re-read. I think I appreciated its ecological thriller aspect a lot more. The writing is creepy in parts, and I read a particularly climactic scene at night with just a little reading light, and it affected me even more! I am definitely curious on this read to continue to explore the remaining books.

2014 review: Creepy book, which I suppose was its aim, but mired in riddles which don't have much of a conclusion. I was fairly frustrated by the end.
]]> <![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 Devina 0 to-read 4.20 2021 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Devina
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain]]> 55216172
The British Empire ran for centuries and covered vast swathes of the world. It is, as Sanghera reveals, fundamental to understanding Britain. However, even among those who celebrate the empire there seems to be a desire not to look at it too closely - not to include the subject in our school history books, not to emphasize it too much in our favourite museums.

At a time of great division, when we are arguing about what it means to be British, Sanghera's book urges us to address this bewildering contradiction. For, it is only by stepping back and seeing where we really come from, that we can begin to understand who we are, and what unites us.]]> 306 Sathnam Sanghera 0241445299 Devina 0 to-read 4.08 2021 Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain
author: Sathnam Sanghera
name: Devina
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania]]> 146070961 432 Kathryn Hughes 1421448149 Devina 0 to-read 3.66 2024 Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania
author: Kathryn Hughes
name: Devina
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lagoon 19784026 320 Nnedi Okorafor Devina 3 3.69 2014 Lagoon
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Devina
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:
It was great to read a book where something happens outside of the usual American or British settings. Bringing in Nigerian culture and language together with aliens, great to see it. While the writing picks up towards the end, there is something almost jarring or stilted about the writing, which made it hard to get into at first. The characters' development seemed...random, and just not explained enough IMO. Having said that, it was an interesting read.
]]> Kindred 27042301 Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.]]> 11 Octavia E. Butler Devina 5 audible 4.25 1979 Kindred
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Devina
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: audible
review:
What a fabulous book. It's my first by the author and I am keen to read more.
]]> <![CDATA[Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Audio Collection (Sherlock Holmes, #1-9)]]> 34429916 71 hrs 58 mins

Ever since he made his first appearance in A Study In Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes has enthralled and delighted millions of fans throughout the world. Now Audible is proud to present Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, read by Stephen Fry. A lifelong fan of Doyle's detective fiction, Fry has narrated the complete works of Sherlock Holmes - four novels and five collections of short stories. And, exclusively for Audible, Stephen has written and narrated nine insightful, intimate and deeply personal introductions to each title.

He writes: "Popular fiction offers different kinds of superheroes to save the world by restoring order to the chaos, confusion and criminality of our times. Heroes with remarkable gifts are as in vogue now as they have been since they first appeared, perhaps even more in vogue. But although the very first one was launched in serial published form just like his masked and body-suited successors, it was not in DC or Marvel comic books that he made his appearance; rather it was in the sedate and respectable pages of Mrs Beeton's Christmas Annual in the mid-Victorian year 1887."

Stephen Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, comedian, television presenter, film director and all round national treasure. He is the acclaimed narrator of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter audiobooks and most recently recorded The Tales of Max Carrados for Audible Studios. Stephen has contributed columns and articles to newspapers and magazines, appears frequently on radio and has written four novels and three volumes of autobiography.

A Study in Scarlet
The Sign of Four
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
The Valley of Fear
His Last Bow
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes]]> 72 Arthur Conan Doyle Devina 5 4.59 1915 Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Audio Collection (Sherlock Holmes, #1-9)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Devina
average rating: 4.59
book published: 1915
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves:
review:
What a fabulous audio collection, of all the Sherlock Holmes stories. From stories I have read many times to ones (especially in the later years) that I experienced for the first time - it was wonderful. Plus, having Stephen Fry narrate was an absolute treat.
]]> 2312 13078770
The year is 2312. Scientific advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer our only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system, on moons, planets, and in between. But in 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront our past, present, and future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, in the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. For Swan Er Hong, it will change her life. Once a designer of worlds, now Swan will be led into a plot to destroy them.

2312 is a bold vision of humanity's future and a compelling portrait of those individuals who will shape its events.]]> 568 Kim Stanley Robinson Devina 0 3.39 2012 2312
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Devina
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: the-old-library, couldn-t-finish
review:

]]> A Tale for the Time Being 17237030 422 Ruth Ozeki 0857867970 Devina 4 the-old-library 4.10 2013 A Tale for the Time Being
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: Devina
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: the-old-library
review:
Reading it again after 9 years, I definitely liked it more this time around. I liked the weaving in between Japan and Canada, and there were many poignant moments facing the main characters. Glad I gave it another go!
]]> <![CDATA[The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel]]> 12848580 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780812982428

When Ravi Kapoor, an overworked London doctor, reaches the breaking point with his difficult father-in-law, he asks his wife: “Can’t we just send him away somewhere? Somewhere far, far away.� His prayer is seemingly answered when Ravi’s entrepreneurial cousin sets up a retirement home in India, hoping to re-create in Bangalore an elegant lost corner of England. Several retirees are enticed by the promise of indulgent living at a bargain price, but upon arriving, they are dismayed to find that restoration of the once sophisiticated hotel has stalled, and that such amenities as water and electricity are . . . infrequent. But what their new life lacks in luxury, they come to find, it’s plentiful in adventure, stunning beauty, and unexpected love.]]> 336 Deborah Moggach Devina 3 the-old-library 3.38 2004 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
author: Deborah Moggach
name: Devina
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: the-old-library
review:

]]> Pride of Baghdad 105703 136 Brian K. Vaughan 1401203140 Devina 3 3.88 2006 Pride of Baghdad
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Devina
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:
Would've been better without the anthropomorphising of the lions, there was some unnecessary arcs there (I mean, [spoilers removed]) It was a predictable, if painful, ending, and there were some really beautifully designed panels.
]]> <![CDATA[The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back]]> 57577281 This eye-opening narrative journey into the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence reveals the dangerous ways AI is exploiting the unconscious habits of our minds—and the real threat it poses to humanity.

Artificial intelligence is going to change the world as we know it. But the real danger isn't some robot that's going to enslave us: It's our own brain. Our brains are constantly making decisions using shortcuts, biases, and hidden processes—and we're using those same techniques to create technology that makes choices for us. In The Loop, award-winning science journalist Jacob Ward reveals how we are poised to build all of our worst instincts into our AIs, creating a narrow loop where each generation has fewer, predetermined, and even dangerous choices.

Taking us on a world tour of the ongoing, real-world experiment of artificial intelligence, The Loop illuminates the dangers of writing dangerous human habits into our machines. From a biometric surveillance state in India that tracks the movements of over a billion people, to a social media control system in China that punishes deviant friendships, to the risky multiple-choice simplicity of automated military action, Ward travels the world speaking with top experts confronting the perils of their research. Each stop reveals how the most obvious patterns in our behavior—patterns an algorithm will use to make decisions about what's best for us—are not the ones we want to perpetuate.

Just as politics, marketing, and finance have all exploited the weaknesses of our human programming, artificial intelligence is poised to use the patterns of our lives to manipulate us. The Loop is call to look at ourselves more clearly—our most creative ideas, our most destructive impulses, the ways we help and hurt one another-so we can put only the best parts of ourselves into the thinking machines we create.]]> Jacob Ward 1549134000 Devina 2 audible, dubai-bibliophiles 3.50 The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back
author: Jacob Ward
name: Devina
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: audible, dubai-bibliophiles
review:

]]> She and Her Cat 223192292 160 Makoto Shinkai Devina 2 3.51 2016 She and Her Cat
author: Makoto Shinkai
name: Devina
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:
I was excited to read this, but it was a bit disappointing. There was a lot of male gaze issues here, and also a bit weird to make the cats feel like they are "dating" their humans? There were some interesting bits around the concepts of loneliness and how a cat (or any pet really) can help mental health, but maybe it worked better as an anime!
]]> The Covenant of Water 180357146 From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 715 Abraham Verghese 0802162177 Devina 0 to-read 4.34 2023 The Covenant of Water
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Devina
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Human Acts 34964181 From the internationally bestselling and Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Vegetarian, a “rare and astonishing� (The Observer) portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed. The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend who meets his own fateful end to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother, their collective heartbreak and acts of hope tell the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of a historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.]]> 226 Han Kang 9781101906 Devina 3 4.28 2014 Human Acts
author: Han Kang
name: Devina
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: the-old-library, dubai-bibliophiles
review:
I found this quite intriguing to read. Some chapters hit harder than others, for example the one told from the perspective of the dead friend. Some chapters felt disjointed, like the factory worker. But then I kept getting confused between switching from second person narratives to others. I don’t necessarily mind second person but I’m not sure it worked here. However, it’s a fascinating book that looks at a very tumultuous time in history in a distinctive way, glad I read it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Restaurant of Love Regained]]> 11791115 193 Ito Ogawa 1846881498 Devina 3 the-old-library 3.55 2008 The Restaurant of Love Regained
author: Ito Ogawa
name: Devina
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: the-old-library
review:

]]> Don Quixote 19100440 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAROLD BLOOM



Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote.

