Max's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 05 Apr 2025 05:43:32 -0700 60 Max's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[How to Train Your Mind: Exploring the Productivity Benefits of Meditation]]> 56688463 The Productivity Project and Hyperfocus - will show in this candid and counter-intuitive guide to the productivity benefits of meditation.

How to Train Your Mind digs deep into the practical, tactical benefits of a meditation practice - and how to integrate a meditation ritual into your own life. In addition to calming your mind and allowing you to slow down in an overanxious world, research shows that meditation can de-stimulate your mind so you can think more clearly, procrastinate less, and be more effective at everything you do - at work and at home.

Featuring guided meditations designed to fit your busy, unpredictable schedule, How to Train Your Mind is the ideal guide for anyone looking to improve productivity without sacrificing time. While much has been written about the spiritual and intangible benefits of meditation, as far as our productivity is concerned, meditation is in a league all its own.]]> Chris Bailey Max 0 3.82 How to Train Your Mind: Exploring the Productivity Benefits of Meditation
author: Chris Bailey
name: Max
average rating: 3.82
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: mental-health, non-fiction, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rose Cord (The Ballad of Sir Benfro, #2)]]> 13614911 The only sure way to reverse this process, or at least halt it, is to conjure up the living flame and reckon the jewel. Such should as a matter of course be done with all haste when a fallen dragon is found, but in those rare cases where there is nothing left of the body, or where the jewels have been removed to a distance and the remains left unmapped to rot, then reckoning will not work. For the living flame must have both body and jewel to set the two together. There are mages who profess a knowledge of how to untie the binding between an unreckoned jewel and the dragon it is trying to usurp, but they are few and spread far in all the kingdoms of Gwlad.
Healer Trefnog’s The Apothecarium

~~

His mother dead at the hands of Inquisitor Melyn, his village betrayed by the vain Frecknock, young kitling Sir Benfro flees deep into the ancient forest of the Ffrydd. Stumbling upon the last resting place of the great dragon of Legend, Magog, Son of the Summer Moon, Benfro rescues the last remaining jewel nestling inside the long-dead mage's bleached, empty skull, unaware that to do so will bind him forever to the ancient gem. Great Magog will teach him everything he could wish to know about the subtle arts, and help him gain his revenge over the men who killed his mother, but will the price be too high?

~~

Be careful what you wish for; it might just come to pass. Errol Ramsbottom once yearned to be a Warrior Priest of the Order of the High Ffrydd, but his dreams were of brave acts against an evil foe, and they died when he uncovered the truth behind the order. As the Twin Kingdoms prepare for war against Llanwennog, Queen Beulah needs to infiltrate the highest levels of the enemy. Errol, with his northern looks, will make the perfect spy. If the inquisitor can only bend the boy to his will.

~~

The second instalment of the acclaimed series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro, The Rose Cord continues the epic tale, as the forces of magic muster on either side, ready to do battle. In ancient times, Gwlad was done a terrible wrong. Now is the time come to try and set it right.]]> 0 James Oswald 0953047369 Max 3 fiction, fantasy 4.09 2012 The Rose Cord (The Ballad of Sir Benfro, #2)
author: James Oswald
name: Max
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: fiction, fantasy
review:
Unfortunately a lot of repetition in this book.. In each chapter the same things happen, one of the main characters gets nearly killed, the other finds some kind of (evil) mentor but escapes or learns a valuable skill. I found part two not as strong as part one. I am curious to see how the story progresses, though..
]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Cage (The Ballad of Sir Benfro, #3)]]> 20649052 Although they have a reputation for terrorising remote settlements and killing people for sport, there is no reliable documented evidence of dragons ever having caused anyone intentional harm. Mander Keece’s fairy tales tell of ferocious battles fought between dragons, and of unfortunate peasant farmers caught up in the mêlée, but it is only in the later, more derivative works of fiction that dragons actually go out of their way to do men ill.

This accords well with the nature of the beasts. Few and far between, they are peaceable, gentle creatures, only their savage appearance lending credence to the tales spun around them.
from Dragon’s Tales by Fr Charmois

----

Fate has thrown Benfro and Errol together once more, but it is far from a happy meeting. For the dragon, Errol represents all that he hates most in the world - mankind who are responsible for the death of his mother and the slaughter of the villagers he called family. He also has to contend with the ever-stronger influence of Magog, reaching out to him along the rose cord and forcing him to rebuild the collection of jewels he scattered.

Errol is beset with dreams of a far-off place, following the footsteps of his beloved Martha, but unable to reach her. She has been trapped in a great fortress, at the top of a high tower, in a cage with bars of gold. He longs to find her, to rescue her as she rescued him. But his ankles are broken, his body wrecked in King Ballah's torture chamber beyond even the healing skills he learned from his mother to repair.

Benfro has the knowledge of a dragon healer, and Errol holds the key to holding off Magog long enough for Benfro to regain his strength. Enough that the young dragon can set about finding a way to be rid of the dead mage forever.

Working together, they might just survive. Apart, they will surely perish at the hands of Inquisitor Melyn.]]> 322 James Oswald 0953047377 Max 0 4.08 2012 The Golden Cage (The Ballad of Sir Benfro, #3)
author: James Oswald
name: Max
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: fiction, currently-reading, fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World]]> 214268997
A transformative guide to rethinking our approach to goals, creativity, and life itself from a neuroscientist and entrepreneur, and the creator of the popular Ness Labs newsletter

Life isn’t linear, and yet we constantly try to mold it around linear goals: four-year college degrees, ten-year career plans, thirty-year mortgages. What if instead we approached life as a giant playground for experimentation? Based on ancestral philosophy and the latest scientific research, Tiny Experiments provides a desperately needed reframing: Uncertainty can be a state of expanded possibility and a space for metamorphosis.

Neuroscientist and entrepreneur Anne-Laure Le Cunff reveals that all you need is an experimental mindset to turn challenges into self-discovery and doubt into opportunity. Readers will replace the old linear model of success with a circular model of growth in which goals are discovered, pursued, and adapted—not in a vacuum, but in conversation with the larger world.

Throughout the book, you will ask hard questions and design simple yet meaningful experiments to find the answers. You will learn how to break free from the invisible cognitive scripts that shape your life, how to harness the power of imperfection, and how to make smarter decisions when the path forward is unclear.

This is a guide to:
� Discover your true ambitions through conducting tiny personal experiments
� Dismantle harmful beliefs about success that have kept you stuck
� Dare to make decisions true to your own aspirations
� Stop trying to find your purpose and start living instead

Tiny Experiments offers not just practical tools to make sure our most vital work gets done, but a guide to reawakening our curiosity and drive in a noisy, busy, disaffected world, so that we can discover and pursue our most authentic ambitions while making a meaningful contribution.]]> 304 Anne-Laure Le Cunff 0593715136 Max 0 to-read 4.34 Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World
author: Anne-Laure Le Cunff
name: Max
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction]]> 36959766 Canada's productivity expert returns with a totally fresh angle on how to do more with less.

Throughout his experiments and research, Chris Bailey came across many little-known insights into how we focus (a key element of productivity), including the surprising idea that focus isn't so much a state of heightened awareness (as we'd assume), but a balance between two frames of mind. The most recent neuroscientific research on attention reveals that our brain has two powerful modes that can be unlocked when we use our attention well: a focused mode (hyperfocus), which is the foundation for being highly productive, and a creative mode (scatterfocus), which enables us to connect ideas in novel ways. Hyperfocus helps readers unlock both, so they can concentrate more deeply, think more clearly, and work and live more deliberately. Diving deep into the science and theories about how and why we bring our attention to bear on life's big goals and everyday tasks, Chris Bailey takes his unique approach to productivity to the next level in Hyperfocus, while retaining the approachable voice and perspective that made him a fast favourite.]]> 256 Chris Bailey 0735273685 Max 4 How to Calm Your Mind), so I was excited to get started in Hyperfocus. There are some easy to implement strategies to increase your productivity, and also to redefine productivity so that you experience less of a guilty feeling if you have a bad day. This is an important thing to focus on, and something that resonates a lot with me. Productivity is not about cramming as much work as possible in a day, it's about setting realistic intentions, and completing those. As soon as you eliminate as much distractions as possible, you can enter into a flow state of working, which the author calls hyperfocus. The opposite can also be useful, which the author calls scatterfocus. Scatterfocus can be compared a bit to brainstorming, but more with the intention to let the mind wander.

This book repeats itself quite a lot, and is not completely novel. I do like the author's style of writing, it's easy to read. I am not completely sure how much I like the use of the term hyperfocus for this purpose, however. I have raging ADHD, and for people like me, hyperfocus can have a very negative effect. But that is not the main point of the book, so I will not dwell on it too much.]]> 3.86 2018 Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction
author: Chris Bailey
name: Max
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: mental-health, neurodiversity, non-fiction, personal-development
review:
I really loved the other book I read by this author (How to Calm Your Mind), so I was excited to get started in Hyperfocus. There are some easy to implement strategies to increase your productivity, and also to redefine productivity so that you experience less of a guilty feeling if you have a bad day. This is an important thing to focus on, and something that resonates a lot with me. Productivity is not about cramming as much work as possible in a day, it's about setting realistic intentions, and completing those. As soon as you eliminate as much distractions as possible, you can enter into a flow state of working, which the author calls hyperfocus. The opposite can also be useful, which the author calls scatterfocus. Scatterfocus can be compared a bit to brainstorming, but more with the intention to let the mind wander.

This book repeats itself quite a lot, and is not completely novel. I do like the author's style of writing, it's easy to read. I am not completely sure how much I like the use of the term hyperfocus for this purpose, however. I have raging ADHD, and for people like me, hyperfocus can have a very negative effect. But that is not the main point of the book, so I will not dwell on it too much.
]]> <![CDATA[The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy]]> 25733994
Chris Bailey turned down lucrative job offers to pursue a lifelong dream—to spend a year performing a deep dive experiment into the pursuit of productivity, a subject he had been enamored with since he was a teenager. After obtaining his business degree, he created a blog to chronicle a year-long series of productivity experiments he conducted on himself, where he also continued his research and interviews with some of the world’s foremost experts, from Charles Duhigg to David Allen. Among the experiments that he Bailey went several weeks with getting by on little to no sleep; he cut out caffeine and sugar; he lived in total isolation for 10 days; he used his smartphone for just an hour a day for three months; he gained ten pounds of muscle mass; he stretched his work week to 90 hours; a late riser, he got up at 5:30 every morning for three months—all the while monitoring the impact of his experiments on the quality and quantity of his work.

The Productivity Project —and the lessons Chris learned—are the result of that year-long journey. Among the counterintuitive insights Chris Bailey will teach
· slowing down to work more deliberately;
· shrinking or eliminating the unimportant;
· the rule of three;
· striving for imperfection;
· scheduling less time for important tasks;
· the 20 second rule to distract yourself from the inevitable distractions;
· and the concept of productive procrastination.
In an eye-opening and thoroughly engaging read, Bailey offers a treasure trove of insights and over 25 best practices that will help you accomplish more.]]> 304 Chris Bailey 1101904038 Max 0 to-read 3.92 2016 The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy
author: Chris Bailey
name: Max
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins]]> 23615703
Yet there is a dark side to our relationship with dolphins. They are the stars of a global multibillion-dollar captivity industry, whose money has fueled a sinister and lucrative trade in which dolphins are captured violently, then shipped and kept in brutal conditions. Casey’s investigation into this cruel underground takes her to the harrowing epicenter of the trade in the Solomon Islands, and to the Japanese town of Taiji, made famous by the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, where she chronicles the annual slaughter and sale of dolphins in its narrow bay.

Casey ends her narrative on the island of Crete, where millennia-old frescoes and artwork document the great Minoan civilization, a culture which lived in harmony with dolphins, and whose example shows the way to a more enlightened coexistence with the natural world.]]> 304 Susan Casey 0385537301 Max 5 4.03 2015 Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins
author: Susan Casey
name: Max
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: marine-biology, biology, non-fiction, favourites
review:
One of my favourite reads of 2025 so far. Some tough to read passages (animal abuse), but very well told. This book is not just about cetaceans, but also about the people fascinated with them, exploiting them and studying them. A good mix of stories making this a very entertaining book. I will re-read this to annotate and dive in a bit deeper soon.
]]> <![CDATA[Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience]]> 66354 303 Mihály Csíkszentmihályi 0060920432 Max 0 to-read 4.11 1990 Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
author: Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
name: Max
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dolphin Diaries: My 25 Years with Spotted Dolphins in the Bahamas]]> 11395883 336 Denise L. Herzing 0312608969 Max 0 to-read 3.78 2011 Dolphin Diaries: My 25 Years with Spotted Dolphins in the Bahamas
author: Denise L. Herzing
name: Max
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Essentials of Animal Behaviour (Studies in Biology)]]> 3329966 244 Peter J.B. Slater 0521629969 Max 0 3.82 1999 Essentials of Animal Behaviour (Studies in Biology)
author: Peter J.B. Slater
name: Max
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: biology, non-fiction, resources, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic]]> 17573681 592 David Quammen 0393346617 Max 0 to-read 4.44 2012 Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
author: David Quammen
name: Max
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dreamwalker (The Ballad of Sir Benfro, #1)]]> 13614501 And kitling sleeps beside the babe ne'er born,
When darkness stills the forest birds at noon,
In blood and fire Gwlad shall rise anew.
The Prophecies of Mad Goronwy

----

The dragons of Gwlad are dying. A sad, shrunken echo of the once-proud creatures of their myths, now they shuffle through their last days, hidden by their subtle arts from the men who have persecuted and killed them for over two millennia. Yet in amongst this quiet decline, there is new life. Benfro, son of Morgwm the Green, the first male kitling in a thousand years. His hatching at the confluence, when great Rasalene the moon covers Arhelion the sun, must surely mark him for great things. For long ago dragons wrought a deep wrong on the land, and now is come the time to make amends.