]]> 981 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Devina 0 couldn-t-finish 4.06 1615 Don Quixote
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Devina
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1615
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: couldn-t-finish
review:

]]> Seven Gothic Tales 45156471 447 Isak Dinesen 8832564394 Devina 0 couldn-t-finish 3.90 1934 Seven Gothic Tales
author: Isak Dinesen
name: Devina
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: couldn-t-finish
review:

]]> Fatherland 56842
The naked body of an old man floats in a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. In one week it will be Adolf Hitler’s 75th birthday. A terrible conspiracy is starting to unravel�

What if Hitler had won?

Fatherland is set in an alternative world where Hitler has won the Second World War. It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb.

As March discovers the identity of the body, he uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with an American journalist, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth -- a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.]]> 380 Robert Harris 0061006629 Devina 3 4.01 1992 Fatherland
author: Robert Harris
name: Devina
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:
It was a good book, one that - I think - successfully created a world in which Hitler won. There are predictable twists and turns, but even so, the writing is engaging and creates a chilling perspective on what it would be like if the war had ended differently. Even more chilling when read in today's world, tbh.
]]> <![CDATA[Katharine Parr, the Sixth Wife (Six Tudor Queens, #6)]]> 60167786 The eye of an ageing and dangerous king falls upon her. She cannot refuse him. She must stifle her feelings and never betray that she wanted another.
And now she is the sixth wife. Her queenship is a holy mission yet, fearfully, she dreams of the tragic parade of women who went before her. She cherishes the secret beliefs that could send her to the fire. And still the King loves and trusts her.
Now her enemies are closing in. She must fight for her very life.
KATHARINE PARR � the last of Henry’s queens.
Alison Weir recounts the extraordinary story of a woman forced into a perilous situation and rising heroically to the challenge. Katharine is a delightful woman, a warm and kindly heroine � and yet she will be betrayed by those she loves and trusts most.
Too late, the truth will dawn on her.]]> Alison Weir Devina 3 audible 4.00 2021 Katharine Parr, the Sixth Wife (Six Tudor Queens, #6)
author: Alison Weir
name: Devina
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century]]> 15750844
Indian diplomacy, a veteran told Shashi Tharoor many years ago, is like the love-making of an elephant: it is conducted at a very high level, accompanied by much bellowing, and the results are not known for two years. In this lively, informative and insightful work, the award-winning author and parliamentarian brilliantly demonstrates how Indian diplomacy has become sprightlier since then and where it needs to focus in the world of the 21st century. Explaining why foreign policy matters to an India focused on its own domestic transformation, Tharoor surveys Indias major international relationships in detail, evokes the countrys soft power and its global responsibilities, analyses the workings of the Ministry of External Affairs, Parliament and public opinion on the shaping of policy, and offers his thoughts on a contemporary new grand strategy for the nation, arguing that India must move beyond non-alignment to multi-alignment. His book offers a clear-eyed vision of an India now ready to assume new global responsibility in the contemporary world. Pax Indica is another substantial achievement from one of the finest Indian authors of our times.]]> 449 Shashi Tharoor 067008574X Devina 2 the-old-library 3.86 2012 Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century
author: Shashi Tharoor
name: Devina
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: the-old-library
review:

]]> <![CDATA[At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple, #10)]]> 16333
When Miss Marple comes up from the country for a holiday in London, she finds what she's looking for at Bertram's: traditional décor and impeccable service. But she senses an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly polished veneer. Not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion when an eccentric hotel guest makes his way to the airport one day late!

Librarian's note: this entry is for the novel, "At Bertram's Hotel." Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."]]> 223 Agatha Christie Devina 5 3.72 1965 At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple, #10)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Devina
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men]]> 41104077
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women�, diving into women’s lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.]]> 448 Caroline Criado Pérez 1419729071 Devina 4 the-old-library 4.35 2019 Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
author: Caroline Criado PĂ©rez
name: Devina
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: the-old-library
review:
Women need to read this. Men need to read this. Essentially, humans (both men and women and not the accepted 'male' as a standard for human) need to read this.
]]> The City & the City 6602575 312 China Miéville 0230741916 Devina 4 the-old-library
I had sworn off reading books by this author many years ago after a DNF book, but I'm glad I picked this up. ]]> 3.84 2009 The City & the City
author: China Miéville
name: Devina
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: the-old-library
review:
I did get lost in a few places, trying to keep up with what was happening. However, this detective story is actually very clever, and the concept - two cities co-existing without acknowledging each other - is quite brilliant. The descriptions are enough to let you imagine this state of being, and I frequently got lost in my imagination of what it would be like.

I had sworn off reading books by this author many years ago after a DNF book, but I'm glad I picked this up.
]]> A Fine Balance 5211
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.]]> 603 Rohinton Mistry 140003065X Devina 5 4.38 1995 A Fine Balance
author: Rohinton Mistry
name: Devina
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, the-old-library
review:
Grim, funny, real, gritty. It's all this and more. I didn't really know much about this period of India's history, just the headlines - but this book was an eye-opener. By the end of the book, you will care - care deeply - about every single character. You'll laugh with them and cry with them. Fabulous.
]]> Maame 123009063 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250282521 can be found ]]> 400 Jessica George 1529395585 Devina 4 the-old-library 4.04 2023 Maame
author: Jessica George
name: Devina
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: the-old-library
review:

]]> Dogs of War (Dogs of War, #1) 57184880
Trong má»™t tương lai xa, nhân loại Ä‘ĂŁ tạo ra được má»™t Ä‘á»™t phá mang tĂŞn “Sinh Dạng.â€� Äây lĂ  những chủng loĂ i má»›i hoĂ n toĂ n, chĂ o đời tá»� các mĂŁ gen tinh tĂşy nhất trong tháş� giá»›i tá»� nhiĂŞn, sau Ä‘Ăł được tĂ­ch hợp thĂŞm hĂ ng loạt máy mĂłc tối tân, gĂłp phần Ä‘Ć°a những kháş� nÄng vốn Ä‘ĂŁ siĂŞu Ä‘áşłng của chĂşng lĂŞn má»™t tầm cao tháş­m chĂ­ còn phi thường hơn nữa.

Tháş� rồi Ä‘Ăşng vá»›i bản chất muĂ´n thuá»�, con người Ä‘ĂŁ láş­p tức Ä‘em cĂ´ng nghá»� đầy tiá»m nÄng ấy Ä‘i thỏa mĂŁn má»™t Ä‘am mĂŞ quái đản: chiáşżn tranh.

HĂ ng ngĂ n Sinh Dạng Ä‘ĂŁ được sản xuất Ä‘á»� lĂ m lĂ­nh đánh thuĂŞ, phục vá»� tại nhiá»u chiáşżn trường Ä‘áş«m máu trĂŞn toĂ n cầu. Trong sá»� những káş� Ä‘á»� tá»� tháş� há»� má»›i nĂ y, tiĂŞu biá»u cĂł Äại Ca - má»™t chĂş chĂł Ä‘ĂŁ được tái cơ cấu thĂ nh hung thần. BĂŞn cạnh giá»� nguyĂŞn những kháş� nÄng Ć°u việt cĹ©ng nhĆ° bản tĂ­nh trung thĂ nh tuyệt đối của loĂ i chĂł, Äại Ca còn được bá»� sung má»™t phần trĂ­ thĂ´ng minh con người vĂ  cấy kèm má»™t loại chip tối tân, biáşżn nĂł thĂ nh má»™t người lĂ­nh lĂ˝ tưởng.

Vá»›i sá»� há»� trá»� của các Sinh Dạng khác trong Bầy Äá»™t kĂ­ch Äa máş«u dạng, Äại Ca khĂ´ng ngừng reo rắc kinh hoĂ ng khắp Campeche, ÄĂ´ng Nam Mexico. Tất cáş� Ä‘á»� phục vá»� Ă”ng Chá»�, bởi vì Ă”ng Chá»� lĂ  Ă”ng Chá»�, vĂ  má»™t ChĂş ChĂł Ngoan sáş� luĂ´n biáşżt nghe lời Ă”ng Chá»�.

Nhưng nếu lúc giết địch, nó cảm thấy mình như Chó Hư, trong khi Ông Ch� lại gọi nó là Chó Ngoan, thì nó biết làm gì đây? Nếu k� Ông Ch� gọi là “địch� trông lại không giống địch, thì nó biết làm gì đây? Nếu Ông Ch� của nó b� gọi là Người Hư, thì nó biết làm gì đây?

VĂ  quan trọng nhất, khi má»™t cá»� máy giáşżt chĂłc người khĂ´ng ra người, ngợm khĂ´ng ra ngợm, vá»›i má»™t Ă˝ hiá»u háşżt sức lá»™n xá»™n vá»� “Ngoanâ€� vĂ  “HĆ°â€� bá»� quáşłng vĂ o giữa xĂŁ há»™i loĂ i người, thảm kịch nĂ o sáş� xảy ra đây?

Kịch tĂ­nh vĂ  ngá»™p thá»�, ám ảnh vĂ  sởn gai ốc, song cĹ©ng trĂ n đầy nhân vÄn vĂ  bi ai, Ä‘Ăł chĂ­nh lĂ 

CHĂ“ SÄ‚N MIỀN BOM Äáş N!]]> Adrian Tchaikovsky Devina 5 audible
2019: The story is this: Bioforms are genetically engineered beings mostly used in war. The story centres on Rex (the dog), Honey (the bear), Dragon (more beast than human), and Bees (this one will be hard to explain until you read). And it's the story of all of them, mostly Rex, and their journey through the world of humans.
While it starts with war, it goes beyond that. There's issues such as rights of living beings, race, and what's done in the name of righteousness, and turning a blind eye to evils because it's just convenient. It makes you think. It makes you ache. It takes science fiction and applies it to life.
Rex, you're a Good Dog. <3
I'm almost not sure how to react any more; I'm typing this minutes after I've finished reading the book and while this isn't exactly a spoiler, [spoilers removed].]]> 4.14 2017 Dogs of War (Dogs of War, #1)
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Devina
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/10
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
2024: Still five stars, still fabulous. Cannot recommend this enough.

2019: The story is this: Bioforms are genetically engineered beings mostly used in war. The story centres on Rex (the dog), Honey (the bear), Dragon (more beast than human), and Bees (this one will be hard to explain until you read). And it's the story of all of them, mostly Rex, and their journey through the world of humans.
While it starts with war, it goes beyond that. There's issues such as rights of living beings, race, and what's done in the name of righteousness, and turning a blind eye to evils because it's just convenient. It makes you think. It makes you ache. It takes science fiction and applies it to life.
Rex, you're a Good Dog. <3
I'm almost not sure how to react any more; I'm typing this minutes after I've finished reading the book and while this isn't exactly a spoiler, [spoilers removed].
]]> <![CDATA[Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)]]> 35665294 "The murderer is with us - on the train now..."

Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer.

Isolated by the storm and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer amongst a dozen of the dead man's enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again...]]> Agatha Christie Devina 5 audible 4.44 1934 Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Devina
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/11
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
I read it most recently as an audiobook and the book is still outstanding, but David Suchet as the narrator is just perfection.
]]> And Then There Were None 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]> 264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 Devina 0 audible 4.28 1939 And Then There Were None
author: Agatha Christie
name: Devina
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at: 2003/02/18
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Everyday Sexism 52475133
In 2012 after being sexually harassed on London public transport Laura Bates, a young journalist, started a project called Everyday Sexism to collect stories for a piece she was writing on the issue. Astounded by the response she received and the wide range of stories that came pouring in from all over the world, she quickly realised that the situation was far worse than she'd initially thought. Enough was enough. From being leered at and wolf-whistled on the street, to aggravation in the work place and serious sexual assault, it was clear that sexism had been normalised. Bates decided it was time for change.

This bold, jaunty and ultimately intelligent book is the first to give a collective online voice to the protest against sexism. This game changing book is a juggernaut of stories, often shocking, sometimes amusing and always poignant - it is a must read for every inquisitive, no-nonsense modern woman.]]> 11 Laura Bates Devina 4 audible 4.09 2014 Everyday Sexism
author: Laura Bates
name: Devina
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2020/11/02
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> The Handmaid's Tale 45442123 The Handmaid's Tale written by Margaret Atwood, read by Elisabeth Moss, with Bradley Whitford, Amy Landecker and Ann Dowd.

Read by Elisabeth Moss, star of the hit Channel 4 TV series.

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.

Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of 21st-century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception.]]> 12 Margaret Atwood Devina 5 audible 4.26 1985 The Handmaid's Tale
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Devina
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2020/06/18
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook]]> 13646898
In the 10 years since his classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out - from Monday fish to the breadbasket conspiracy - much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business and for Anthony Bourdain. Medium Raw explores those changes, moving back and forth from the author's bad old days to the present. Tracking his own strange and unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, Bourdain takes no prisoners as he dissects what he's seen, pausing along the way for a series of confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food.

Beginning with a secret and highly illegal after-hours gathering of powerful chefs that he compares to a mafia summit, Bourdain pulls back the curtain, but never pulls his punches, on the modern gastronomical revolution, as only he can. Cutting right to the bone, Bourdain sets his sights on some of the biggest names in the foodie world, including David Chang, the young superstar chef who has radicalized the fine-dining landscape; the revered Alice Waters, whom he treats with unapologetic frankness; the Top Chef winners and losers; and many more.

Always he returns to the question "Why cook?" Or the more difficult "Why cook well?" Medium Raw is the deliciously funny and shockingly delectable journey to those answers, sure to delight philistines and gourmands alike.

©2010 Anthony Bourdain (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers]]> 9 Anthony Bourdain Devina 4 audible The book contains a number of standalone stories or essays or reflections, each guaranteed to make you think or make you hungry, or both!]]> 3.77 2010 Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Devina
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/04
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
If nothing else, read this book for Chapter 8, which contains some of the best food writing I've ever come across and for his chapter dedicated to David Chang.
The book contains a number of standalone stories or essays or reflections, each guaranteed to make you think or make you hungry, or both!
]]> Becoming 55892788
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.]]> Michelle Obama Devina 5 audible 4.50 2018 Becoming
author: Michelle Obama
name: Devina
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/04/08
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[So You Want to Talk About Race]]> 39904205 In this breakout book, Ijeoma Oluo explores the complex reality of today's racial landscape--from white privilege and police brutality to systemic discrimination and the Black Lives Matter movement--offering straightforward clarity that readers need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide

In So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor at Large of The Establishment Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions readers don't dare ask, and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans.

Oluo is an exceptional writer with a rare ability to be straightforward, funny, and effective in her coverage of sensitive, hyper-charged issues in America. Her messages are passionate but finely tuned, and crystalize ideas that would otherwise be vague by empowering them with aha-moment clarity. Her writing brings to mind voices like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay, and Jessica Valenti in Full Frontal Feminism, and a young Gloria Naylor, particularly in Naylor's seminal essay "The Meaning of a Word."]]> 8 Ijeoma Oluo Devina 2 audible
I struggled to finish this book. I absolutely had no desire to do so. I wonder whether it's better suited to traditional print or reading off a Kindle/e-reader than an audiobook. The narrator has a clear, lovely voice, but it just didn't work for me for this book.

I did learn a few things from this book, and I found the chapter on microaggressions useful - something I've faced as well.

But I was frustrated by many things. There were so many parts of the book that came off as condescending, I just felt like I - WOC or not - was being berated constantly. I wanted to learn from the book, but even that felt like it wasn't possible because she constantly tells me how you need to stop asking POC things and just google.

This para at the end, I just couldn't digest it.
"And if you are white in a white supremacist society, you are racist. If you are male in a patriarchy, you are sexist. If you are able-bodied, you are ableist. If you are anything above poverty in a capitalist society, you are classist. You can sometimes be all of these things at once."