----

First in the series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro, Dreamwalker sets the stage for an epic fantasy of dragons and men, magic and mystery.]]> 325 James Oswald 0953047350 Max 4 fantasy, fiction 3.90 2012 Dreamwalker (The Ballad of Sir Benfro, #1)
author: James Oswald
name: Max
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: fantasy, fiction
review:
According to the pencil writing on the first page, I purchased this book in October 2015. I don't grab fantasy books often these days, as I feel like I can spend my time better on non-fiction. But that's nonsense, I should also read to relax. So I packed this in my book crate for the Spitsbergen fieldwork. Finally got around to starting it, and what an enjoyable read this was for me! The two storylines are both interesting, and they come close to each other, but never really merge. That will probably happen in part two.. the worldbuilding picks up slowly, it took me a while to figure out how the magic worked. But I like this more than when the first few chapters are only explanations of the world and the magic, which can really bore the reader. Time to find the ebook version of part two..
]]> <![CDATA[How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times]]> 60751769
“After rebounding from his own burnout, Bailey devised a clear-eyed, concise method that marries science and self-help; he’s equally proficient in probing the roles of serotonin and endorphins while charting concrete steps in chapters titled ‘The Mindset of More� and ‘Heights of Stimulation.� Slow down, breathe, and submerge into these pages.� —Oprah Daily


A PENGUIN LIFE BOOK

It took an on-stage panic attack for productivity expert Chris Bailey to recognize how critical it is to invest in calm at the same time that we invest in becoming more productive. Productivity advice works—and we need it now more than ever—but it’s just as vital that we develop our capacity for calm. By finding calm and overcoming anxiety, we don’t just feel more comfortable in our own mind—we build a deeper, more expansive reservoir of energy to draw from throughout the day. The pursuit of calm ultimately leads us to become more engaged, focused, and deliberate—while making us more satisfied with our lives. And because calm saves us time by making us more productive, we don’t even need to feel guilty about the time we spend investing in it.

How to Calm Your Mind is our crucial guide to achieving calm, navigating anxiety, and staving off burnout. It explains how our digital world drains us, and what we can do to abate the hidden sources of stress that burden our days. Bailey has learned to embrace the analog world and “stimulation fasts,� to use the science of “savoring� to become more focused and present, and to relax without guilt—and he shows us how we can reclaim calm, too. In an anxious world, investing in calm might be the best productivity strategy around.]]> 288 Chris Bailey 0593298519 Max 5 3.73 How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times
author: Chris Bailey
name: Max
average rating: 3.73
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: mental-health, non-fiction, personal-development, favourites
review:
Really liked this once. I've been on a bit of a self-help/productivity book binge this year, I am not sure why. Some stick, most I forget about instantly.. This one will stick, I think. I even started annotating and marking passages. Most information and techniques are not new to me, but the book helped me realize some things about chronic stress and how I could potentially minimize it in my own life. The author's writing is really enjoyable, a bit of humor, not too condescending. I will recommend this book to people in my life (definitely fellow PhD candidates.. hehe).
]]> <![CDATA[Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance]]> 214152270 In the tradition of When Time Stopped and The Hare with Amber Eyes, this extraordinary family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author’s great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist specializing in radioactive household products who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis.

When novelist and poet Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their heroic escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. Instead, what he found in his great-grandfather’s voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. “I confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error. I betrayed myself, my most sacred principles,� he wrote. “I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience.�

Siegfried Merzbacher was a German-Jewish chemist living in Oranienburg, a small town north of Berlin, where he developed various household items, including a radioactive toothpaste called Doramad. But then he was asked by the government to work on products with a strong military connection—first he made and tested gas-mask filters, and then he was invited to establish a chemical weapons laboratory. Between 1933 and 1935, he was a Jewish chemist making chemical weapons for the Nazis. While he and his nuclear family escaped safely to Turkey before the war, Siegfried never got over his complicity, particularly after learning that members of his extended family were murdered in Auschwitz.

Armed only with his great-grandfather’s rambling, 2,000-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg—a place where hundreds of unexploded bombs remain hidden in the irradiated soil—to reckon with the remarkable, unsettling legacy of his family’s past.]]> 240 Joe Dunthorne 1982180757 Max 0 to-read 4.14 2025 Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance
author: Joe Dunthorne
name: Max
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language]]> 40180029 240 Emma Byrne 0393356655 Max 2 non-fiction
I missed the science that the title promised. I did find the chimpanzee chapter interesting, but the rest of the book was pretty fucking boring.]]> 3.53 2017 Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language
author: Emma Byrne
name: Max
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: non-fiction
review:
I was looking forward to reading this book (I swear a lot), but I was underwhelmed. There are a lot of generalizations regarding swearing as a result of culture, and a lot of comparisons of swearing between cultures. Unfortunately these are so generic and unspecific, it feels very superficial. Not all Americans swear similar to the few the author interviewed. I am sure the author is aware of this, but she should have acknowledged this.

I missed the science that the title promised. I did find the chimpanzee chapter interesting, but the rest of the book was pretty fucking boring.
]]> The Let Them Theory 216351768
If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words�Let Them—will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The Let Them Theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands—and this book will show you exactly how to do it.

In her latest groundbreaking book, The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins�New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's most respected experts on motivation, confidence, and mindset—teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life.

Using the same no-nonsense, science-backed approach that's made The Mel Robbins Podcast a global sensation, Robbins explains why The Let Them Theory is already loved by millions and how you can apply it in eight key areas of your life to make the biggest impact. Within a few pages, you'll realize how much energy and time you've been wasting trying to control the wrong things—at work, in relationships, and in pursuing your goals—and how this is keeping you from the happiness and success you deserve.

Written as an easy-to-understand guide, Robbins shares relatable stories from her own life, highlights key takeaways, relevant research and introduces you to world-renowned experts in psychology, neuroscience, relationships, happiness, and ancient wisdom who champion The Let Them Theory every step of the way.

Learn how

Stop wasting energy on things you can't control Stop comparing yourself to other peopleBreak free from fear and self-doubtRelease the grip of people's expectationsBuild the best friendships of your lifeCreate the love you deservePursue what truly matters to you with confidenceBuild resilience against everyday stressors and distractionsDefine your own path to success, joy, and fulfillment. . . and so much more.

The Let Them Theory will forever change the way you think about relationships, control, and personal power. Whether you want to advance your career, motivate others to change, take creative risks, find deeper connections, build better habits, start a new chapter, or simply create more happiness in your life and relationships, this book gives you the mindset and tools to unlock your full potential.

Order your copy of The Let Them Theory now and discover how much power you truly have. It all begins with two simple words.]]> 311 Mel Robbins 1401971377 Max 0 to-read 4.20 2024 The Let Them Theory
author: Mel Robbins
name: Max
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose]]> 211025416 From bestselling author Martha Beck, a new path to overcoming anxiety by awakening the creativity within.

We live in an epidemic of anxiety. Most of us assume that the key to overcoming it is to think our way out. And for a while it works. But there is always something that sends us back into the anxious spiral we’ve been trying to climb out of.

In Beyond Anxiety, Dr. Martha Beck explains why anxiety is skyrocketing around you, and likely within you. She also tells you how to not only reduce your anxiety but use it to propel you into a life filled with peace, meaning, and joy.

Using a combination of the latest neuroscience as well as her background in sociology and coaching, Beck explains how our brains tend to get stuck in an “anxiety spiral,� a feedback system that can increase anxiety indefinitely. To climb out, we must engage different parts of our nervous system—the parts involved in creativity. Beck provides instructions for engaging the “creativity spiral,� in a process that not only shuts down anxiety but leads to innovative problem solving, a sense of meaning and purpose, and joyful, intimate connection with others—and with the world.

The opposite of anxiety, it turns out, is a wonderful new way of life—one that can calm and inspire us as individuals and help us become a source of healing for everything around us.]]> 336 Martha Beck 0593656385 Max 0 to-read 4.01 2025 Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose
author: Martha Beck
name: Max
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gentle: Rest More, Stress Less, and Live the Life You Actually Want]]> 214175098 From the author of Soulful Simplicity and Project 333, a collection of 30 practices to overcome chronic overwhelm, cultivate self-compassion, and find permission to do less—perfect for readers of Rest is Resistance and Wintering.

Written by minimalism expert and celebrated author Courtney Carver, Gentle is the “don’t do it all� self-help book you need to live with less stress and more ease, less overwhelm and more joy by uncovering the Gentle You.
Grounded in self-compassion and a fierce commitment to less, becoming the Gentle You isn’t about taking the easy road. It’s a practice of real self-care that, over time, will soothe your nervous system and strengthen your relationships.
Organized into three parts—Rest, Less, and Rise�30 challenges and simple practices will help readers radically and (yes)gentlyshift their pace, headspace, and heart.
It’s time to find strength in your softness, fierceness in your flexibility, and to finally rise—not by pushing through but by connecting with theGentleYou, standing in your light and honoring the person you are.]]> 288 Courtney Carver 1538765217 Max 0 to-read 4.15 2025 Gentle: Rest More, Stress Less, and Live the Life You Actually Want
author: Courtney Carver
name: Max
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Chemistry of Calm: A Powerful, Drug-Free Plan to Quiet Your Fears and Overcome Your Anxiety]]> 9530756 Blending Eastern techniques of meditation with traditional Western solutions of diet and exercise, celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Henry Emmons offers a proven plan to combat anxiety—without medication—that has helped tens of thousands gain inner peace and start enjoying life. The debilitating effects of anxiety can affect your sense of well-being, health, longevity, productivity, and relationships. In The Chemistry of Calm, Dr. Henry Emmons presents his Resilience Training Program—a groundbreaking regimen designed to relieve anxiety and restore physical and mental strength. This step-by-step plan for mental calmness and emotional wisdom focuses on ways to create resilience as a key to resolving anxiety in everyday life, incorporating the latest science -Diet—you’ve got to eat good food to feel good -Exercise—it’s moving makes you less anxious -Nutritional Supplements—boosting your natural anxiety resistance -Mindfulness—including meditation techniques to calm your body and brain Using this program, Dr. Emmons has helped countless patients reduce their anxiety and reclaim the resilience that is their birthright. Now, with The Chemistry of Calm, you can be anxiety free too!]]> 288 Henry Emmons 1439149534 Max 0 to-read 3.72 2010 The Chemistry of Calm: A Powerful, Drug-Free Plan to Quiet Your Fears and Overcome Your Anxiety
author: Henry Emmons
name: Max
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tailchaser's Song 23340
“The hour of Unfolding Dark had begun, and the rooftop where Tailchaser lay was smothered in shadow. He was deep in a dream of leaping and flying when he felt an unusual tingling in his whiskers. Fritti Tailchaser, hunterchild of the Folk, came suddenly awake and sniffed the air. Ears pricked and whiskers flared straight, he sifted the evening breeze. Nothing unusual. Then what had awakened him? Pondering, he splayed his claws and began a spine-limbering stretch that finally ended at the tip of his reddish tail.�

Join Tailchaser on his magical quest to rescue his catfriend Hushpad on a quest that will take him all the way to cat hell and beyond.]]> 375 Tad Williams Max 5 fantasy 3.99 1985 Tailchaser's Song
author: Tad Williams
name: Max
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: fantasy
review:
What a charming story! I'm a great fan of Tad Williams' writing, and this book is amazing as expected. At first I thought a story like this could be a bit childish, but in no way I felt like I was reading a children's book. It's a proper fantasy, with strong characters. In the last few chapters you wonder when the story is resolved, stuff keeps happening at the end. I wish the book was longer! (I'm not a cat lover.. so that Tad managed to grip me with this is pretty cool.)
]]> <![CDATA[Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science]]> 50188782 336 Erika Engelhaupt 1426220979 Max 4 morbidly-curious, non-fiction 4.08 2021 Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science
author: Erika Engelhaupt
name: Max
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:
A quick and fun read for this month's Morbidly Curious Book Club. This book is a bit set up like a blog, with chapters on many "gory" topics. While I did not find all of the topics particularly gory, they are interesting. The author has a witty way of writing which kept me reading until late in the night. I even learned some new things (I knew about skin mites, but how they live.. that's freaky!). Definitely recommended for some light entertainment.
]]> <![CDATA[The Earth Transformed: An Untold History]]> 61965394 A revolutionary new history that reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development—and demise—of civilizations across time

Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been with us.

Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop failure, why the roots of regime change in Eleventh-Century Baghdad lay in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth century. Again and again, Frankopan shows that when past empires have failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, Climate will radically reframe the way we look at the world and our future.]]> 736 Peter Frankopan 0525659161 Max 4 3.87 2023 The Earth Transformed: An Untold History
author: Peter Frankopan
name: Max
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: biology, climate-problems, history, non-fiction
review:
At nearly 750 pages, this took me over a month to read. What a beast of a book! To discuss the effect of climate change (not just anthropogenic) on the environment and civilizations you need a lot of pages, so it makes sense, but it does not make for a light read. While I definitely learned new things, especially about older civilizations and history, I found it a bit too long and dwindling at times, even though the book never really goes in depth on a specific topic. There are many stories, but all of them pass by in just a few pages. I think the book would be more impactful if there were less stories, and more in depth on the stories that are told. But I guess the aim was to provide a history as complete as possible.
]]> I'm Glad My Mom Died 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

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

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy Max 0 to-read 4.45 2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Max
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine]]> 131121289 Legacy is an illuminating and stirring journey of a book.� —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times- bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

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

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

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

Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.]]> 304 Uché Blackstock Max 0 to-read 4.46 2024 Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
author: Uché Blackstock
name: Max
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy]]> 195790788
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.�

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

Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.]]> 304 Tia Levings 1250288282 Max 0 to-read 4.31 2024 A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
author: Tia Levings
name: Max
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told)]]> 195790756 An inclusive and essential guide to reproductive health—including period problems, pelvic pain, menopause, fertility, sexual health, vaginal and urinary conditions, and overall wellbeing―from leading expert Dr. Karen Tang

Reproductive healthcare, from abortion to gender-affirming care, is under siege. The onus continues to fall on patients to find and advocate for the care they need. Dr. Karen Tang is on a mission to transform how women engage with their bodies and their healthcare.

Did you know that one in three women experiences menstrual abnormalities or pelvic issues, yet these conditions are overwhelmingly misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or dismissed? The root causes for these issues, such as polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and pelvic-floor muscle dysfunction, don’t receive the stream of funding for research and new treatments that other conditions do, despite the potential to affect up to half the population.

It’s Not Hysteria is a comprehensive guide to common conditions and potential treatment options, with practical tools such as symptom prompts and sample questions to ask one's provider. In the face of uncertainty and misinformation, It’s Not Hysteria is destined to become a new classic that educates and empowers.]]> 384 Karen Tang 1250894158 Max 0 to-read 4.22 2024 It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told)
author: Karen Tang
name: Max
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good]]> 63876551 A groundbreaking exploration of the ancient rules women unwittingly follow in order to be considered "good," revealing how the Seven Deadly Sins still control and distort their lives and illuminating a path toward a more balanced, spiritually complete way to live

Women congratulate themselves when they resist the doughnut in the office break-room. They celebrate their restraint when they hold back from sending an e-mail in anger. They feel virtuous when they wake up at dawn to get a jump on the day. They put others' needs ahead of their own and believe this makes them exemplary. In On Our Best Behavior, journalist Elise Loehnen explains that these impulses--often lauded as unselfish, distinctly feminine instincts--are actually ingrained in women by a culture that reaps the benefits, via an extraordinarily effective collection of mores known as the Seven Deadly Sins.

Since being codified by the Christian church in the fourth century, the Seven Deadly Sins--pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth--have exerted insidious power. Even today, in our largely secular, patriarchal society, they continue to circumscribe women's behavior. For example, seeing sloth as sinful leads women to deny themselves rest; a fear of gluttony drives them to ignore their appetites; and an aversion to greed prevents them from negotiating for themselves and contributes to the 55 percent gender wealth gap. Loehnen reveals how women have been programmed to obey the rules represented by these sins and how doing so qualifies them as "good."

This probing analysis of contemporary culture and thoroughly researched history explains how women have internalized the patriarchy, and how they unwittingly reinforce it. By sharing her own story and the spiritual wisdom of other traditions, Loehnen shows how women can break free and discover the integrity and wholeness they seek.]]> 384 Elise Loehnen 059324303X Max 0 to-read 3.78 2023 On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good
author: Elise Loehnen
name: Max
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women]]> 195791053 An up-close and striking look at modern beauty culture―from Botox and Instagram filters to lip flips and editing apps―and the realities of coming of age online

We live in a new age of beauty. With advancements in cosmetic surgery, walk-in treatments, augmented-reality face filters, photo-editing apps, and exposure to more images than ever, we have the ability to craft the image we want everyone to see. We pinch, pull, squeeze, tweeze, smooth, and slice ourselves beyond recognition. But is modern beauty culture truly empowering? Are we really in control?

In Pixel Flesh, Ellen Atlanta holds a mirror up to our modern beauty ideal and the pressure to present a perfect image, to live in an age of constant comparison and curated feeds. She weaves in her personal story with others� to reconfigure our obsession with the cult of beauty and to explore the reality of living in a world of paradoxes: We know our standards are unhealthy, but following them helps us succeed. We resent social media but continue to scroll. We know digital beauty is artificial, yet we strive for it.

From Love Island to lip filler, "blackfishing" to the "beauty tax," Pixel Flesh exposes what young women face under a dominant industry. Nuanced, unflinching, and razor sharp, it unmasks the absurdities of the standards we suddenly find ourselves upholding and acts as a rallying cry and a refusal to suffer in silence.]]> 384 Ellen Atlanta 1250286220 Max 0 to-read 4.16 2024 Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women
author: Ellen Atlanta
name: Max
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation]]> 75496481 Dr. Jen Gunter fights myths and fear-mongering with real science, inclusive facts, and shame-free advice on the topic that impacts more than 72 million Americans every month: menstruation.

Most women, transgender, and non-binary people who menstruate can expect to have hundreds of periods in a lifetime. So why is real information so hard to find? Despite the significance of menstruation, most education focuses on either increasing the chances of pregnancy or preventing it. Those who menstruate deserve to know more about their bodies than just what happens in service to reproduction. At a time when charlatans, politicians, and social media are succeeding in propagating damaging disinformation with real and devastating consequences, Dr. Gunter provides the antidote with science, myth busting, and no-nonsense facts.]]> 480 Jen Gunter 0806540680 Max 0 to-read 4.21 2024 Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation
author: Jen Gunter
name: Max
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today]]> 158649729 The fascinating history of women’s health as it’s never been told before.

For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal legacy that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women.

While the modern age has seen significant advancements in the medical field, the notion that female bodies are flawed inversions of the male ideal lingers on—as do the pervasive societal stigmas and lingering ignorance that shape women’s health and relationships with their own bodies.

Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen peels back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. With a physician’s knowledge and empathy, Dr. Comen follows the road map of the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her own experience treating thousands of women.

Empowering women to better understand ourselves and advocate for care that prioritizes healthy and joyful lives—for us and generations to come�All in Her Head is written with humor, wisdom, and deep scientific and cultural insight. Eye-opening, sometimes enraging, yet always captivating, this shared memoir of women’s medical history is an essential contribution to a holistic understanding and much-needed reclaiming of women’s history and bodies.]]> 368 Elizabeth Comen 0063293013 Max 0 to-read 4.37 2024 All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today
author: Elizabeth Comen
name: Max
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary]]> 211003691
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country’s literary scene, and parenting her son. Now she became someone new: a war crimes researcher and the chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children’s book author.

Everyone in Ukraine knew that Amelina was documenting the war. She photographed the ruins of schools and cultural centers; she recorded the testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses to atrocities. And she slowly turned back into a storyteller, writing what would become this book.

On the evening of June 27th, 2023, Amelina and three international writers stopped for dinner in the embattled Donetsk region. When a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, Amelina suffered grievous head injuries, and lost consciousness. She died on July 1st. She was thirty-seven. She left behind an incredible account of the ravages of war and the cost of resistance. Honest, intimate, and wry, this book will be celebrated as a classic.]]> 320 Victoria Amelina 1250367689 Max 0 to-read 4.48 Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary
author: Victoria Amelina
name: Max
average rating: 4.48
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sisters in Science 203747797
In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, Jewish and female citizens were forced out of their academic positions. Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen were eminent in their fields, but they had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments.

Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required Herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists. Lise fled to Sweden, where she made a groundbreaking discovery in nuclear physics, and the others fled to the United States, where they brought advanced physics to American universities. No matter their destination, each woman revolutionized the field of physics when all odds were stacked against them, galvanizing young women to do the same.

Well-researched and written with cinematic prose, Sisters in Science brings these trailblazing women to life and shows us how sisterhood and scientific curiosity can transcend borders and persist—flourish, even—in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.]]> 384 Olivia Campbell 0778333388 Max 0 to-read 3.85 2024 Sisters in Science
author: Olivia Campbell
name: Max
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women]]> 61086853
In the last few years, as identity politics has taken hold, middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings, the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused.

Hags asks the question why these women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme - care work, beauty, violence, political organization, sex - and explores it in relation to middle-aged women's beliefs, bodies and choices. Victoria Smith traces the attitudes she describes back to the same anxieties about older women that drove Early Modern witch hunts, and explores the very specific reasons why this type of misogyny is so powerful today. The demonisation of hags has never felt more now.

Victoria Smith has decided in this book that she will be the Karen so nobody else has to be, and she ends on a positive note, exploring potential solutions which can benefit all women, hags and hags-in-waiting.]]> 368 Victoria Smith 0349726965 Max 0 to-read 3.50 2023 Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women
author: Victoria Smith
name: Max
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire]]> 61918856
At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the their vast libraries and monumental sculptures, their elaborate trade and information networks, and the crucial role played by royal women.

Although Assyria was crushed by rising powers in the late seventh century BCE, its legacy endured from the Babylonian and Persian empires to Rome and beyond. Assyria is a stunning and authoritative account of a civilization essential to understanding the ancient world and our own.]]> 528 Eckart Frahm 1541674405 Max 0 to-read 4.08 2023 Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire
author: Eckart Frahm
name: Max
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Max 3 mental-health, non-fiction
But this book takes some liberties with the science, and presents the ideas of the author as a total truth. But there is no proof to that. I think it would be fairer to keep the tone more speculative. To me, it's always a bit suspicious if scientists are 100% sure of themselves. As a scientist myself, I know that researching only leaves you with more and more questions.

A lot of the sources the author cites are his own website, blog posts, unpublished research, et cetera. This is of course also a bit shady. I am also really surprised about the relatively low amount of information on LGBTQ+ folks. It's being passed over most of the time, while this should have made up a bigger part of the book, as there is a lot going on for these kids these days with social media and mental health.

But what I do like are the general ideas. More time off-screen, more synchronous interaction with family and friends, less social media. Especially for children. ]]> 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Max
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: mental-health, non-fiction
review:
2.5 stars. I am not really sure about this book. I think the message is very important, and I agree growing up glued to a screen can not be beneficial.

But this book takes some liberties with the science, and presents the ideas of the author as a total truth. But there is no proof to that. I think it would be fairer to keep the tone more speculative. To me, it's always a bit suspicious if scientists are 100% sure of themselves. As a scientist myself, I know that researching only leaves you with more and more questions.

A lot of the sources the author cites are his own website, blog posts, unpublished research, et cetera. This is of course also a bit shady. I am also really surprised about the relatively low amount of information on LGBTQ+ folks. It's being passed over most of the time, while this should have made up a bigger part of the book, as there is a lot going on for these kids these days with social media and mental health.

But what I do like are the general ideas. More time off-screen, more synchronous interaction with family and friends, less social media. Especially for children.
]]> The Living Mountain 25773742 This is an alternate Cover Edition for ISBN10: 0857861832/ ISBN13: 9780857861832.

The Living Mountain is a lyrical testament in praise of the Cairngorms. It is a work deeply rooted in Nan Shepherd's knowledge of the natural world, and a poetic and philosophical meditation on our longing for high and holy places. Drawing on different perspectives of the mountain environment, Shepherd makes the familiar strange and the strange awe-inspiring. Her sensitivity and powers of observation put her into the front rank of nature writing.]]> 157 Nan Shepherd Max 0 to-read 4.29 1977 The Living Mountain
author: Nan Shepherd
name: Max
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Painted People: 5,000 Years of Tattooed History from Sailors and Socialites to Mummies and Kings]]> 123204175 352 Matt Lodder 0008402108 Max 0 to-read 4.21 Painted People: 5,000 Years of Tattooed History from Sailors and Socialites to Mummies and Kings
author: Matt Lodder
name: Max
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pocket Barcelona (Lonely Planet Pocket Guide)]]> 22300508 Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher

Lonely Planet's Pocket Barcelona is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Walk La Rambla, explore Gaudi's Park Guell, or be inspired at the Museu Picasso; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of the best of Barcelona and begin your journey now!

Inside Lonely Planet's Pocket Barcelona:



Full-colour maps and images throughout

Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests

Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots

Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices

Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss

Free, convenient pull-out Barcelona map (included in print version), plus over 15 colour neighbourhood maps

User-friendly layout with helpful icons, and organised by neighbourhood to help you pick the best spots to spend your time

Covers Barri Gotic, El Ravel, La Ribera, La Barceloneta, L'Eixample, Montjuic, Poble Sec, Sarria, Pedralbes and more
The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet's Pocket Barcelona, a colorful, easy-to-use, and handy guide that literally fits in your pocket, provides on-the-go assistance for those seeking only the can't-miss experiences to maximize a quick trip experience.


Check out Lonely Planet's Barcelona guide, if you're looking for a comprehensive guide that recommends both popular and offbeat experiences, and extensively covers all of Barcelona's neighbourhoods, or Discover Barcelona , if you're looking for a photo-rich guide that features the city's most popular and authentic experiences.
Looking for more extensive coverage? Check out Lonely Planet's Spain guide for a comprehensive look at all the country has to offer or Discover Spain , a photo-rich guide focused on the country's most popular sights.
Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet and Regis St Louis.

About Lonely Planet: Since 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel media company with guidebooks to every destination, an award-winning website, mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves.]]> 192 Lonely Planet 1742208916 Max 3 non-fiction 4.15 1999 Pocket Barcelona (Lonely Planet Pocket Guide)
author: Lonely Planet
name: Max
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/27
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Useful, but needs some budget options and I hope the update has a little more information on public transport and the bike rental system.
]]> <![CDATA[Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential]]> 59616977
Now, this eye-opening and accessible guide shows how you can easily create your own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. As a trusted and organized digital repository of your most valued ideas, notes, and creative work synced across all your devices and platforms, a Second Brain gives you the confidence to tackle your most important projects and ambitious goals.

Discover the full potential of your ideas and translate what you know into more powerful, more meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain.]]> 272 Tiago Forte 1982167386 Max 4
While going fully digital is not the focus of the book, it does give some helpful insights. The book does not give specific recommendations for apps, which is smart in an ever-changing landscape of apps. Instead, there is a link to a resource page on the author's website.

The book helped me to organise my material more based on the end product, as in: what do I expect to need this information for later? Is it my thesis, a publication, etc.? Just simply tagging information with keywords is not always useful, especially if you have hundreds of blurbs collected on a topic and you need to sift through pages and pages tagged with one keyword to find what you need.

In all, this is a helpful book. There is some repetition, and a lot of the author's methods overlap with other similar information-organisation methods, but it is easy to read and gave me some helpful new inspiration for my Zettelkasten.]]> 3.98 2022 Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential
author: Tiago Forte
name: Max
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: non-fiction, personal-development, resources
review:
I've been working on my "Zettelkasten" for a while now, and it's really useful for me as a scientist to link concepts together to see things that I would have otherwise overlooked. The only downside of my system is that it's half analogue and half digital, so I am often missing either my physical notes or my digital notes when I am working on my writing. So this is why I picked up this book, to get some inspiration on going fully digital.

While going fully digital is not the focus of the book, it does give some helpful insights. The book does not give specific recommendations for apps, which is smart in an ever-changing landscape of apps. Instead, there is a link to a resource page on the author's website.

The book helped me to organise my material more based on the end product, as in: what do I expect to need this information for later? Is it my thesis, a publication, etc.? Just simply tagging information with keywords is not always useful, especially if you have hundreds of blurbs collected on a topic and you need to sift through pages and pages tagged with one keyword to find what you need.

In all, this is a helpful book. There is some repetition, and a lot of the author's methods overlap with other similar information-organisation methods, but it is easy to read and gave me some helpful new inspiration for my Zettelkasten.
]]> <![CDATA[Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector]]> 61993805
Henry Wilkens burst through the doors of the emergency room covered in his wife’s blood. But was he a grieving husband, or a ruthless killer who’d conspired with bandits to have her murdered?

To find out, the San Francisco police turned to technology, and a new machine that had just been invented in Berkeley by a rookie detective, a visionary police chief, and a teenage magician with a showman’s touch.

John Larson, Gus Vollmer and Leonarde Keeler hoped the lie detector would make the justice system fairer - but the flawed device soon grew too powerful for them to control. It poisoned their lives, turned fast friends into bitter enemies, and as it conquered America and the world, it transformed our relationship with the trusts on ways that are still being felt.

As new forms of lie detection gain momentum in the present day, this book reveals the incredible truth behind the creation of the polygraph. Touching on psychology, technology and the science of the truth, Tremors in the Blood is a vibrant, atmospheric thriller, and a warning from history: be careful what you believe.]]> 352 Amit Katwala 1639103422 Max 3 3.55 2022 Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector
author: Amit Katwala
name: Max
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: morbidly-curious, non-fiction, history
review:
This was something different from what I expected! I expected more information about the science and background of the workings of the polygraph (lie detector). Instead, it is more a story on the lives of the people involved with the lie detector (designers, users, convicts subjected to it, etc). While this makes for easy and entertaining reading, it missed a layer of depth to me. Maybe that is because I don't particularly care for the life and drama of people, but more of the technical and medical details of devices like this. So, a fun read, but for me personally I like something a bit more in depth.
]]> <![CDATA[The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug]]> 184327
Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients; and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness.