I think the chapter on cultural appropriation threw me off a lot. As a dancer who learns different styles of movements, I found her throwaway comment about how learning how to belly dance being cultural appropriation just weird - for me. I learn afro-style dancing from amazing instructors who hail from across the continent and they find joy in sharing the dance of their culture. I find great joy in moving to these steps. I mean, I have no issues if non-Indians learn classical Indian dance; please do it, it's a beautiful art form and its skills should be spread.

There is 100% a need to have a discussion about race, about how racial issues affect POC, but this felt less of a dialogue and more of a lecture.]]> 4.48 2018 So You Want to Talk About Race
author: Ijeoma Oluo
name: Devina
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2021/01/24
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
I'm still dealing with my conflicting feelings after reading this book. As a POC, I wanted to hear more and read more from other POC, and particularly WOC. However...

I struggled to finish this book. I absolutely had no desire to do so. I wonder whether it's better suited to traditional print or reading off a Kindle/e-reader than an audiobook. The narrator has a clear, lovely voice, but it just didn't work for me for this book.

I did learn a few things from this book, and I found the chapter on microaggressions useful - something I've faced as well.

But I was frustrated by many things. There were so many parts of the book that came off as condescending, I just felt like I - WOC or not - was being berated constantly. I wanted to learn from the book, but even that felt like it wasn't possible because she constantly tells me how you need to stop asking POC things and just google.

This para at the end, I just couldn't digest it.
"And if you are white in a white supremacist society, you are racist. If you are male in a patriarchy, you are sexist. If you are able-bodied, you are ableist. If you are anything above poverty in a capitalist society, you are classist. You can sometimes be all of these things at once."

I think the chapter on cultural appropriation threw me off a lot. As a dancer who learns different styles of movements, I found her throwaway comment about how learning how to belly dance being cultural appropriation just weird - for me. I learn afro-style dancing from amazing instructors who hail from across the continent and they find joy in sharing the dance of their culture. I find great joy in moving to these steps. I mean, I have no issues if non-Indians learn classical Indian dance; please do it, it's a beautiful art form and its skills should be spread.

There is 100% a need to have a discussion about race, about how racial issues affect POC, but this felt less of a dialogue and more of a lecture.
]]> Fahrenheit 451 23439967
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family". But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.]]> 6 Ray Bradbury Devina 3 audible 3.89 1953 Fahrenheit 451
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Devina
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1953
rating: 3
read at: 2021/08/24
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India]]> 40532304
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Inglorious Empire, written and read by Shashi Tharoor.

In the 18th century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased sixfold. The empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism and caused millions to die from starvation.

British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial 'gift' - from the railways to the rule of law - was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation and the destruction of its textile industry.

In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain's stained Indian legacy.]]> Shashi Tharoor Devina 5 audible 4.18 2016 Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India
author: Shashi Tharoor
name: Devina
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/08
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Questions of Faith 39880689
Judaism, Islam and Christianity share far more in common than the abhorrent acts of extremists would ever suggest. When the roots of the three Abrahamic faiths are shared, why is it that they foster dissent, intolerance and disagreement? What unites them and what divides them? Is God a warmonger or a peacemaker? Why do some believers commit violence in God's name?

With the help of experts and former extremists, David sets out to answer these and many other questions.

From Jerusalem and London to New York and Northern Ireland, David investigates the motivations and twisted justifications behind religious terrorism. He reveals stories from inside high security jails and the minds of fanatics. He meets with leading scholars, survivors of extremism, reformed hate preachers and a whole host of contributors who might be able to help him get to the truth of why so much evil is justified in the name of God.

This is the story of how religion impacts society on many fundamental levels and sets humanity against itself.]]> David Suchet Devina 4 audible 4.09 2018 Questions of Faith
author: David Suchet
name: Devina
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/03
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Humble Pie 432075 331 Gordon Ramsay 0007229682 Devina 2 audible 3.79 2006 Humble Pie
author: Gordon Ramsay
name: Devina
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2020/02/06
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef]]> 49551625 The Devil in the Kitchen, he tells the story of his life in food, spanning his apprenticeship with Albert and Michel Roux, his wild years in the bacchanal of 1980s Chelsea, his ferocious pursuit of the highest Michelin rating, and his “retirement career� as a hugely successful restaurateur. With cameos from the likes of Michael Caine, Madonna, and Damien Hirst, The Devil in the Kitchen leaves no dish unserved, relating the backroom antics, the blood feuds, and the passion for great food that have driven London’s greatest restaurants for decades.]]> Marco Pierre White Devina 4 audible 4.07 2006 The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef
author: Marco Pierre White
name: Devina
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Smoke and Mirrors 36380784 Neil Gaiman Devina 4 audible 3.60 1998 Smoke and Mirrors
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Devina
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/18
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession (Six Tudor Queens, #2)]]> 35217050
A novel filled with new insights into the story of Henry VIII’s second—and most infamous—wife, Anne Boleyn. The second book in the epic Six Tudor Queens series, from the acclaimed historian and bestselling author of Katherine of Aragon.

It is the spring of 1527. Henry VIII has come to Hever Castle in Kent to pay court to Anne Boleyn. He is desperate to have her. For this mirror of female perfection he will set aside his Queen and all Cardinal Wolsey’s plans for a dynastic French marriage.

Anne Boleyn is not so sure. She loathes Wolsey for breaking her betrothal to the Earl of Northumberland’s son, Harry Percy, whom she had loved. She does not welcome the King’s advances; she knows that she can never give him her heart.

But hers is an opportunist family. And whether Anne is willing or not, they will risk it all to see their daughter on the throne…]]> 22 Alison Weir Devina 5 audible 4.05 2017 Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession (Six Tudor Queens, #2)
author: Alison Weir
name: Devina
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> The Odyssey 33845692 The Odyssey has been the standard translation for more than three generations of students and poets. Macmillan Audio is delighted to publish the first ever audio edition of this classic work, the greatest of all epic poems. Fitzgerald's supple verse is ideally suited for audio, recounting the story of Odysseus' long journey back to his wife and home after the Trojan War. Homer's tale of love, adventure, food and drink, sensual pleasure, and mortal danger reaches the English-language listener in all its glory.

In keeping with the oral tradition of the time, Dan Stevens, whose many celebrated performances include Downton Abbey's Matthew Crawley, makes this epic tale come alive. The listener becomes totally immersed in the adventure and drama of the story � this is the way The Odyssey was meant to be experienced.

Also included on the program is a portion of the poem read in ancient Greek so that listeners may experience the lyricism and music of the original language.

©1998 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. (P)2014 Macmillan Audio]]> 10 Homer Devina 2 audible 4.14 -700 The Odyssey
author: Homer
name: Devina
average rating: 4.14
book published: -700
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/22
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
Maybe a 1.5. I mean, it's impressive to write such a tale. But honestly - and while I appreciate this is from a whole other era - the misogyny was stressful. The 'did my wife cheat on me' trope while he was with the nymph was far too annoying.
]]> <![CDATA[Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It]]> 17365692 14 Craig Taylor 1471224856 Devina 2 audible 3.44 2011 Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It
author: Craig Taylor
name: Devina
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/26
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
Perhaps I would've liked it more if I read this while I lived in London or around that time. But, having said that, some of the vignettes were fascinating and there was always a little thrill when a certain area of the sprawl that is London was mentioned. I enjoyed the section focusing on immigrants, there were also a lot of insights into the heart of the city such as chefs, police officers, fruit & veg retailers, and so on. Those were truly a delight.
]]> <![CDATA[Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen (Six Tudor Queens, #1)]]> 31140345
The lives of Henry VIII's queens make for dramatic stories and Alison Weir will write a series of novels that offer insights into the real lives of the six wives based on extensive research and new theories.

In all the romancing, has anyone regarded the evidence that Anne Boleyn did not love Henry VIII? Or that Prince Arthur, Katherine of Aragon's first husband, who is said to have loved her in fact cared so little for her that he willed his personal effects to his sister? Or that Henry VIII, an over-protected child and teenager, was prudish when it came to sex? That Jane Seymour, usually portrayed as Henry's one true love, had the makings of a matriarch? There is much to reveal ...

Alison will write about the wives in the context of their own age and of the court intrigues that surrounded these women and - without exception - wrecked their lives. She will transport readers into a lost and vivid world of splendour and brutality: a world in which love, or the game of it, dominates all.