A strange and colorful story, The Demon Under the Microscope illuminates the vivid characters, corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful planning, lucky breaks, cynicism, heroism, greed, hard work, and the central (though mistaken) idea that brought sulfa to the world. This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement and intrigue of a great suspense novel.


For thousands of years, humans had sought medicines with which they could defeat contagion, and they had slowly, painstakingly, won a few some vaccines to ward off disease, a handful of antitoxins. A drug or two was available that could stop parasitic diseases once they hit, tropical maladies like malaria and sleeping sickness. But the great killers of Europe, North America, and most of Asia—pneumonia, plague, tuberculosis, diphtheria, cholera, meningitis—were caused not by parasites but by bacteria, much smaller, far different microorganisms. By 1931, nothing on earth could stop a bacterial infection once it started. . . .

But all that was about to change. . . . —from The Demon Under the Microscope]]> 352 Thomas Hager 1400082137 Max 3 ]]> 4.07 2006 The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
author: Thomas Hager
name: Max
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: biology, history, non-fiction, health
review:
While this is an interesting history of discovery of one of the first antibiotics, the book has some problems. The pacing is off, the book starts of with a very long description of the first experiments that lead to the isolation of the drug, and the personal life of the involved scientists. This makes for a slow, dragging start. Besides this, from the beginning we realise that there is a big "political" elephant in the room, that this medication was developed and used in aid of World War II by German scientists. In the second half of the book the author elaborates on the role of these scientists and their experiments during the Nazi regime, and while I understand you can have respect for the intelligence and dedication of these scientists, I think it's really important to acknowledge these problems in the beginning of the story. Now it feels like the author is first glancing over this, and then defending the actions of the German scientists and their experiments. If balanced carefully, I think you can definitely tell this story with respect for the scientists, without condoning their actions.

]]> <![CDATA[Aesop’s Animals: The Science Behind the Fables]]> 65211533
In Aesop's Animals, zoologist Jo Wimpenny turns a critical eye to the fables to examine the science behind Aesop's portrayal of the animal kingdom. She brings the tales into the twenty-first century, introducing the latest findings from the world of behavioural ecology � the study of why animals do the things they do, in areas such as tool use, plans and projections, self-recognition, cooperation and deception. How close to verifiable scientific truths do these ancient tales lay?

Sifting facts from fiction, Aesop's Animals explores and challenges our notions about animals, the ways in which they behave, and the roles we both play in our shared world.]]> 368 Jo Wimpenny 1472966929 Max 0 to-read 4.25 2021 Aesop’s Animals: The Science Behind the Fables
author: Jo Wimpenny
name: Max
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Battles of Tolkien 31213600
The history of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth is filled with epic battles in an ongoing struggle between good and evil. The Battles of Tolkien recounts many of the greatest conflicts over thousands of years, from the earliest skirmishes of the Valarian Ages to the defining battles in the War of the Ring. Insightful commentary by Tolkien scholar David Day discusses how the people, tactics, and weapons influenced the outcome of each battle, and also how the legends of Middle-earth relate to the real-world mythology on which Tolkien based his famous literary creation. Maps and full-color illustrations help bring this rich universe to life, making it an invaluable reference book for Tolkien fans of all ages.

This work is unofficial and is not authorized by the Tolkien Estate or HarperCollins Publishers.]]> 256 David Day 1626868530 Max 3 fiction
Great choice of illustrations, which also shows a new perspective, most illustrations used in the book differ a lot from the original illustrations and the Peter Jackson imagery.

So, in all, fun book. I just wish it was more in depth, it's very short. Took me only a few hours to finish, but I think there could be so much more to explore.]]> 3.55 2016 The Battles of Tolkien
author: David Day
name: Max
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: fiction
review:
A pretty interesting little book. A lot of people "complain" about Day taking loads of liberties with Tolkien's source material, which might be true. But, in the introduction he is very clear and honest about that a lot of the material in this book is his own interpretation. He also refers to the original text, as in: "If you want to read what Tolkien wrote on this himself, check such-and-such". So in that regard, I am not so annoyed as most Tolkien-purists. I think it's nice to see a different perspective on these stories. If he would not put in these disclaimers, I could see why one could get annoyed. But this is just fine.

Great choice of illustrations, which also shows a new perspective, most illustrations used in the book differ a lot from the original illustrations and the Peter Jackson imagery.

So, in all, fun book. I just wish it was more in depth, it's very short. Took me only a few hours to finish, but I think there could be so much more to explore.
]]> <![CDATA[Genius Gut: The Life-Changing Science of Eating for Your Second Brain]]> 218094266 A New Gut-Brain Method to Superpower the Second Brain and Feel Your Absolute Best

Ever experienced ‘gut feelings� or ‘butterflies in your stomach�? Turns out there’s real science behind them. Your gut isn’t just a digestive system, it’s a powerhouse - your second brain.
Join the Gut-Brain Revolution
Microbiome scientist and registered dietitian Dr Emily Leeming explains the ground-breaking evidence on the relationship between food and mood, unveiling the powerful gut-brain connection…and exciting new links to your gut bacteria.
A Healthy Gut, A Healthy Mind
Understand how the food you eat and the habits surrounding it can elevate your memory, sharpen your focus, and make you feel amazing through the Genius Gut method.
No More Diet BS
Say goodbye to food-related stress. No more cutting out foods, feeling hungry, or worrying about what you ‘should� or ‘shouldn’t� eat. Genius Gut cuts through the nutritional noise to get you to achieve a healthy balance - without restriction and with plenty of science-backed tips.
Simple Hacks That Work
Dr Emily has translated complex science into 10 actionable gut-brain hacks to boost your health, mood, and brainpower. Packed with ready-to-go tips and expert advice, Genius Gut is your ultimate ally for everyday gut (and brain) health that will make the world of difference.
Tune into your genius gut and transform your health, mood and brainpower from the inside out

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

PRAISE FOR GENIUS GUT

"The gut is the gateway to the brain � and this is the go-to guide" - Dr Tara Swart, neuroscientist and author of The Source

"Apart from being an exceptional academic, Emily’s talent and passion for disseminating the science into digestible nuggets is second to none. I devoured this book." - Alana Macfarlane, author of The Gut Stuff

"Dr Emily Leeming masterfully distils emerging and complex science into easy and actionable reading, dispelling common myths along the way. Everyone should own a copy!" - Angela Foster, High Performance Health Podcast

"An essential and refreshing read about an important topic" - Joshua Fletcher, the Anxiety Therapist (@anxietyjosh, the author of And How Does That Make You Feel?)

"In an ocean of much need books on health, I’m so glad I’ve got Dr Emily’s Genius Gut. As a fellow ex private chef, I love how she writes practically and deliciously on food. Congrats Emily. Thank you from me and my gut." - Melissa Hemsley

"This truly is a gut health bible" - Kaitlin Colucci, gut health dietitian

]]> 400 Dr Emily Leeming 1405964421 Max 0 to-read 4.25 Genius Gut: The Life-Changing Science of Eating for Your Second Brain
author: Dr Emily Leeming
name: Max
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain]]> 42291479 A bold new book that proves our bodies and surroundings know more than our brains do

For centuries, we've believed that our thoughts happen entirely inside our brains. But in the last decade, new research has revealed that our bodies, our gestures, and our surroundings dramatically impact our intelligence and mental health. For example, did you know that closing your eyes makes you smarter, that half an hour among trees is as effective as a dose of Ritalin at controlling ADHD, that certain hand gestures aid memory, and that negotiators win an average of 80 percent more value when on their own turf? Indeed, as Annie Murphy Paul shows, we are constantly thinking outside our brains.

Like Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences or Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, Thinking Outside the Brain offers a dramatic new view of how our minds work, full of practical advice on how to think--and feel--better.]]> 352 Annie Murphy Paul 0544947584 Max 0 to-read 4.04 2021 The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain
author: Annie Murphy Paul
name: Max
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer]]> 214971755

Inside, you will learn how to:


Effortlessly capture ideas before they slip away
Save the most relevant insights from what you read
Connect information in profound and unexpected ways
Transform individual notes into articles, blog posts, and books
Start every writing session with words already on the page
Develop a system for writing that not only supports your creativity, but inspires it


If you're done with writer's block, information overload, forgetting ideas, and waiting around for inspiration to strike, then read this book. It was written for you. ]]> 206 Bob Doto Max 0 to-read 4.18 A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer
author: Bob Doto
name: Max
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> How to Write a Thesis 23461426
Eco's approach is anything but dry and academic. He not only offers practical advice but also considers larger questions about the value of the thesis-writing exercise. "How to Write a Thesis" is unlike any other writing manual. It reads like a novel. It is opinionated. It is frequently irreverent, sometimes polemical, and often hilarious. Eco advises students how to avoid "thesis neurosis" and he answers the important question "Must You Read Books?" He reminds students "You are not Proust" and "Write everything that comes into your head, but only in the first draft." Of course, there was no Internet in 1977, but Eco's index card research system offers important lessons about critical thinking and information curating for students of today who may be burdened by Big Data.

"How to Write a Thesis" belongs on the bookshelves of students, teachers, writers, and Eco fans everywhere. Already a classic, it would fit nicely between two other classics: "Strunk and White" and "The Name of the Rose."

This MIT Press edition will be available in three different cover colors.

Contents
The Definition and Purpose of a Thesis
Choosing the Topic
Conducting Research
The Work Plan and the Index Cards
Writing the Thesis
The Final Draft]]> 229 Umberto Eco Max 0 to-read 3.97 1977 How to Write a Thesis
author: Umberto Eco
name: Max
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey]]> 61689445
A distant and exotic Celtic land, domain of tin-miners, pirates, smugglers and evocatively named saints, somehow separate from the rest of our island...

Few regions of Britain are as holidayed in, as well-loved or as mythologized as Cornwall. From the woodlands of the Tamar Valley to the remote peninsula of Penwith � via the wilderness of Bodmin Moor and coastal villages where tourism and fishing find an uneasy coexistence � Tim Hannigan undertakes a zigzagging journey on foot across Britain's westernmost region to discover how the real Cornwall, its landscapes, histories, communities and sense of identity, intersect with the many projections and tropes that writers, artists and others have placed upon it.

Combining landscape and nature writing with deep cultural inquiry, The Granite Kingdom is a probing but highly accessible tour of one of Britain's most popular regions, juxtaposing history, myth, folklore and literary representation with the geographical and social reality of contemporary Cornwall.]]> 374 Tim Hannigan 1801108846 Max 0 to-read 4.21 The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey
author: Tim Hannigan
name: Max
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire]]> 2166088
Bringing the latest scholarship to a general audience in accessible prose, Herrin focuses each short chapter around a representative theme, event, monument, or historical figure, and examines it within the full sweep of Byzantine history - from the foundation of Constantinople, the magnificent capital city built by Constantine the Great, to its capture by the Ottoman Turks.

She argues that Byzantium's crucial role as the eastern defender of Christendom against Muslim expansion during the early Middle Ages made Europe - and the modern Western world - possible. Herrin captivates us with her discussions of all facets of Byzantine culture and society. She walks us through the complex ceremonies of the imperial court. She describes the transcendent beauty and power of the church of Hagia Sophia, as well as chariot races, monastic spirituality, diplomacy, and literature. She reveals the fascinating worlds of military usurpers and ascetics, eunuchs and courtesans, and artisans who fashioned the silks, icons, ivories, and mosaics so readily associated with Byzantine art.

An innovative history written by one of our foremost scholars, Byzantium reveals this great civilization's rise to military and cultural supremacy, its spectacular destruction by the Fourth Crusade, and its revival and final conquest in 1453.]]> 416 Judith Herrin 0713999977 Max 0 to-read 3.90 2007 Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
author: Judith Herrin
name: Max
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Finn Family Moomintroll (The Moomins, #3)]]> 79549 176 Tove Jansson 0374423075 Max 4 fantasy, fiction 4.34 1948 Finn Family Moomintroll (The Moomins, #3)
author: Tove Jansson
name: Max
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1948
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: fantasy, fiction
review:
Another whimsical Moomin story. This one is centered around a magical hat (owned by the Hobgoblin), which wreaks havoc in Moomin Valley. As always these stories are charming and magical. Sometimes the sentences are a bit off, for some reason the flow is funky. I suspect it's the specific translation I read. It must be quite difficult to translate something that is meant to be so whimsy. Anyway, fun read, especially entertaining for children.
]]> <![CDATA[Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory]]> 25189315
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters and unforgettable scenes. Caring for dead bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, Caitlin soon becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. She describes how she swept ashes from the machines (and sometimes onto her clothes) and reveals the strange history of cremation and undertaking, marveling at bizarre and wonderful funeral practices from different cultures.

Her eye-opening, candid, and often hilarious story is like going on a journey with your bravest friend to the cemetery at midnight. She demystifies death, leading us behind the black curtain of her unique profession. And she answers questions you didn’t know you had: Can you catch a disease from a corpse? How many dead bodies can you fit in a Dodge van? What exactly does a flaming skull look like?

Honest and heartfelt, self-deprecating and ironic, Caitlin's engaging style makes this otherwise taboo topic both approachable and engrossing. Now a licensed mortician with an alternative funeral practice, Caitlin argues that our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead).]]> 254 Caitlin Doughty 0393351904 Max 5 morbidly-curious, non-fiction
Written with a dose of humour and wit, it's a surprisingly easy read for a topic so loaded. I think this was exactly the aim of the author, so this book is a success in that regard. Definitely recommended for the morbidly curious.]]> 4.24 2014 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory
author: Caitlin Doughty
name: Max
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:
This was so entertaining! A memoir about a person who starts working in a crematory, fascinated by death, but still quite unexperienced. We read along as the author learns how to prepare dead bodies for family viewing and cremating. We notice a mindset-shift in the author's thinking, and a clear reflection on how we as a society view death and dying. The author visibly grows, explores different ways to deal with death and ends up exploring the thought of running her own funeral home.

Written with a dose of humour and wit, it's a surprisingly easy read for a topic so loaded. I think this was exactly the aim of the author, so this book is a success in that regard. Definitely recommended for the morbidly curious.
]]> <![CDATA[In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex]]> 17780
In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex - an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship's cabin boy.

At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.]]> 302 Nathaniel Philbrick 0141001828 Max 4 4.16 2000 In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
author: Nathaniel Philbrick
name: Max
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: history, adventure, non-fiction
review:
What a bizarre story, from the conditions these people had to work in, to the conditions they had to try to stay alive in.. a gripping telling of the sinking of the *Essex* and what happened to the whalers afterwards. Condensed to under 300 pages, it's a quick read. Perfect length for me, longer is not always better, especially with nautical non-fiction. I should re-read Moby Dick again..
]]> <![CDATA[In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos]]> 344883 In the Time of Madness is an accomplishment in the great tradition of Conrad, Orwell, and Ryszard Kapuscinski.]]> 328 Richard Lloyd Parry 0802142931 Max 0 to-read 3.99 2005 In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos
author: Richard Lloyd Parry
name: Max
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Elements of Style 33514 105 William Strunk Jr. Max 4 4.15 1918 The Elements of Style
author: William Strunk Jr.
name: Max
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1918
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: resources, phd-reads, non-fiction
review:
This book was recommended to me a while ago by an academic writing teacher. This "little book" is well known amongst scientists and writers. Most things in this book had been addressed in the course I followed at the University, so there was not too much new information in it. But, it's always good to refresh your memory, especially for a non-native English speaker. It is a bit outdated, unfortunately, even with the revisions done later, but that is to be expected. Language is constantly changing, after all..
]]> <![CDATA[Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone]]> 30335545
It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis, and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.

Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings. He met a priest who performed exorcisms on people possessed by the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village which had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own.

What really happened to the local children as they waited in the school playground in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up?

Ghosts of the Tsunami is a classic of literary non-fiction, a heart-breaking and intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the personal accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the bleak struggle to find consolation in the ruins.]]> 276 Richard Lloyd Parry 1911214179 Max 4
I have read some books about the Fukushima disaster, but only focused on the power plants and the radioactivity, so it was interesting to read another side of the events. This account is well written, with a lot of insights into Japanese culture (the supernatural is especially intriguing). Some chapters dragged a bit, because of the repetition in experiences. But it's good that all experiences were kept in, because it makes the impact of the stories as a whole more powerful.]]> 4.17 2017 Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone
author: Richard Lloyd Parry
name: Max
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: morbidly-curious, history, non-fiction
review:
Very interesting telling of some of the events that happened after the earthquake & tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. This book mostly highlights the sad story of a school where most children died when the tsunami hit. The school's inadequate disaster plan and reaction of the staff lead to a situation that could likely have been prevented. The book deals with the grief of the parents and the aftermath, the fight to get as much of the truth up as possible.

I have read some books about the Fukushima disaster, but only focused on the power plants and the radioactivity, so it was interesting to read another side of the events. This account is well written, with a lot of insights into Japanese culture (the supernatural is especially intriguing). Some chapters dragged a bit, because of the repetition in experiences. But it's good that all experiences were kept in, because it makes the impact of the stories as a whole more powerful.
]]> <![CDATA[LIT: Life Ignition Tools: Use Nature's Playbook to Energize Your Brain, Spark Ideas, and Ignite Action]]> 59947665 LIT takes us off autopilotand helps us stay alert, present, and fully engaged in our lives. Dr. Karp also shares insightsfrom some of the world’s most accomplished people, including NobelPrizewinners, the founder of an Indigenous wellness center, a visionaryphotographer, a social justiceactivist, a five-time US memorychampion, an Olympic medalist, a neurosurgeon who founded acenter for compassion, andnumerous professors, inventors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and members ofhislaboratory—all creatives in their own ways. Using Dr. Karp’s principles,anyone can redirect their lives with energy, focus, creativity, motivation,intention, and impact to create the lives they truly want to lead. Learningto be lit is the ultimaterenewable energy and is accessible to everyone, anytime, wherever you are.]]> 336 Jeffrey Michael Karp 0063010739 Max 0 to-read 3.59 LIT: Life Ignition Tools: Use Nature's Playbook to Energize Your Brain, Spark Ideas, and Ignite Action
author: Jeffrey Michael Karp
name: Max
average rating: 3.59
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write]]> 32336647
So how do these successful academics write, and where do they find the “air and light and time and space,� in the words of poet Charles Bukowski, to get their writing done? What are their formative experiences, their daily routines, their habits of mind? How do they summon up the courage to take intellectual risks and the resilience to deal with rejection?

Sword identifies four cornerstones that anchor any successful writing B ehavioral habits of discipline and persistence; A rtisanal habits of craftsmanship and care; S ocial habits of collegiality and collaboration; and E motional habits of positivity and pleasure. Building on this “BASE,� she illuminates the emotional complexity of the writing process and exposes the lack of writing support typically available to early-career academics. She also lays to rest the myth that academics must produce safe, conventional prose or risk professional failure. The successful writers profiled here tell stories of intellectual passions indulged, disciplinary conventions subverted, and risk-taking rewarded. Grounded in empirical research and focused on sustainable change, Air & Light & Time & Space offers a customizable blueprint for refreshing personal habits and creating a collegial environment where all writers can flourish.]]> 266 Helen Sword 0674737709 Max 0 to-read 3.97 Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write
author: Helen Sword
name: Max
average rating: 3.97
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]]> 10569 (back cover)]]> 320 Stephen King 0743455967 Max 0 to-read 4.33 2000 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
author: Stephen King
name: Max
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs]]> 61239940 Although it is often considered an Islamic and Asian phenomenon, the Ottoman Empire (c.1288�1922) was multiethnic, multilingual and multireligious, stretching into Europe and Africa as well as Asia. In this sweeping history Baer traces the rise and fall of the Ottoman dynasty and argues that these powerful rulers, who saw themselves as inheritors of the Roman Empire, made important contributions, both positive and negative, to European religious and political development.]]> 543 Marc David Baer 1473695740 Max 0 to-read 3.84 2021 The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs
author: Marc David Baer
name: Max
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dirt Music 35306 One morning Fox is observed poaching by Georgie Jutland. Chance, or a kind of willed recklessness, has brought Georgie into the life and home of Jim Buckridge, the most prosperous fisherman in the area and a man who loathes poachers, Fox above all. But she's never fully settled into Jim's grand house on the water or into the inbred community with its history of violent secrets. After Georgie encounters Fox, her tentative hold on conventional life is severed. Neither of them would call it love, but they can't stay away from each other no matter how dangerous it is, and out on White Point it is very dangerous.

Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music is a love story about people stifled by grief and regret; a novel about the odds of breaking with the past and about the lure of music. Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity." Even in the wild, Luther cannot escape it. There is, he discovers, no silence in nature.

Ambitious, perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense and supercharged emotion, and it confirms Tim Winton's status as the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation.

]]> 465 Tim Winton 0330490265 Max 0 to-read 3.87 2001 Dirt Music
author: Tim Winton
name: Max
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art]]> 48890486
There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.]]> 280 James Nestor 0735213615 Max 0 to-read 4.13 2020 Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
author: James Nestor
name: Max
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Celtic Knotwork 1218480 115 Iain Bain 0806986387 Max 0 to-read 4.19 1990 Celtic Knotwork
author: Iain Bain
name: Max
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Half-Arse Human: How to live better without burning out]]> 213938823

Me either.


I am a half-arser. A shave-one-legger. A rinse-the-plates-and-tell-myself-any-residual-dirt-will-improve-my-immune-system-er. And yet, I still want to live better, improve my relationships, build a career, enjoy hobbies, have ethics, and live a full, passionate, varied life.


And it's possible. This book will teach you to harness the power of half-arsedness to improve the things you actually care about improving, without expending more than you have to give. It's not going to turn you into a superhuman, but it will help you feel more human.]]> 300 Leena Norms 1399820311 Max 0 4.07 2024 Half-Arse Human: How to live better without burning out
author: Leena Norms
name: Max
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, mental-health, non-fiction, super-excited-to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks]]> 35120183
Gold Dust Woman gives "the gold standard of rock biographers" (The Boston Globe) his ideal Nicks' work and life are equally sexy and interesting, and Davis delves deeply into each, unearthing fresh details from new, intimate interviews and interpreting them to present a rich new portrait of the star. Just as Nicks (and Lindsay Buckingham) gave Fleetwood Mac the "shot of adrenaline" they needed to become real rock stars--according to Christine McVie--Gold Dust Woman is vibrant with stories and with a life lived large and
--How Nicks and Buckingham were asked to join Fleetwood Mac and how they turned the band into stars
--The affairs that informed Nicks' greatest songs
--Her relationships with the Eagles' Don Henley and Joe Walsh, and with Fleetwood himself
--Why Nicks married her best friend's widower
--Her dependency on cocaine, drinking and pot, but how it was a decade-long addiction to Klonopin that almost killed her
-- Nicks' successful solo career that has her still performing in venues like Madison Square Garden
--The cult of Nicks and its extension to chart-toppers like Taylor Swift and the Dixie Chicks]]> 320 Stephen Davis 1250032903 Max 0 to-read 3.94 2017 Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks
author: Stephen Davis
name: Max
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World]]> 199809440
In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was an AI chatbot called ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world’s two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, who now steers Google's AI efforts, has remained elusive - until now.

In Supremacy, Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, tells the astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history. The story focuses on the continuing rivalry of two key CEOs at the center of it all, who cultivated a religion around their mission to build god-like super intelligent machines: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind.

Supremacy sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence that its top creators are ignoring: the profit-driven spread of flawed and biased technology into industries, education, media and more. With exclusive access to a network of high-ranking sources, Parmy Olson uses her 13 years of experience covering technology to bring to light the exploitation of the greatest invention in human history, and how it will impact us all.]]> 336 Parmy Olson 1250337747 Max 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.02 2024 Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
author: Parmy Olson
name: Max
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels]]> 177185884
For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potter’s fields—a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies. Up to 150,000 Americans now go unclaimed each year. Who are they? Why are they being forgotten? And what is the meaning of life if your death doesn’t matter to others?

In this extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, eight years in the making, sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans uncover a hidden social world. They follow four individuals in Los Angeles, tracing the twisting, poignant paths that put each at risk of going unclaimed, and introducing us to the scene investigators, notification officers, and crematorium workers who care for them when no one else will.

The Unclaimed lays bare the difficult truth that anyone can be abandoned. It forces us to confront a variety of social ills, from the fracturing of families and the loneliness of cities to the toll of rising inequality. But it is also filled with unexpected moments of tenderness. In Boyle Heights, a Mexican American neighborhood not far from the glitter of Hollywood, hundreds of strangers come together each year to mourn the deaths of people they never knew. These ceremonies, springing up across the country, reaffirm our shared humanity and help mend our frayed social fabric.

Beautifully crafted and profoundly empathetic, The Unclaimed urges us to expand our circle of caring—in death and in life.]]> 336 Pamela Prickett 0593239059 Max 0 4.02 2024 The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels
author: Pamela Prickett
name: Max
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood]]> 38232376 An eye-opening exploration of blood, the lifegiving substance with the power of taboo, the value of diamonds, and the promise of breakthrough science

Blood carries life, yet the sight of it makes people faint. It is a waste product and a commodity pricier than oil. It can save lives and transmit deadly infections. Each one of us has roughly nine pints of it, yet many don’t even know their own blood type. And for all its ubiquity, the few tablespoons of blood discharged by 800 million women are still regarded as taboo; menstruation is perhaps the single most demonized biological event.

Rose George, author of The Big Necessity, is renowned for her intrepid work on topics that are invisible but vitally important. In Nine Pints, she takes us from ancient practices of bloodletting to modern “hemovigilance� teams that track blood-borne diseases. She introduces Janet Vaughan, who set up the world’s first system of mass blood donation during the Blitz, and Arunachalam Muruganantham, known as “Menstrual Man� for his work on sanitary pads for developing countries. She probes the lucrative business of plasma transfusions, in which the U.S. is known as the “OPEC of plasma.� And she looks to the future, as researchers seek to bring synthetic blood to a hospital near you.

Spanning science and politics, stories and global epidemics, Nine Pints reveals our life's blood in an entirely new light.]]> 289 Rose George 1627796371 Max 0 3.81 2018 Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood
author: Rose George
name: Max
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, biology, health, morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places]]> 28815491
Colin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie homes," Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. Some have established reputations as "the most haunted mansion in America," or "the most haunted prison"; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget.
With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living � how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made � and why those changes are made � Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved.
Spellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, Ghostland discovers the past we're most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.]]> 320 Colin Dickey 1101980192 Max 0 3.74 2016 Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places
author: Colin Dickey
name: Max
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press]]> 57693254
Regina Martínez was no stranger to retaliation. A journalist out of Mexico's Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, Regina's stories for the magazine Proceso laid out the corruption and abuse underlying Mexican politics. She was barred from press conferences, and copies of Proceso often disappeared before they made the newsstands. In 2012, shortly after Proceso published an article on corruption and two Veracruz politicians, and the magazine went missing once again, she was bludgeoned to death in her bathroom. The message was clear: No journalist in Mexico was safe.

Katherine Corcoran, then leading the Associated Press coverage of Mexico, admired Regina Martínez's work. Troubled by the news of her death, Corcoran journeyed to Veracruz to find out what had happened. Regina hadn't even written the controversial article. But did she have something else that someone didn't want published? Once there, Katherine bonded with four of Regina's grief-stricken mentees, each desperate to prove who was to blame for the death of their friend. Together they battled cover-ups, narco-officials, red tape, and threats to sift through the mess of lies-and discover what got Regina killed.

A gripping look at reporters who dare to step on the deadly “third rail,� where the state and organized crime have become indistinguishable, In the Mouth of the Wolf confronts how silencing the free press threatens basic protections and rule of law across the globe.]]> 336 Katherine Corcoran 1635575036 Max 0 3.78 2022 In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press
author: Katherine Corcoran
name: Max
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End]]> 182095333
"A truly unique, inspiring perspective on the time we have, what we do with it, and how we let go of this world.... There is no one I'd trust more to guide me through an understanding of death, and how it informs life." � Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Mad Honey and The Book of Two Ways

"Briefly Perfectly Human is a beautiful, raw, light-bringing experience. Alua's voice is shimmering, singular, and pulses with humor, vulnerability, insight, and refreshing candor.... Be prepared for it to grab you, hold you tight, and raise the roof on the power of human connection." � Tembi Locke, author of From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

For her clients and everyone who has been inspired by her humanity, Alua Arthur is a friend at the end of the world. As our country’s leading death doula, she’s spreading a transformative message: thinking about your death—whether imminent or not—will breathe wild, new potential into your life.

Warm, generous, and funny AF, Alua supports and helps manage end-of-life care on many levels. The business matters, medical directives, memorial planning; but also honoring the quiet moments, when monitors are beeping and loved ones have stepped out to get some air—or maybe not shown up at all—and her clients become deeply contemplative and want to talk. Aching, unfinished business often emerges. Alua has been present for thousands of these sacred moments—when regrets, fears, secret joys, hidden affairs, and dim realities are finally said aloud. When this happens, Alua focuses her attention at the pulsing center of her clients� anguish and creates space for them, and sometimes their loved ones, to find peace.

This has had a profound effect on Alua, who was already no stranger to death’s periphery. Her family fled a murderous coup d’état in Ghana in the 1980s. She has suffered major, debilitating depressions. And her dear friend and brother-in-law died of lymphoma. Advocating for him in his final months is what led Alua to her life’s calling. She knows firsthand the power of bearing witness and telling the truth about life’s painful complexities, because they do not disappear when you look the other way. They wait for you.