Length: 27 hours and 44 minutes]]> 28 Alison Weir Devina 4 audible 3.74 2016 Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen (Six Tudor Queens, #1)
author: Alison Weir
name: Devina
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
Very well written account from Katherine of Aragon's perspective. So often have I read books of this era but so far, this is the first book I've read that is purely from her perspective and does not account for anything which she does not know or learn. I'd also never really known the exact details of the last few years of her life; this book delivered all that and more. I was reminded, in a way, of the musical 'Six', which through the clever lyrics and music seeks to tell the story from the female perspective of each of his wives. I'm starting the second book too - this was really worth it.
]]> Piranesi 52127716 New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

For readers of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.]]> 7 Susanna Clarke Devina 4 audible 4.10 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Devina
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Small Things Like These 62893971
It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

The long-awaited new work from the author of Foster, Small Things Like These is an unforgettable story of hope, quiet heroism and tenderness.]]> 2 Claire Keegan Devina 4 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 4.13 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Devina
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/16
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:
Don't let the length of this book fool you; every page and it would seem every line is bursting with meaning. The writing style gives you a real sense of place and time, which is a true delight. It deals with the Magdalene Laundries through the lens of the main character, and it's dealt with beautifully. Highly recommend this book and keen to now read more by the author.
]]> Homegoing 39712779 Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

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

Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.]]> 14 Yaa Gyasi Devina 5 audible 4.24 2016 Homegoing
author: Yaa Gyasi
name: Devina
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
What a beautiful book - following multiple generations of a family tree that never knew each other over hundreds of years. The searing look at colonisation, slavery, racism through little vignettes of each character... stunning. Despite just a snapshot of each character's lives, you never feel like you're reading an incomplete character - each of them has depth, which is truly brilliant writing.
]]> The Island of Sea Women 44326126 A new novel from Lisa See, the New York Times bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and family secrets on a small Korean island.

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger.

Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.

This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them�The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.]]> 14 Lisa See Devina 4 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 4.12 2019 The Island of Sea Women
author: Lisa See
name: Devina
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/07
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> How to Read Now 62056521 How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico.

At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy--within ourselves, and with each other.]]> 10 Elaine Castillo 0593590554 Devina 1 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 3.79 2022 How to Read Now
author: Elaine Castillo
name: Devina
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> The Land of Lost Things 199577641
Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world.

But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard.

Now an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey - to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres's childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father, to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting.]]> John Connolly Devina 3 audible 3.67 2023 The Land of Lost Things
author: John Connolly
name: Devina
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Blonde Roots 54549735
Imagine Africans the masters and Europeans their slaves....

Now meet young Doris, living in a sleepy English cottage. One day she is kidnapped and put aboard a slave ship bound for the New World. On a strange tropical island, Doris is told she is an ugly, stupid savage. Her only purpose in life is to please her mistress. Then, as personal assistant to Bwana, Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I, she sees the horrors of the sugarcane fields. Slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun. But though she lives in chains, Doris dreams of escape - of returning home to England and those she loves....

©2020 Bernardine Evaristo (P)2020 Penguin Audio]]> Bernardine Evaristo Devina 2 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 3.36 2008 Blonde Roots
author: Bernardine Evaristo
name: Devina
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen (Six Tudor Queens, #3)]]> 40513476
Acclaimed author and historian Alison Weir continues her epic Six Tudor Queens series with this third captivating novel, which brings to life Jane Seymour, King Henry VIII’s most cherished bride and mother of his only male heir.

Ever since she was a child, Jane has longed for a cloistered life as a nun. But her large noble family has other plans, and, as an adult, Jane is invited to the King’s court to serve as lady-in-waiting for Queen Katherine of Aragon. The devout Katherine shows kindness to all her ladies, almost like a second mother, which makes rumors of Henry’s lustful pursuit of Anne Boleyn—who is also lady-in-waiting to the queen—all the more shocking. For Jane, the betrayal triggers memories of a painful incident that shaped her beliefs about marriage.

But once Henry disavows Katherine and secures his new queen—altering the religious landscape of England—he turns his eye to another: Jane herself. Urged to return the King’s affection and earn favor for her family, Jane is drawn into a dangerous political game that pits her conscience against her desires. Can Jane be the one to give the King his long-sought-after son or will she meet a fate similar to the women who came before her?

Bringing new insight to this compelling story, Weir marries meticulous research with gripping historical fiction to re-create the dramas and intrigues of the most renown court in English history. At its center is a loving and compassionate woman who captures the heart of a king, and whose life will hang in the balance for it.]]> Alison Weir Devina 4 audible 3.96 2018 Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen (Six Tudor Queens, #3)
author: Alison Weir
name: Devina
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Katheryn Howard, the Scandalous Queen (Six Tudor Queens, #5)]]> 58182825 Alison Weir, historian and author of the Sunday Times-bestselling Six Tudor Queens series, relates one of the most tragic stories in English history: Katheryn Howard, Henry VIII's fifth queen.

A naive girl, thrust forward by her ambitious family. A pretty girl, who has captured the heart of the King. Katheryn sings, she dances, she delights in the pleasures of being queen. The King tells the world she is his rose without a thorn.

But this young woman has a past of which Henry knows nothing. It comes back increasingly to haunt her, even as she courts danger yet again. For those who gather roses must beware of the thorns.]]> Alison Weir Devina 4 audible 3.64 2020 Katheryn Howard, the Scandalous Queen (Six Tudor Queens, #5)
author: Alison Weir
name: Devina
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Anna of Kleve: The Princess in the Portrait (Six Tudor Queens, #4)]]> 60167809 Bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir tells the little-known story of Henry VIII’s fourth wife, as a grieving king chooses a bride sight unseen in the fourth novel in the epic and intrigue-filled Six Tudor Queens series.

Newly widowed and the father of an infant son, Henry VIII realizes he must marry again to insure the royal succession. Now forty-six, overweight and unwell, Henry is soundly rejected by some of Europe’s most eligible princesses, but Anna of Kleve—a small German duchy—is twenty-four and eager to wed. Henry requests Anna’s portrait from his court painter, who enhances her looks, painting her straight-on in order not to emphasize her rather long nose. Henry is entranced by the lovely image, only to be bitterly surprised when Anna arrives in England and he sees her in the flesh. She is pleasant looking, just not the lady that Henry had expected.

What follows is a fascinating story of this awkward royal union that had to somehow be terminated tactfully. Alison Weir takes a fresh and surprising look at this remarkable royal marriage by describing it from the point of view of Queen Anna, a young woman with hopes and dreams of her own, alone in a royal court that rejected her from the day she arrived.]]> Alison Weir Devina 4 audible 3.80 2019 Anna of Kleve: The Princess in the Portrait (Six Tudor Queens, #4)
author: Alison Weir
name: Devina
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
Perhaps one of the Six Queens I knew the least about! While this is fictional and the author has spoken about what plot points are based on supposition, it's a great look into the live of this Queen. I had no idea Henry VIII remained so friendly with her after the annulment, and it was a touching look at their relationship. Whether or not the plot point around having had a child when she was younger was true, it's a fascinating look at her life.
]]> By the Sea 200638823
Meanwhile Latif Mahmud, someone intimately connected with Saleh's past, lives quietly alone in his London flat. When Saleh and Latif meet in an English seaside town, a story is unravelled. It is a story of love and betrayal, seduction and possession, and of a people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom of their times.

11 Hrs. 39 min.]]> 12 Abdulrazak Gurnah Devina 3 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 3.50 2001 By the Sea
author: Abdulrazak Gurnah
name: Devina
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> Twelve Years a Slave 59135389
Shipped to New Orleans, he endures the life of a slave in Louisiana's isolated plantation country. For twelve long years, he endures the unimaginable brutality and inhumanity of daily life, while keeping his dignity intact and dreaming of one day returning home to the arms of his family.]]> Solomon Northup Devina 3 audible 2.67 1853 Twelve Years a Slave
author: Solomon Northup
name: Devina
average rating: 2.67
book published: 1853
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/06
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> The Familiars 48649833
Is there more to Alice than meets the eye? Fleetwood must risk everything to prove her innocence. As the two women’s lives become intertwined, the Witch Trials of 1612 loom. Time is running out; both their lives are at stake. Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other.