Briefly Perfectly Human is a life-changing, soul-gathering debut, by a writer whose empathy, tenderness, and wisdom shimmers on the page. Alua Arthur combines intimate storytelling with a passionate appeal for loving, courageous end-of-life care—what she calls “death embrace.� Hers is a powerful testament to getting in touch with something deeper in our lives, by embracing the fact of our own mortality. “Hold that truth in your mind,� Alua says, “and wondrous things will begin to grow around it.”]]> 272 Alua Arthur 0063240033 Max 0 4.19 2024 Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
author: Alua Arthur
name: Max
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine]]> 33931044 The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters--no place for the squeamish--and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These medical pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than their patients' afflictions, and they were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. At a time when surgery couldn't have been more hazardous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister, who would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

Fitzharris dramatically recounts Lister's discoveries in gripping detail, culminating in his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection--and could be countered by antiseptics. Focusing on the tumultuous period from 1850 to 1875, she introduces us to Lister and his contemporaries--some of them brilliant, some outright criminal--and takes us through the grimy medical schools and dreary hospitals where they learned their art, the deadhouses where they studied anatomy, and the graveyards they occasionally ransacked for cadavers.

Eerie and illuminating, The Butchering Art celebrates the triumph of a visionary surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world.]]> 304 Lindsey Fitzharris 0374117292 Max 0 4.32 2017 The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
author: Lindsey Fitzharris
name: Max
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias]]> 60741802 Named one of The New Yorker's "Best Books of 2023"

A news-making account of the war between David Koresh’s Branch Davidians and the FBI, and how their standoff launched today’s militias

In 1993, David Koresh and a band of heavily armed evangelical Christians took on the might of the US government. A two-month siege of their compound in Waco, Texas, ended in a firefight that killed seventy-six, including twenty-five children. America is still picking up the pieces, and we still haven’t heard the full story.

Kevin Cook, who revealed the truth behind a mythic, misunderstood murder in his 2014 Kitty Genovese, finally provides the full story of what happened at Waco. He gives readers a taste of Koresh’s deadly charisma and takes us behind the scenes at the Branch Davidians� compound, where “the new Christ� turned his followers into servants and sired seventeen children by a dozen “wives.� In vivid accounts packed with human drama, Cook harnesses never-reported material to reconstruct the FBI’s fifty-one-day siege of the Waco compound in minute-to-minute detail. He sheds new light on the Clinton administration’s approval of a lethal governmental assault in a new, definitive account of the firefight that ended so many lives and triggered the rise of today’s militia movement. Waco drew the battle lines for American extremists—in Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s words, “Waco started this war.� With help from sources as diverse as Branch Davidian survivors and the FBI’s lead negotiator during the siege, Cook draws a straight line from Waco’s ashes to the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol and insurrections yet to come.

Unmissable reading for anyone interested in the truth of what happened in Texas three decades ago, Waco Rising is chillingly relevant today. Here is the spark that ignited today’s antigovernment militias.]]> 288 Kevin Cook 125084052X Max 0 3.85 2023 Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias
author: Kevin Cook
name: Max
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:

]]> All That Is Wicked 60097427 Kate Winkler Dawson tells the story of Edward Rulloff--a serial murderer who was called "too intelligent to be killed"--and the array of 19th century investigators who were convinced his brain held the key to finally understanding the criminal mind.

Edward Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer--some have called him a "Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter"--whose crimes spanned decades and whose victims were chosen out of revenge, out of envy, and sometimes out of necessity. From his humble beginnings in upstate New York to the dazzling salons and social life he established in New York City, at every turn Rulloff used his intelligence and regal bearing to evade detection and avoid punishment. He could talk his way out of any crime...until one day, Rulloff's luck ran out.

By 1871 Rulloff sat chained in his cell--a psychopath holding court while curious 19th-century mind hunters tried to understand what made him tick. From alienists (early psychiatrists who tried to analyze the source of his madness) to neurologists (who wanted to dissect his brain) to phrenologists (who analyzed the bumps on his head to determine his character), each one thought he held the key to understanding the essential question: is evil born or made? Eventually, Rulloff's brain would be placed in a jar at Cornell University as the prize specimen of their anatomy collection...where it still sits today, slowly moldering in a dusty jar. But his story--and its implications for the emerging field of criminal psychology--were just beginning.

Expanded from season one of her podcast on the Exactly Right network, in All That Is Wicked Kate Winkler Dawson draws on hundreds of source materials and never-before-shared historical documents to present one of the first glimpses into the mind of a serial killer--a century before the term was coined--through the scientists whose work would come to influence criminal justice for decades to come.]]> 320 Kate Winkler Dawson 0593420063 Max 0 3.59 2022 All That Is Wicked
author: Kate Winkler Dawson
name: Max
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read, morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway]]> 16129241
With oil and gas behemoth Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway proposal nearing approval, supertankers loaded with two million barrels of oil may soon be plying the waters from northern British Columbia down the wild Pacific Coast. This region is home to the largest tract of temperate rainforest on earth, First Nations who have lived there for millennia, and some of the world’s most biodiverse waters—one spill is all it will take to erase ten thousand years of evolution.

Arno Kopecky and his companions travel aboard a forty-one-foot sailboat exploring the pristine route—a profoundly volatile marine environment that registered 1,275 marine vessel incidents—mechanical failures, collisions, explosions, groundings, and sinkings—between 1999 and 2009 alone. Neither Kopecky nor the boat’s owner have ever sailed before, yet they brave these waters alone when their captain leaves them part way through the journey.

Written with Kopecky’s quick humor and deft touch, this is a rich evocation of a mythic place and the ecology, culture, and history of a legendary region with a knife at its throat.]]> 176 Arno Kopecky 1771001070 Max 4
It read quickly, was enjoyably written with a dose of humour and wit. You really feel the appreciation of the area in this book. It's also something a bit different from most of the climate-adventure books I've read so far, there's more personality of the author shining through, which I appreciate.]]> 4.12 2013 The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway
author: Arno Kopecky
name: Max
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: ant-arctic, adventure, climate-problems, non-fiction, travel
review:
A great little adventure book. Two guys got a sailboat and decided to sail along the Canadian coast to learn more about the marine protected areas and the effect of oil deals and spills. They talk to many local First Nation peoples and observe the wonderful wildlife in the area. And sometimes the boat breaks down. :)

It read quickly, was enjoyably written with a dose of humour and wit. You really feel the appreciation of the area in this book. It's also something a bit different from most of the climate-adventure books I've read so far, there's more personality of the author shining through, which I appreciate.
]]> <![CDATA[Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier]]> 36433723
In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman organized a most unusual summer voyage to the wilds of Alaska: He converted a steamship into a luxury "floating university," populated by some of America's best and brightest scientists and writers, including the anti-capitalist eco-prophet John Muir. Those aboard encountered a land of immeasurable beauty and impending environmental calamity. More than a hundred years later, Alaska is still America's most sublime wilderness, both the lure that draws a million tourists annually on Inside Passage cruises and a natural resources larder waiting to be raided. As ever, it remains a magnet for weirdos and dreamers.

Armed with Dramamine and an industrial-strength mosquito net, Mark Adams sets out to retrace the 1899 expedition. Using the state's intricate public ferry system, the Alaska Marine Highway System, Adams travels three thousand miles, following the George W. Elder's itinerary north through Wrangell, Juneau, and Glacier Bay, then continuing west into the colder and stranger regions of the Aleutians and the Arctic Circle. Along the way, he encounters dozens of unusual characters (and a couple of very hungry bears) and investigates how lessons learned in 1899 might relate to Alaska's current struggles in adapting to climate change.]]> 336 Mark Adams 1101985100 Max 5 adventure, ant-arctic, travel 3.88 2018 Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier
author: Mark Adams
name: Max
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: adventure, ant-arctic, travel
review:
What an entertaining read! The author travels around Alaska, retracing a specific historical expedition. He travels by boat, small airplanes, kayak, etc. I loved the balance of history and current-day, the author meets many interesting people on the way. The book is really easy to read and kept my attention constantly. Not too intense or in depth, a great companion on a travel day. One of my favourite travel reads from Alaska so far.
]]> <![CDATA[Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention� and How to Think Deeply Again]]> 57933306 Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening--and how to get our attention back.

In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions--even abandoning his phone for three months--but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention--and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers' productivity.

Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus--as individuals, and as a society--if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.]]> 357 Johann Hari 0593138511 Max 0 to-read 4.22 2022 Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again
author: Johann Hari
name: Max
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs]]> 201319612 The bestselling author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus offers a revelatory look at the drugs upending weight loss as we knew it—from his personal experience on Ozempic to what these drugs mean for our society’s deeply dysfunctional relationship with food, weight, and our bodiesIn January 2023, bestselling author Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic, the diabetes drug that produces significant weight loss. Hewasn’t alone—credible predictions suggest that in two years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking this class of drug. Proponents say that this is a biological solution to a biological problem. While 95 percent of diets fail, the average person taking one of the new drugs will lose a quarter of their body weight in six months, and keep it off for as long as they take it. Here is a moment of liberation from an illness that massively increases your chances of diabetes, dementia, and cancer, and causes 10 percent of all deaths.Still, Hari was wildly conflicted. The massive rise in obesity rates around the world in the last half century didn’t happen because something went wrong with human biology. It happened because something went disastrously wrong with our We began to eat food designed to be maximally addictive. We built cities that are impossible to walk or bike around. We became much more stressed, making us seek out more comfort snacks. From this perspective, the new weight loss drugs arrive at a moment of madness. We built a food system that poisons us, then decided en masse to inject ourselves with a different potential poison that puts us off all food.A personal journey through weight loss combined with scientific evidence from experts, Magic Pill explores, as only Hari can, questions How did we get to this point? What does it reveal about our society that we couldn’t solve this problem socially, and instead turned to potentially risky pharmaceutical solutions? And will this free us from social pressure to conform to an ideal body type—or make that pressure even more dangerously intense?]]> 320 Johann Hari 0593728637 Max 0 to-read 4.27 2024 Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs
author: Johann Hari
name: Max
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well]]> 60764306 528 Tim Spector 1787334260 Max 0 to-read 4.24 2022 Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well
author: Tim Spector
name: Max
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food]]> 62586003 A manifesto to change how you eat and how you think about the human body.

It’s not you, it’s the food.

We have entered a new age of eating. For the first time in human history, most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food. There’s a long, formal scientific definition, but it can be boiled down to this: if it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, it’s UPF.

These products are specifically engineered to behave as addictive substances, driving excess consumption. They are now linked to the leading cause of early death globally and the number one cause of environmental destruction. Yet almost all our staple foods are ultra-processed. UPF is our food culture and for many people it is the only available and affordable food.

In this book, Chris van Tulleken, father, scientist, doctor, and award-winning BBC broadcaster, marshals the latest evidence to show how governments, scientists, and doctors have allowed transnational food companies to create a pandemic of diet-related disease. The solutions don’t lie in willpower, personal responsibility, or exercise. You’ll find no diet plan in this book―but join Chris as he undertakes a powerful self-experiment that made headlines around the world: under the supervision of colleagues at University College London he spent a month eating a diet of 80 percent UPF, typical for many children and adults in the United States. While his body became the subject of scientific scrutiny, he spoke to the world’s leading experts from academia, agriculture, and―most important―the food industry itself. But more than teaching him about the experience of the food, the diet switched off Chris’s own addiction to UPF.

In a fast-paced and eye-opening narrative he explores the origins, science, and economics of UPF to reveal its catastrophic impact on our bodies and the planet. And he proposes real solutions for doctors, for policy makers, and for all of us who have to eat. A book that won’t only upend the way you shop and eat, Ultra-Processed People will open your eyes to the need for action on a global scale.]]> 384 Chris van Tulleken 1324036729 Max 4 food, health, non-fiction
While the book is somewhat scientifically written, there are also plenty of personal stories that make the book overall pretty easy to read if you're into the topic. This is not a guide on how to eat better, so if you are expecting more applicable information, this is not the book for you. For more practical tips I would read How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease. These books together make a good duo to begin with when you think about eating better.]]> 4.41 2023 Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food
author: Chris van Tulleken
name: Max
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: food, health, non-fiction
review:
I am a fan of nutrition-related books, especially written by scientists or doctors, so when I saw this at the Oslo airport I had to buy it (also, in Norway the books are so much more affordable than in the Netherlands? So good!). It didn't disappoint. While there was not too much new information for me personally, it is really a good summary of the effects of ultra-processed food (UPF) on the body and mind. The author is not preachy, he relates the information to his own "experiment" of first eating a lot of UPF, and then going without UPF at all. I think this is a good, non-judgemental approach to the topic.

While the book is somewhat scientifically written, there are also plenty of personal stories that make the book overall pretty easy to read if you're into the topic. This is not a guide on how to eat better, so if you are expecting more applicable information, this is not the book for you. For more practical tips I would read How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease. These books together make a good duo to begin with when you think about eating better.
]]> <![CDATA[The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor]]> 22609354
In The Dorito Effect, Mark Schatzker shows us how our approach to the nation's number one public health crisis has gotten it wrong. The epidemics of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are not tied to the overabundance of fat or carbs or any other specific nutrient. Instead, we have been led astray by the growing divide between flavor - the tastes we crave - and the underlying nutrition.

Since the late 1940s, we have been slowly leeching flavor out of the food we grow. Those perfectly round, red tomatoes that grace our supermarket aisles today are mostly water, and the big breasted chickens on our dinner plates grow three times faster than they used to, leaving them dry and tasteless. Simultaneously, we have taken great leaps forward in technology, allowing us to produce in the lab the very flavors that are being lost on the farm. Thanks to this largely invisible epidemic, seemingly healthy food is becoming more like junk food: highly craveable but nutritionally empty. We have unknowingly interfered with an ancient chemical language - flavor - that evolved to guide our nutrition, not destroy it.

With in-depth historical and scientific research, The Dorito Effect casts the food crisis in a fascinating new light, weaving an enthralling tale of how we got to this point and where we are headed. We've been telling ourselves that our addiction to flavor is the problem, but it is actually the solution. We are on the cusp of a new revolution in agriculture that will allow us to eat healthier and live longer by enjoying flavor the way nature intended.]]> 259 Mark Schatzker 1476724210 Max 0 to-read 3.99 2015 The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor
author: Mark Schatzker
name: Max
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea]]> 96178186
Braiding her powerful and deeply personal narrative and illustrations with stories of six keystone marine creatures―the fire crow, sperm whale, wandering albatross, humpback whale, shearwater, and the barnacle―Stowe invites readers to fall in love, as she has, with the sea and those that call it home, and to discover the majesty, wonder, and vulnerability of the underwater world.
For fans of Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard, Move Like My Story of the Sea is an inspiring, heartfelt hymn to the sea, a testament to finding and following a dream, and an unforgettable introduction to a deeply gifted nature writer of a new generation.]]> 288 Hannah Stowe 1959030108 Max 0 to-read 4.11 2023 Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea
author: Hannah Stowe
name: Max
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic]]> 526432
In September 1921, four young men and Ada Blackjack, a diminutive 25-year-old Eskimo woman, ventured deep into the Arctic in a secret attempt to colonize desolate Wrangel Island for Great Britain. Two years later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. This young, unskilled woman--who had headed to the Arctic in search of money and a husband--conquered the seemingly unconquerable north and survived all alone after her male companions had perished.

Following her triumphant return to civilization, the international press proclaimed her the female Robinson Crusoe. But whatever stories the press turned out came from the imaginations of Ada Blackjack refused to speak to anyone about her horrific two years in the Arctic. Only on one occasion--after charges were published falsely accusing her of causing the death of one her companions--did she speak up for herself.

Jennifer Niven has created an absorbing, compelling history of this remarkable woman, taking full advantage of the wealth of first-hand resources about Ada that exist, including her never-before-seen diaries, the unpublished diaries from other primary characters, and interviews with Ada's surviving son. Ada Blackjack is more than a rugged tale of a woman battling the elements to survive in the frozen north--it is the story of a hero.]]> 431 Jennifer Niven 0786868635 Max 0 to-read 3.95 2003 Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic
author: Jennifer Niven
name: Max
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2025 on ŷ 216825549 2025 on ŷ should make an interesting and varied catalogue of books to inspire other readers in 2026.

For those of you who don't like to add titles you haven't actually 'read', you can place 2025 on ŷ on an 'exclusive' shelf. Exclusive shelves don't have to be listed under 'to read', 'currently reading' or 'read'. To create one, go to 'edit bookshelves' on your 'My Books' page, create a shelf name such as 'review-of-the year' and tick the 'exclusive' box. Your previous and future 'reviews of the year' can be collected together on this dedicated shelf.

Concept created by Fionnuala Lirsdottir.
Description: Fionnuala Lirsdottir
Cover art: Paul Cézanne, Vase of Flowers and Apples, 1889-1890
Cover choice and graphics by Jayson]]> Various Max 0 year-in-review
I did start another 100 book ŷ challenge, but it is likely that work will get in the way of actually reading so many. But, all good, no stress.

This year I will (again) aim to read more fiction. I have plenty on my TBR, but I just tend to go for non-fiction because it takes me less time to dive into a story. I know that when I get into the groove of a good fantasy, I absolutely love it, but getting through those first chapters to get to know the world and the characters.. sometimes I don't have the energy for that.

Happy reading, ŷ-friends! I appreciate your reviews, comments and recommendations a lot. It makes reading a lot more fun. :-)]]> 4.71 2025 2025 on ŷ
author: Various
name: Max
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: year-in-review
review:
Excited for all the things to come in 2025.. and the many books I have piled up to read.

I did start another 100 book ŷ challenge, but it is likely that work will get in the way of actually reading so many. But, all good, no stress.

This year I will (again) aim to read more fiction. I have plenty on my TBR, but I just tend to go for non-fiction because it takes me less time to dive into a story. I know that when I get into the groove of a good fantasy, I absolutely love it, but getting through those first chapters to get to know the world and the characters.. sometimes I don't have the energy for that.

Happy reading, ŷ-friends! I appreciate your reviews, comments and recommendations a lot. It makes reading a lot more fun. :-)
]]> 2024 on ŷ 195342176 2024 on ŷ should make an interesting and varied catalogue of books to inspire other readers in 2025.

For those of you who don't like to add titles you haven't actually 'read', you can place 2024 on ŷ on an 'exclusive' shelf. Exclusive shelves don't have to be listed under 'to read', 'currently reading' or 'read'. To create one, go to 'edit bookshelves' on your 'My Books' page, create a shelf name such as 'review-of-the year' and tick the 'exclusive' box. Your previous and future 'reviews of the year' can be collected together on this dedicated shelf.

Concept created by Fionnuala Lirsdottir.
Description: Fionnuala Lirsdottir
Cover art: Paul Cézanne, The House with the Cracked Walls, 1892-1894
Cover choice and graphics by Jayson]]> Various Max 4 year-in-review
My favourites:
Fiction: The Navigator's Children
History: The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi
Graphic novel: Chernobyl: The Fall of Atomgrad
Biology: Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change
Travel: Grensen: En reise rundt Russland gjennom Nord-Korea, Kina, Mongolia, Kasakhstan, Aserbajdsjan, Georgia, Ukraina, Hviterussland, Litauen, Polen, Latvia, Estland, Finland og Norge samt Nordøstpassasjen
Personal development: How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking � for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

~*~

I really enjoyed my reading time in 2023, so hopefully it will be the same in 2024. This year I will travel way more for work, so I’ll have enough time to read. Hopefully I’ll pass 100 books again. My reading goals for 2024 are:

- Read the hard copy books I have at home.
- Put the books I definitely won’t reread in the Little Free Library. I aim for minimalism in my house.
- Read a few fantasy series I have been meaning to read for a long time: Tad Williams� Shadowmarch series, a reread of one of Terry Brooks� Shannara trilogies.
- Request less NetGalley books at the same time. I tend to request about 10, suddenly they are all accepted which stresses me out, because of course I want to read and review all of them right away. I’m very thankful for the books I am allowed to review, so I’d love to give each book my full time and attention.
- I’d like to read a little more fiction. I love reading nonfiction, and that will be my biggest chunk of books, but I can relax more with fiction.
- Read 100 books again!
- Engage more with my friends on here (you guys!). I love to see what you read and it always adds to my to-read shelf.]]> 4.15 2024 2024 on ŷ
author: Various
name: Max
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: year-in-review
review:
That was a good year overall! I didn't read as much as in 2023, didn't complete the 100 books-challenge I set for myself. But I was quite busy with my fieldwork in the Arctic. Worked a lot, seven days a week, between 10-12 hours a day, but still managed to get some reading in. Loads of good recommendations from you guys, but also from my colleagues and (new) friends.

My favourites:
Fiction: The Navigator's Children
History: The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi
Graphic novel: Chernobyl: The Fall of Atomgrad
Biology: Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change
Travel: Grensen: En reise rundt Russland gjennom Nord-Korea, Kina, Mongolia, Kasakhstan, Aserbajdsjan, Georgia, Ukraina, Hviterussland, Litauen, Polen, Latvia, Estland, Finland og Norge samt Nordøstpassasjen
Personal development: How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking � for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

~*~

I really enjoyed my reading time in 2023, so hopefully it will be the same in 2024. This year I will travel way more for work, so I’ll have enough time to read. Hopefully I’ll pass 100 books again. My reading goals for 2024 are:

- Read the hard copy books I have at home.
- Put the books I definitely won’t reread in the Little Free Library. I aim for minimalism in my house.
- Read a few fantasy series I have been meaning to read for a long time: Tad Williams� Shadowmarch series, a reread of one of Terry Brooks� Shannara trilogies.
- Request less NetGalley books at the same time. I tend to request about 10, suddenly they are all accepted which stresses me out, because of course I want to read and review all of them right away. I’m very thankful for the books I am allowed to review, so I’d love to give each book my full time and attention.
- I’d like to read a little more fiction. I love reading nonfiction, and that will be my biggest chunk of books, but I can relax more with fiction.
- Read 100 books again!
- Engage more with my friends on here (you guys!). I love to see what you read and it always adds to my to-read shelf.
]]> Reasons to Stay Alive 25733573 Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.

Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it.

Everyone’s lives are touched by mental illness: if we do not suffer from it ourselves, then we have a friend or loved one who does. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it. Above all, his humor and encouragement never let us lose sight of hope. Speaking as his present self to his former self in the depths of depression, Matt is adamant that the oldest cliché is the truest—there is light at the end of the tunnel. He teaches us to celebrate the small joys and moments of peace that life brings, and reminds us that there are always reasons to stay alive.]]> 256 Matt Haig 0143128728 Max 0 to-read 4.04 2015 Reasons to Stay Alive
author: Matt Haig
name: Max
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science]]> 208580608 The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Galileo’s Daughter crafts a luminous chronicle of the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science, and the untold story of the many young women trained in her laboratory who were launched into stellar scientific careers of their own

“Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name,� writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science—Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally passionate outside it. Grieving Pierre’s untimely death in 1906, she took his place as professor of physics at the Sorbonne; devotedly raised two brilliant daughters; drove a van she outfitted with x-ray equipment to the front lines of World War I; befriended Albert Einstein and other luminaries of twentieth-century physics; won support from two U.S. presidents; and inspired generations of young women the world over to pursue science as a way of life.

As Sobel did so memorably in her portrait of Galileo through the prism of his daughter, she approaches Marie Curie from a unique angle, narrating her remarkable life of discovery and fame alongside the women who became her legacy—from France’s Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium, and Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch, to Mme. Curie’s elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For decades the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings that probed new theories about the interior of the atom, Marie Curie traveled far and wide, despite constant illness, to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. Her two triumphant tours of the United States won her admirers for her modesty even as she was mobbed at every stop; her daughters, in Ève’s later recollection, “discovered all at once what the retiring woman with whom they had always lived meant to the world.�

With the consummate skill that made bestsellers of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, and the appreciation for women in science at the heart of her most recent The Glass Universe, Dava Sobel has crafted a radiant biography and a masterpiece of storytelling, illuminating the life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time.]]> 318 Dava Sobel 0802163823 Max 3
The 1 star review bombers haven't actually read the book, by the way. The book addresses her homeland Poland, the choice why she decided to publish and work under the name Marie Curie, and does no disservice to Poland in any way.]]> 3.93 2024 The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
author: Dava Sobel
name: Max
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: biology, history, non-fiction, radiation
review:
A biography on Marie Curie, with also a great focus on the young women she mentored during her research. Sometimes a bit long-winded, and the writing is not always very engaging. But, Marie Curie was an inspiring female scientist who paved the way for all of us in a way, so in all an entertaining read.

The 1 star review bombers haven't actually read the book, by the way. The book addresses her homeland Poland, the choice why she decided to publish and work under the name Marie Curie, and does no disservice to Poland in any way.
]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)]]> 13642
Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.]]> 183 Ursula K. Le Guin Max 3 fantasy, fiction
The world in which the story takes place is unique and the magic is not so "standard", which is definitely a plus of this book. Overall, the story was entertaining, but not outstanding to me.]]> 4.02 1968 A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Max
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: fantasy, fiction
review:
I feel like I should like this way more than I actually do.. I think the main complaint is that it is too short and quick paced. There was no way for me to connect with Ged, as he speedruns through his wizard life. The book is a lot of tell instead of show, with little dialogue between the characters. When there is dialogue, it's immediately more interesting to read. So I really wish there was more of that..

The world in which the story takes place is unique and the magic is not so "standard", which is definitely a plus of this book. Overall, the story was entertaining, but not outstanding to me.
]]> <![CDATA[Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica]]> 40919
Johnson’s savagely funny [book] is a grunt’s-eye view of fear and loathing, arrogance and insanity in a dysfunctional, dystopian closed community. It’s like M*A*S*H on ice, a bleak, black comedy.”�The Times of London]]> 260 Nicholas Johnson 0922915997 Max 4 3.70 2005 Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica
author: Nicholas Johnson
name: Max
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: ant-arctic, adventure, non-fiction, memoirs
review:
Interesting non-scientist perspective of life in a remote fieldwork station. I have only read scientist reports from the Antarctic station, this is something quite different, even though there are also similarities, ofcourse. The bureaucracy for example.. the tone is quite negative and I'm not sure if everyone's experience is like this, it is probably written with dark glasses on..
]]> <![CDATA[George Silverman's Explanation]]> 4906080 54 Charles Dickens Max 3 fiction 3.34 1868 George Silverman's Explanation
author: Charles Dickens
name: Max
average rating: 3.34
book published: 1868
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: fiction
review:
Relatively sad story from later in Dickens' life, close to his death. One of the easier Dickens' stories to read, it flows well and is gripping until the end.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Max 0 to-read, climate-problems 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Max
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read, climate-problems
review:

]]> The River's Daughter 214389569 Recalling memoirs like Wild and Educated, an internationally renowned whitewater rafting guide offers a gripping and inspiring memoir about overcoming hardship and coming into her own through her relationship with the rivers she has known.

After Bridget Crocker’s parents split in a vicious divorce, she moved with her mother from California to Wyoming, to a trailer park on the banks of the Snake River. Her childhood was nearly idyllic, with a stepfather she loved and a new baby brother, and with the river as her companion. When her mother underwent a drastic personality change seemingly overnight and left her stepfather for an eco-warrior and radical new lifestyle, Bridget’s world upended. She returned to California to live with her explosive father—until his violence sent her back to Wyoming.

The river was the most constant and nurturing influence in Bridget’s life; it helped instill in her the resilience she needed to overcome sexual assault and betrayals by those close to her and taught her to trust her intuition and embrace her strength as a woman. She became a world-class whitewater rafting guide, leading expeditions on the Snake, the Kern, the Salmon, and Zambia’s Zambezi rivers. Ultimately, her relationship with the rivers she came to know led her to reunite with her family and work with them to transform multi-generational cycles of poverty, trauma, and abuse.

In this propulsive story of finding hope and belonging in a life outdoors, Bridget Crocker not only takes us on exhilarating, and at times terrifying, adventures on the water but opens up a new way of experiencing the world—through its rivers, which can guide us, just as we can navigate them—and introduces a bold and vibrant new voice in adventure writing.]]> 320 Bridget Crocker 1954118546 Max 0 to-read 4.66 2025 The River's Daughter
author: Bridget Crocker
name: Max
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Is a River Alive? 218569826 Underland delivers a revelatory book that transforms how we look at the natural world—and life itself.

Hailed as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler� (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane’s dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.]]> 384 Robert Macfarlane 0393242137 Max 0 to-read 4.54 2025 Is a River Alive?
author: Robert Macfarlane
name: Max
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Max 0 to-read 4.57 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Max
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue]]> 211003941 Two-time National Outdoor Book Award-winning author Buddy Levy's thrilling narrative of polar exploration via airship�and the men who sacrificed everything to make history.

Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and trans-Atlantic airship aviation, making history’s first attempts at each. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a courageous innovator who pushed the boundaries of polar exploration and paved the way for the ultimate conquest of the North Pole—which would be achieved not by dogsled or airplane, but by airship.