Rich and compelling, set against the frenzy of the real Pendle Hill Witch Trials, this novel explores the rights of 17th-century women and raises the question: Was witch-hunting really women-hunting? Fleetwood Shuttleworth, Alice Grey and the other characters are actual historical figures. King James I was obsessed with asserting power over the lawless countryside (even woodland creatures, or “familiars,� were suspected of dark magic) by capturing “witches”—in reality mostly poor and illiterate women.]]> Stacey Halls Devina 4 audible 3.78 2019 The Familiars
author: Stacey Halls
name: Devina
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/31
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
I enjoyed this book. Based on true events - the Pendle witch trials - and on real people as well, Stacey Halls has created a real page turner (or in my case, listener?) in this book. I found out after reading that this is her debut novel as well, genuinely wonderful.
]]> The Vanishing Half 58597428 A novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 12 Brit Bennett Devina 3 audible
I genuinely enjoyed reading this book, the writing was beautiful and the story extremely engaging. I didn't rate a full 4 because I feel like I wanted to understand more about the psychological impact of 'passing' and I didn't necessarily get a full sense of the pain it caused everyone affected by Stella's decision.]]> 3.94 2020 The Vanishing Half
author: Brit Bennett
name: Devina
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/27
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
3.5 for me.

I genuinely enjoyed reading this book, the writing was beautiful and the story extremely engaging. I didn't rate a full 4 because I feel like I wanted to understand more about the psychological impact of 'passing' and I didn't necessarily get a full sense of the pain it caused everyone affected by Stella's decision.
]]> The Sandman (Book #1) 58787381
When The Sandman, also known as Lord Morpheus—the immortal king of dreams, stories and the imagination—is pulled from his realm and imprisoned on Earth by a nefarious cult, he languishes for decades before finally escaping. Once free, he must retrieve the three "tools" that will restore his power and help him to rebuild his dominion, which has deteriorated in his absence. As the multi-threaded story unspools, The Sandman descends into Hell to confront Lucifer (Michael Sheen), chases rogue nightmares who have escaped his realm, and crosses paths with an array of characters from DC comic books, ancient myths, and real-world history, including: Inmates of Gotham City's Arkham Asylum, Doctor Destiny, the muse Calliope, the three Fates, William Shakespeare (Arthur Darvill), and many more.

A powerhouse supporting cast helps translate this masterwork into a sonic experience worthy of its legacy, including Riz Ahmed, Kat Dennings, Taron Egerton, Samantha Morton, Bebe Neuwirth, Andy Serkis, and more. Setting the stage for their performance is an unprecedented cinematic soundscape featuring an original musical score by British Academy Award winner James Hannigan. Fans will especially revel in a new twist for the audio adaptation: Neil Gaiman himself serves as the narrator. Follow him as he leads listeners along a winding path of myths, imagination and, often, terror. Even in your wildest dreams, you’ve never heard anything like this.

This first installment of the audio series The Sandman adapts volumes 1-3 of the graphic novel series (Preludes & Nocturnes, The Doll’s House, and Dream Country).

Estimated run time: 10hrs 50mins

©2020 DC. All Rights Reserved. The Sandman and all related elements are trademarks of DC. �2020 DC and Audible]]> Dirk Maggs Devina 5 audible 4.23 2020 The Sandman (Book #1)
author: Dirk Maggs
name: Devina
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
I haven't read the graphic novels but I definitely want to, more so after this fabulous audio production. The voice actors, the sense of place... it's all insanely wonderful. And the story is gripping, of course. It's one of the best audio productions I've heard. Can't wait to hear the rest.
]]> More Perfect 58485469 "What does it feel like to wake up in the Panopticon? It’s like waking up for the first time ever. It’s like waking up with a third eye."

When Moremi connects her brain to the Panopticon, a network which allows you to see inside the minds and dreams of others, she believes that itĚýwill save her from depression, loneliness and, eventually, death. That is until she meets Orpheus.Ěý

Orpheus was brought up in isolation by a Neo-luddite father. He was raised to question everything, including the government who plan to make the connection procedure compulsory.Ěý

They promise that connecting everyone to the Panopticon will end human suffering and usher in a more perfect world. But when Orpheus and Moremi uncover the dark side of the technology, they find themselves on opposite sides of a radical divide, between those who believe that the Panopticon will save humanity, and those who will stop at nothing to destroy it.

More Perfect is The Circle meets Inception in an immersive and futuristic story that explores love, loneliness and the limits of technology’s ability to save a humanity who might not want to be saved.]]> Temi Oh 1398500658 Devina 1 audible An addendum: I don't have to hear the phrase "find purchase" or really, the word "purchase" in any other way than it's used in the monetary sense. ]]> 3.67 2023 More Perfect
author: Temi Oh
name: Devina
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2023/12/23
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
At first I thought I'm too old for YA, but that's not true, I have some YA novels that I'm happy to re-read even now. This one really wasn't for me - so much felt convenient or lazy. At one point someone said something about an execution of a character and I thought, well yeah go for it maybe the book will end.
An addendum: I don't have to hear the phrase "find purchase" or really, the word "purchase" in any other way than it's used in the monetary sense.
]]> The Sandman: Act II 58730467 The Sandman: Act II. James McAvoy returns to voice Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, in this sequel to the #1 New York Times audio best-seller. Journey into a world of myths, imagination, and terror based on the best-selling DC comic books and graphic novels written by Neil Gaiman (returning as the Narrator), and lose yourself in another groundbreaking, immersive drama adapted and directed by the award-winning audio master Dirk Maggs.

In the absolutely packed Act II, the dark fantasy resumes and the Sandman expands into the French Revolution, Ancient Rome, 19th-Century San Francisco, 8th-century Baghdad, and beyond. New and familiar characters abound, voiced by a bright mix of performers, including Kat Dennings, Regé-Jean Page, Emma Corrin, Michael Sheen, Kristen Schaal, Brian Cox, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Wright, and so many more, including fan-favorite narrators Simon Vance and Ray Porter.

Just close your eyes and listen again as the greatest epic continues.

Act II of the audio series The Sandman adapts collected volumes 4 (Season of Mists) and 5 (A Game of You) of the comics in their entirety, and most of volume 6 (Fables & Reflections).

Please note: This content is not for kids. It is for mature audiences only. Just like the original graphic novels, this audio adaptation contains explicit language and graphic violence, as well as strong sexual content and themes. Discretion is advised.]]> 14 Dirk Maggs 1713647257 Devina 4 audible 4.39 2021 The Sandman: Act II
author: Dirk Maggs
name: Devina
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
The audio production is still fabulous! I just wanted more Morpheus and less of the other characters, but that's probably the only reason it's a 4/5 instead of a full 5. What an amazing, amazing world.
]]> The Sandman: Act III 62816012
All the original cast returns, including Kat Dennings as Death, Aidan Turner as Cluracan, and Neil Gaiman himself as The Narrator, joined by Harewood and other new cast members Wil Wheaton, KJ Apa, Shruti Hasaan and more.

It’s time to close your eyes and listen. Once again.

TRACKLIST:
--. Introduction 01:17
--. Opening Credits 00:38

01. The Song Of Orpheus 01:04:02

02. Fear Of Falling 11:17

03. The Flowers Of Romance 12:42

04. Brief Lives Part 1 43:40
05. Brief Lives Part 2 30:57
06. Brief Lives Part 3 35:58
07. Brief Lives Part 4 41:27
08. Brief Lives Part 5 41:00
09. Brief Lives Part 6 34:36
10. Brief Lives Part 7 33:24
11. Brief Lives Part 8 30:33
12. Brief Lives Part 9 37:51

13. How They Met Themselves 19:55

14. Worlds' End Part 1 38:27
15. Worlds' End Part 2 42:19
16. Worlds' End Part 3 37:39
17. Worlds' End Part 4 43:23
18. Worlds' End Part 5 44:28
19. Worlds' End Part 6 30:03

--. End Credits 16:20]]> 12 Dirk Maggs Devina 5 audible 4.49 2022 The Sandman: Act III
author: Dirk Maggs
name: Devina
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
The entire production of Sandman on Audible has just set the bar for audio productions so high - it's insane. *must hunt for the Song of Orpheus*
]]> Odd and the Frost Giants 75547035
Out in the forest Odd encounters a bear, a fox, and an eagle—three creatures with a strange story to tell. Now Odd is forced on a journey to save Asgard, city of the gods, from the Frost Giants who have invaded it. It's going to take a very special kind of twelve-year-old boy to outwit the Frost Giants, restore peace to the city of gods, and end the long winter. Someone cheerful and infuriating and clever. . . .

Someone just like Odd. . . .]]> 2 Neil Gaiman Devina 5 audible 5.00 2008 Odd and the Frost Giants
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Devina
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead]]> 200484489
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans.

Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind...

A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?]]> Olga Tokarczuk Devina 3 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 3.95 2009 Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Devina
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/12
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> The Water Dancer 49490298
So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.]]> 15 Ta-Nehisi Coates Devina 3 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 4.08 2019 The Water Dancer
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Devina
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/13
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> Midnight at Malabar House 55292031 Bombay, New Year's Eve, 1949

As India celebrates the arrival of a momentous new decade, Inspector Persis Wadia stands vigil in the basement of Malabar House, home to the city's most unwanted unit of police officers. Six months after joining the force she remains India's first female police detective, mistrusted, sidelined and now consigned to the midnight shift.
And so, when the phone rings to report the murder of prominent English diplomat Sir James Herriot, the country's most sensational case falls into her lap.

As 1950 dawns and India prepares to become the world's largest republic, Persis, accompanied by Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, finds herself investigating a case that is becoming more political by the second. Navigating a country and society in turmoil, Persis, smart, stubborn and untested in the crucible of male hostility that surrounds her, must find a way to solve the murder - whatever the cost.

]]> Vaseem Khan Devina 4 audible
(My only complaint was with the audiobook narrator who kept pronouncing one of the Indian names all wrong, and made me cringe!)]]> 3.88 2020 Midnight at Malabar House
author: Vaseem Khan
name: Devina
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/25
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
I actually enjoyed this book. It's a nice start to a series, with India's first female police officer and set just a couple of years after Independence (and Partition) - all of which plays a part in the setting of this tale. For a whodunit with a splash of history, this is interesting.

(My only complaint was with the audiobook narrator who kept pronouncing one of the Indian names all wrong, and made me cringe!)
]]> <![CDATA[The Dying Day (The Malabar House Series)]]> 57669919 A priceless manuscript. A missing scholar. A trail of riddles.
Persis must solve the riddle to find the killer - or die trying . . .

Bombay, 1950

For over a century, one of the world's great treasures, a six-hundred-year-old copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy, has been safely housed at Bombay's Asiatic Society. But when it vanishes, together with the man charged with its care, British scholar and war hero, John Healy, the case lands on the desk of Persis Wadis, India's first female police detective.

Uncovering a series of complex riddles written in verse, Persis - together with English forensic scientist Archie Blackfinch - is soon on the trail. But then they discover the first body. As the death toll mounts it becomes evident that someone else is also pursuing this priceless artifact and will stop at nothing to possess it . . .

Harking back to an era of darkness, this second thriller in the Malabar House series pits Persis, once again, against her peers, a changing India, and an evil of limitless intent.

]]> 352 Vaseem Khan Devina 3 audible 4.43 2021 The Dying Day (The Malabar House Series)
author: Vaseem Khan
name: Devina
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/09
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> A Deadly Affair 61169349
In this new collection of Agatha Christie short stories, witness the dark side of love � crimes of passion, games of the heart and deadly affairs. This pulse-pounding compendium features beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, master of charades Parker Pyne, the enigmatic Harley Quin, and the adventurous Tommy and Tuppence, all at the ready to solve a tantalising mystery.

Includes the stories:

� The King of Clubs

� The Face of Helen

� A Death on the Nile

� Death by Drowning

� The Double Clue

� Finessing the King

� A Fruitful Sunday

� Wasps� Nest

� The Case of the Caretaker

� The Man in the Mist

� The Case of the Rich Woman

� Magnolia Blossom

� The Love Detectives]]> 272 Agatha Christie 000854445X Devina 4 audible 3.28 2022 A Deadly Affair
author: Agatha Christie
name: Devina
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/23
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Book Lovers 62024192 One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

Nora Stephens� life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters� trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.]]> 12 Emily Henry Devina 3 audible 4.00 2022 Book Lovers
author: Emily Henry
name: Devina
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
A lovely, light read. A fun romance novel, it was just what I needed to end the year's reading.
]]> Stoner 36328618
Colum McCann once called Stoner one of the great forgotten novels of the past century, but it seems it is forgotten no longer - in 2013 translations of Stoner began appearing on best-seller lists across Europe.

William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at 19 to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death his colleagues remember him rarely.

Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history and reclaims the significance of an individual life.

A listening experience like no other, itself a paean to the power of literature, it is a novel to be savoured.]]> 9 John Williams Devina 5 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 4.05 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Devina
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/18
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> Man's Search for Meaning 24852595
Through every waking moment of his ordeal, Frankl’s training as a psychiatrist lent him a remarkable perspective on the psychology of survival. As a result of these experiences, Dr. Frankl developed a revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as logotherapy. At the core of his theory is the belief that man’s primary motivational force is his search for meaning. Frankl’s assertion that “the will to meaning� is the basic motivation for human life has forever changed the way we understand our humanity in the face of suffering.

Frankl’s riveting memoir was named one of the 10 Most Influential Books in America after a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and Book of the Month Club. This revised and updated version includes a new postscript: “The Case for a Tragic Optimism�.]]> 5 Viktor E. Frankl Devina 4 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 4.20 1946 Man's Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Devina
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1946
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/07
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> A House in the Sky: A Memoir 17860372 The New York Times bestselling memoir of a woman whose curiosity led her to the world’s most remote places and then into fifteen months of captivity: “Exquisitely told…A young woman’s harrowing coming-of-age story and an extraordinary narrative of forgiveness and spiritual triumph� (The New York Times Book Review).

As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself visiting its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.� On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road.

Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark.

Vivid and suspenseful, as artfully written as the finest novel, A House in the Sky is “a searingly unsentimental account. Ultimately it is compassion—for her naïve younger self, for her kidnappers—that becomes the key to Lindhout’s survival� (O, The Oprah Magazine).]]> 14 Amanda Lindhout 1442367490 Devina 2 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 4.26 2013 A House in the Sky: A Memoir
author: Amanda Lindhout
name: Devina
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2023/01/31
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> Great Circle 57700246
A fictional female aviator and a disgraced actress cast to play her in a biopic decades later star in this historical fiction. Separated by time, but bound by ambition, neither will succumb to gravity or social convention.


©2020 Maggie Shipstead (P)2020 Random House Audio]]> 20 Maggie Shipstead Devina 4 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 3.76 2021 Great Circle
author: Maggie Shipstead
name: Devina
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs]]> 54344421
For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of European stereotypes. The conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic moment, nor an origin story launching Mexicans into existence. The Mexica people had a history of their own long before the Europeans arrived and did not simply capitulate to Spanish culture and colonization. Instead, they realigned their political allegiances, accommodated new obligations, adopted new technologies, and endured.

This engaging revisionist history of the Aztecs, told through their own words, explores the experience of a once-powerful people facing the trauma of conquest and finding ways to survive, offering an empathetic interpretation for experts and non-specialists alike.
]]> 13 Camilla Townsend 1705217095 Devina 2 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 3.86 2019 Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
author: Camilla Townsend
name: Devina
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2023/04/30
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story 55447085
Discover the incredible untold story of one of Star Wars' most iconic characters, C-3PO, told by the man who knows
him best.

"Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor! We'll be destroyed for sure. This is madness."

These words were the very first to be spoken in any Star Wars movie, and they were spoken by a droid: C-3PO.
With his gleaming golden body and good-intentioned (yet worrisome) personality, C-3PO was there at the very beginning. Of course, C-3PO wasn't actually a robot, or some amazing early animatronic creation - he was actually a man named Anthony Daniels.

Now, for the very first time, Anthony Daniels will tell C-3PO's story in its entirety, from seeing the first concept images to the early stages of the final film in the Skywalker saga, Star Wars: Episode IX, and in the process, will also tell his own. This includes his encounters with movie legends such as Sir Alec Guinness, what it was like working closely with George Lucas, and the friendships he formed with Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and others. But being encased in a solid shell for countless hours also involved hardships, pain, and in some cases real physical danger.

In I am C-3PO: The Inside Story, Daniels candidly relays his humorous, unvarnished, and extraordinary story as the man inside the machine, providing fresh new insights for even the most die-hard of Star Wars fans.]]> 10 Anthony Daniels Devina 4 audible 3.83 2019 I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story
author: Anthony Daniels
name: Devina
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/05
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
I enjoyed this memoir, and more so because it was narrated by the author. The addition of music where appropriate added to it all. Of course, you really have to be a Star Wars fan to care about this fascinating account of his life as C-3P0 ... but I've got to say, it left me wanting to know more about his life outside of this Star Wars universe!
]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 108262438
Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world—of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over, fades from view.

When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love—making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars.

This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in and of everything that comes after success: money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest as it examines the nature of identity, creativity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play and, above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

©2022 Gabrielle Zevin (P)2022 Penguin Audio]]> 14 Gabrielle Zevin Devina 4 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 3.99 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Devina
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/16
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida]]> 63852066
But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka.]]> 15 Shehan Karunatilaka Devina 3 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 3.74 2022 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
author: Shehan Karunatilaka
name: Devina
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/06
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Henry VIII: The King and His Court]]> 56124039 Alison Weir Devina 4 audible 4.08 2001 Henry VIII: The King and His Court
author: Alison Weir
name: Devina
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/17
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:
If you're obsessed with the Tudor era, and have read many fiction novels of the period, but really want a deep dive into the facts and details of the court of Henry VIII, I can highly recommend this book. The overall facts will be known to you, if so, but the detail is astounding, with everything backed by fact rather than supposition - and these are laid out as such, if at all. I'm going to dive into Weir's fiction about the queens after this!
]]> A Place for Us 49003654 A Place for Us unfolds the lives of an Indian-American Muslim family, gathered together in their Californian hometown to celebrate the eldest daughter, Hadia’s, wedding â€� a match of love rather than tradition. It is here, on this momentous day, that Amar, the youngest of the siblings, reunites with his family for the first time in three years. Rafiq and Layla must now contend with the choices and betrayals that lead to their son’s estrangement â€� the reckoning of parents who strove to pass on their cultures and traditions to their children; and of children who in turn struggle to balance authenticity in themselves with loyalty to the home they came from.Ěý
Ěý
In a narrative that spans decades and sees family life through the eyes of each member, A Place For Us charts the crucial moments in the family's past, from the bonds that bring them together to the differences that pull them apart. And as siblings Hadia, Huda, and Amar attempt to carve out a life for themselves, they must reconcile their present culture with their parent's faith, to tread a path between the old world and the new, and learn how the smallest decisions can lead to the deepest of betrayals.]]> 377 Fatima Farheen Mirza 1524763578 Devina 2 dubai-bibliophiles, audible 4.18 2018 A Place for Us
author: Fatima Farheen Mirza
name: Devina
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2022/05/24
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: dubai-bibliophiles, audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose]]> 57794242 A deeply moving memoir about the year that would forever change both a family and a country.

In November 2014, thirteen members of the Biden family gathered on Nantucket for Thanksgiving, a tradition they had been celebrating for the past forty years; it was the one constant in what had become a hectic, scrutinized, and overscheduled life. The Thanksgiving holiday was a much-needed respite, a time to connect, a time to reflect on what the year had brought, and what the future might hold. But this year felt different from all those that had come before. Joe and Jill Biden’s eldest son, Beau, had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor fifteen months earlier, and his survival was uncertain. “Promise me, Dad,� Beau had told his father. “Give me your word that no matter what happens, you’re going to be all right.� Joe Biden gave him his word.

Promise Me Dad chronicles the year that followed, which would be the most momentous and challenging in Joe Biden’s extraordinary life and career. As vice president, Biden traveled more than a hundred thousand miles that year, across the world, dealing with crises in Ukraine, Central America, and Iraq. When a call came from New York, or Capitol Hill, or Kyiv, or Baghdad—“Joe, I need your help”—he responded. For twelve months, while Beau fought for and then lost his life, the vice president balanced the twin imperatives of living up to his responsibilities to his country and his responsibilities to his family. And never far away was the insistent and urgent question of whether he should seek the presidency in 2016. The year brought real triumph and accomplishment, and wrenching pain. But even in the worst times, Biden was able to lean on the strength of his long, deep bonds with his family, on his faith, and on his deepening friendship with the man in the Oval Office, Barack Obama.

Writing with poignancy and immediacy, Joe Biden allows readers to feel the urgency of each moment, to experience the days when he felt unable to move forward as well as the days when he felt like he could not afford to stop.

This is a book written not just by the president, but by a father, grandfather, friend, and husband. Promise Me Dad is a story of how family and friendships sustain us and how hope, purpose, and action can guide us through the pain of personal loss into the light of a new future.

Note: this Audible Exclusive includes a powerful interview � only available here � between Joe Biden and award-winning journalist, Mike Barnicle. Their discussion contextualizes the memoir’s wide-ranging themes, while also touching upon the presidential election, current events, and what it means to grapple with profound grief.]]> Joe Biden Devina 3 audible 4.20 2017 Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose
author: Joe Biden
name: Devina
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/17
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack]]> 60027445
Wolf 21 and Wolf 42 were attracted to each other the moment they met in Yellowstone Park--but Wolf 42's jealous sister hindered their relationship. After an explosive insurrection within the pack, the two wolves came together at last as alpha male and alpha female of the Druids, which, under their benevolent leadership, became the most successful wolf pack in Yellowstone history. Renowned wolf expert and Yellowstone's first-ever wolf interpreter Rick McIntyre recounts their fascinating lives with compassion and a keen eye for detail, drawing on his more than twenty-five years of experience observing Yellowstone wolves in the wild.

The story of Wolf 42 and Wolf 21 is a remarkable work of science writing, offering unparalleled insight into wolf behavior and Yellowstone's famed wolf reintroduction project. It's also a heart-wrenching love story with a cathartic ending, providing further evidence that the lives of wolves are as eventful--and important--as our own.

Listening length: 6 hours, 41 minutes]]> 7 Rick McIntyre Devina 4 audible 4.00 2020 The Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack
author: Rick McIntyre
name: Devina
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/10
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Need To Talk About The British Empire]]> 51477571 Afua Hirsch Devina 3 audible 4.16 We Need To Talk About The British Empire
author: Afua Hirsch
name: Devina
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2021/11/20
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Jon Snow: Making the News 56211135 Jon Snow Devina 3 audible 3.78 Jon Snow: Making the News
author: Jon Snow
name: Devina
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2021/11/27
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chewing the Fat: Tasting Notes From a Greedy Life]]> 60507379 Does bacon improve everything?
And is gin really the devil's work? In this collection of his columns, the award-winning writer and Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner answers these vital questions and many, many more. They are glorious dispatches, seasoned in equal measure with both enthusiasm and bile, from decades at the very frontline of eating.]]> Jay Rayner Devina 4 audible 4.50 Chewing the Fat: Tasting Notes From a Greedy Life
author: Jay Rayner
name: Devina
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/23
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Audible Theatre Collection: Oedipus]]> 43302126
These three plays were written around 450 BC, with the playwright following the established convention of presenting the story through main characters but using a chorus - sometimes one voice, sometimes more - as an independent commentator that also occasionally participates in the drama. When the audiences of ancient Athens went to the amphitheatres to see the plays, they would have known the basic story of poor Oedipus.

Nevertheless, the power of Sophocles' retelling made the Theban plays deeply horrifying and affecting - and this is still true now, some 2,500 years later. There is also a strong contemporary resonance for us, for in the 20th century the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud famously adopted the story to illustrate his Oedipus complex, which, he argued, was a condition of the unconscious mind in boys - that they want to sleep with their mothers. It is interesting that through the character of the queen, Jocasta, in Oedipus the King, Sophocles states this unequivocally.

Oedipus the King is well known. The other two are less so: Oedipus at Colonus, which deals with his last days, and Antigone, which casts the spotlight on his daughter, who, as part of the accursed bloodline, chooses to act in a way she believes is right, whatever the consequences. Yet they are equally powerful and moving.

This audio production, with Jamie Glover as Oedipus and Hayley Atwell as his daughter, Antigone, is a world premiere audio recording of all three plays.

With the authoritative but modern translation by Ian Johnston, specially commissioned new music from the English composer Roger Marsh, and a cast of outstanding actors, this Audible Original presentation of Sophocles' Theban plays will be listened to not once but many times.]]> 6 Sophocles Devina 3 audible 3.80 -429 Audible Theatre Collection: Oedipus
author: Sophocles
name: Devina
average rating: 3.80
book published: -429
rating: 3
read at: 2021/04/14
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]> Flowers for Algernon 36374246
All Charlie wants is to be smart and have friends, but the treatment turns him into a genius.

Then Algernon begins to fade.

What will become of Charlie?]]> 8 Daniel Keyes Devina 5 audible 4.40 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Devina
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/14
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: audible
review:

]]>