American explorer Dr. Frederick Cook was the first to claim he made it to the North Pole in 1908. A year later, so did American Robert Peary, but both Cook’s and Peary’s claims had been seriously questioned. There was enough doubt that Norwegian explorer extraordinaire Roald Amundsen—who’d made history and a name for himself by being first to sail through the Northwest Passage and first man to the South Pole—picked up where Walter Wellman left off, attempting to fly to the North Pole by airship. He would go in the Norge, designed by Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile. The 350-foot Norge flew over the North Pole on May 12, 1926, and Amundsen was able to accurately record and verify their exact location.

However, the engineer Nobile felt slighted by Amundsen. Two years later, Nobile returned, this time in the Italia, backed by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. This was an Italian enterprise, and Nobile intended to win back the global accolades and reputation he believed Amundsen had stripped from him. The journey ended in disaster, death, and accusations of cannibalism, launching one of the great rescue operations the world had ever seen.

Realm of Ice and Sky is the thrilling narrative of polar exploration via airship―and the men who sacrificed everything to make history.]]> 384 Buddy Levy 1250289181 Max 0 to-read 4.19 2025 Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue
author: Buddy Levy
name: Max
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus]]> 62649144 A new biography of Carl Linnaeus, offering a vivid portrait of Linnaeus's life and work



Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), known as the father of modern biological taxonomy, formalized and popularized the system of binomial nomenclature used to classify plants and animals. Linnaeus himself classified thousands of species; the simple and immediately recognizable abbreviation "L" is used to mark classifications originally made by Linnaeus. This biography, by the leading authority on Linnaeus, offers a vivid portrait of Linnaeus's life and work. Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished sources--including diaries and personal correspondence--as well as new research, it presents revealing and original accounts of his family life, the political context in which he pursued his work, and his eccentric views on sexuality.

The Man Who Organized Nature describes Linnaeus's childhood in a landscape of striking natural beauty and how this influenced his later work. Linnaeus's Lutheran pastor father, knowledgeable about plants and an enthusiastic gardener, helped foster an early interest in botany. The book examines the political connections that helped Linnaeus secure patronage for his work, and untangles his ideas about sexuality. These were not, as often assumed, an attempt to naturalize gender categories but more likely reflected the laissez-faire attitudes of the era. Linnaeus, like many other brilliant scientists, could be moody and egotistical; the book describes his human failings as well as his medical and scientific achievements. Written in an engaging and accessible style, The Man Who Organized Nature--one of the only biographies of Linnaeus to appear in English--provides new and fascinating insights into the life of one of history's most consequential and enigmatic scientists.]]> 512 Gunnar Broberg 0691213429 Max 0 to-read 3.11 The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus
author: Gunnar Broberg
name: Max
average rating: 3.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Boys Enter the House: The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind]]> 57136789 —Jeff Coen, author of Murder in Canaryville

As investigators brought out the bagged remains of several dozen young men from a small Chicago ranch home and paraded them in front of a crowd of TV reporters and spectators, attention quickly turned to the owner of the house. John Gacy was an upstanding citizen, active in local politics and charities, famous for his themed parties and appearances as Pogo the Clown.

But in the winter of 1978�79, he became known as one of many so-called “sex murderers� who had begun gaining notoriety in the random brutality of the 1970s. As public interest grew rapidly, victims became footnotes and statistics, lives lost not just to violence, but to history.

Through the testimony of siblings, parents, friends, lovers, and other witnesses close to the case, Boys Enter the House retraces the footsteps of these victims as they make their way to the doorstep of the Gacy house itself.]]> 324 David B. Nelson 1641604867 Max 3 morbidly-curious, non-fiction
This book tells the story of the victims of a horrible criminal who violated and murdered them, all young boys/men. The stories are compiled from many interviews the author has done the past years, with family and others, trying to give a voice to a story that is otherwise usually dominated by the criminal. This is an important perspective, and I appreciate the focus on something else than John Gacy. However, there are many victims, so it took quite a while for me to get into a reading groove. The first half of the book was somewhat difficult to follow because of this. In the second half the investigation into Gacy began, and then the stories started to fall into place.

In all, a well written book with an interesting perspective, and worth reading because of that. For me personally, the execution didn't work so well, as the build-up was too slow. But it fits the mood of the book, so I guess it is really personal.]]> 3.74 Boys Enter the House: The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind
author: David B. Nelson
name: Max
average rating: 3.74
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: morbidly-curious, non-fiction
review:
This was an intense read. I usually don't read crime-related books like this, but I ventured out of my reading-comfort-zone because this was a pick in the Morbidly Curious Book Club.

This book tells the story of the victims of a horrible criminal who violated and murdered them, all young boys/men. The stories are compiled from many interviews the author has done the past years, with family and others, trying to give a voice to a story that is otherwise usually dominated by the criminal. This is an important perspective, and I appreciate the focus on something else than John Gacy. However, there are many victims, so it took quite a while for me to get into a reading groove. The first half of the book was somewhat difficult to follow because of this. In the second half the investigation into Gacy began, and then the stories started to fall into place.

In all, a well written book with an interesting perspective, and worth reading because of that. For me personally, the execution didn't work so well, as the build-up was too slow. But it fits the mood of the book, so I guess it is really personal.
]]> <![CDATA[Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries]]> 60310691 A lively tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born ѱ’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead.

ѱ’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States' ambition and reach.

But they are changing and fading. Embalming and burial is incredibly toxic, and while cremations have just recently surpassed burials in popularity, they’re not great for the environment either. Over My Dead Body explores everything—history, sustainability, land use, and more—and what it really means to memorialize.

Locales visited in Over My Dead Body
Shawsheen Cemetery � Bedford, Massachusetts
The 1607 Burial Ground � Historic Jamestowne, Virginia
Burial Hill � Plymouth, Massachusetts
Colonial Jewish Burial Ground � Newport, Rhode Island
Monticello’s African American Graveyard � Charlottesville, Virginia
Mount Auburn Cemetery � Cambridge, Massachusetts
Green-Wood Cemetery � Brooklyn, New York
Laurel Grove Cemetery � Savannah, Georgia
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery � Concord, Massachusetts
Central Park � New York, New York
Gettysburg National Cemetery � Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Arlington National Cemetery � Arlington, Virginia
Woodlawn Cemetery � Bronx, New York
Boothill Graveyard � Tombhill, Arizona
Forest Lawn Memorial-Park � Glenwood, California
The Chapel of the Chimes � Oakland, California
Hollywood Forever Cemetery � Los Angeles, California
Nature's Sanctuary � Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]> 272 Greg Melville 1419754858 Max 4 3.96 2022 Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries
author: Greg Melville
name: Max
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: morbidly-curious, history, non-fiction
review:
Funny and well written book on American graveyards. A niche topic, brought in an interesting way. The author uses some "dad jokes", but has a serious tone when necessary. Also love the photography. Great pick by the Morbidly Curious Book Club!
]]> Nuclear War: A Scenario 182733784
Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds� notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.]]> 400 Annie Jacobsen 0593476093 Max 0 to-read 4.37 2024 Nuclear War: A Scenario
author: Annie Jacobsen
name: Max
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[ADHD. Hoe haal je het uit je hoofd?]]> 16013701 0 Cathelijne Wildervanck 9055948551 Max 1
Wat een rare kijk op ADHD bevat dit boek. Het is overduidelijk niet geschreven dóór en vóór mensen die zelf ADHD hebben. Dit boek slaat totaal de plank mis en getuigt echt van onbegrip voor mensen met ADHD.

Ik werd al meteen getriggerd door het noemen van visolie en homeopathie als behandelingsopties. Natuurlijk zullen er dingen zijn die iets van de symptomen kunnen beïnvloeden, maar ADHD is een serieuze diagnose met échte, intense gevolgen voor een patiënt. Een positieve mindset en supplementen alleen lossen geen disbalans in je brein op.

Veel in dit boek is gebaseerd op pseudoscience, sommige vormen van therapie (NLP.. hier ga ik zo verder nog op in) die genoemd worden zijn nooit wetenschappelijk effectief verklaard. Zo kan ik ook wel zeggen, als ik mijn knuffel draak meeneem naar werk ben ik rustiger, want ik vind hem leuk, dus kan ik me iets beter concentreren, dus hiermee haal ik ADHD "uit mijn hoofd". Onzin toch? Mijn knuffel bestrijdt een symptoom oppervlakkig, net als visolie of een kruidenmengsel.

Vervolgens geeft de auteur aan dat we moeten stoppen met gedrag toeschrijven aan een leeftijdsfase. Dat je ál het gedrag kunt beïnvloeden. Dat is in zekere mate zo, maar de "twee-is-nee" peuter-rebellie en het dronken thuiskomen van een puber van 16 is niet álleen maar puur gedrag. Wanneer hersenen groeien verandert er continu vanalles, nieuwe verbindingen worden gemaakt, afgifte van stoffen verandert, etc. De voorbeelden die de auteur geeft worden ook deels daardoor beïnvloed: dit is gewoon biologie. Het zijn wél fases, de peuterleeftijd en de puberteit. Dit ontkennen is onzin.

Alle voorbeelden en case studies zijn ongeloofwaardig generiek. Bijna alsof ze bedacht zijn. Er zit geen persoonlijkheid in deze voorbeelden. Óf ze zijn niet echt, of zodanig ge-edit door de auteur zodat ze meer in haar schrijfstijl en gedachtengang passen. Beide opties zouden missers zijn.

Het is pijnlijk vaak duidelijk dat de auteur zelf geen ADHD heeft en ook niet iemand heeft geraadpleegd heeft die dat wel heeft als er adviezen uitgedeeld worden. In de oefeningen (bijvoorbeeld "Achterliggende Overtuigingen Ontdekken") wordt er heel erg gefocused op het feit "dat je zelf je gedrag kunt beïnvloeden". Maar in de meeste ADHD situaties is dat gewoon niet zo. Ik wil heel graag alert zijn, hoofd- en bijzaken scheiden, etc. Ik heb gedragstherapie gevolgd, ik neem medicatie, ik heb vanalles geprobeerd, maar het lukt niet: mijn brein zit anders in elkaar. Als ze vraagt: "Misschien kun je voor jezelf een paar redenen bedenken hoe het is gekomen dat je 'niets wil/mag missen' en dat je zo alert bent." Hier heb ik er één voor je: ik heb ADHD.

In hoofdstuk 5 realiseerde ik me dat veel van de gedachtengang van de auteur gevormd is door NLP (Neurolinguistisch programmeren). Dit is een pseudowetenschappelijke methodiek vooral gericht op communicatie technieken. In principe wordt geloofd dat elke vaardigheid overdraagbaar is op anderen door een "expert". Als het niet lukt, beter je best doen. Dit is natuurlijk onzin. Iedereen kan beter worden in een vaardigheid met geduld, tijd en training. Maar er zit wel een maximum aan wat iemand kan leren. Zeker als je lichaam of brein anders in elkaar zit dan een neurotypisch mens.

Eigenlijk had ik het met de titel al kunnen weten: ADHD: hoe haal je het uit je hoofd? Niet. Je accepteert jezelf zoals je bent, je probeert je niet maximaal te conformeren aan een neurotypisch systeem. Je focust je op wat je zélf kunt doen, en hoe je ervoor kunt zorgen dat je toch kunt meedraaien in een samenleving die niet specifiek voor jou is ingericht. Je zoekt hulp van gecertificeerde mensen die hebben gestudeerd en weten waar ze het over hebben, en niet van "coaches". In plaats van dat je gaat proberen je gedachten ("Van vrolijkheid komt vrolijkheid, van rust komt rust! Je maakt je eigen medicijn!") te herprogrammeren, ga je werken aan zelfacceptatie. Je hoeft niet te veranderen. Je bent perfect zoals je bent, alleen deze samenleving is niet ontwikkeld en gevormd met en door mensen zoals jij en ik in gedachten.

Ik gooi niet vaak een boek weg. Deze heb ik uit een minibieb, maar ik zet dit niet terug. Het gaat bij het oud papier. Zó erg vind ik het. Ik wil voorkomen dat iemand die dit leest denkt dat hun gedachten geherprogrammeerd moeten worden, of dat ze zichzelf met positieve gedachten kunnen medicineren. Zelden voel ik me zó zuur na het lezen van een boek. -60743883 sterren.]]> 3.42 2009 ADHD. Hoe haal je het uit je hoofd?
author: Cathelijne Wildervanck
name: Max
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2009
rating: 1
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: non-fiction, neurodiversity, total-garbage
review:
Review in Dutch, as this book is only available in Dutch. For publishers reading this thinking its worth to translate it: don't bother. It's trash.

Wat een rare kijk op ADHD bevat dit boek. Het is overduidelijk niet geschreven dóór en vóór mensen die zelf ADHD hebben. Dit boek slaat totaal de plank mis en getuigt echt van onbegrip voor mensen met ADHD.

Ik werd al meteen getriggerd door het noemen van visolie en homeopathie als behandelingsopties. Natuurlijk zullen er dingen zijn die iets van de symptomen kunnen beïnvloeden, maar ADHD is een serieuze diagnose met échte, intense gevolgen voor een patiënt. Een positieve mindset en supplementen alleen lossen geen disbalans in je brein op.

Veel in dit boek is gebaseerd op pseudoscience, sommige vormen van therapie (NLP.. hier ga ik zo verder nog op in) die genoemd worden zijn nooit wetenschappelijk effectief verklaard. Zo kan ik ook wel zeggen, als ik mijn knuffel draak meeneem naar werk ben ik rustiger, want ik vind hem leuk, dus kan ik me iets beter concentreren, dus hiermee haal ik ADHD "uit mijn hoofd". Onzin toch? Mijn knuffel bestrijdt een symptoom oppervlakkig, net als visolie of een kruidenmengsel.

Vervolgens geeft de auteur aan dat we moeten stoppen met gedrag toeschrijven aan een leeftijdsfase. Dat je ál het gedrag kunt beïnvloeden. Dat is in zekere mate zo, maar de "twee-is-nee" peuter-rebellie en het dronken thuiskomen van een puber van 16 is niet álleen maar puur gedrag. Wanneer hersenen groeien verandert er continu vanalles, nieuwe verbindingen worden gemaakt, afgifte van stoffen verandert, etc. De voorbeelden die de auteur geeft worden ook deels daardoor beïnvloed: dit is gewoon biologie. Het zijn wél fases, de peuterleeftijd en de puberteit. Dit ontkennen is onzin.

Alle voorbeelden en case studies zijn ongeloofwaardig generiek. Bijna alsof ze bedacht zijn. Er zit geen persoonlijkheid in deze voorbeelden. Óf ze zijn niet echt, of zodanig ge-edit door de auteur zodat ze meer in haar schrijfstijl en gedachtengang passen. Beide opties zouden missers zijn.

Het is pijnlijk vaak duidelijk dat de auteur zelf geen ADHD heeft en ook niet iemand heeft geraadpleegd heeft die dat wel heeft als er adviezen uitgedeeld worden. In de oefeningen (bijvoorbeeld "Achterliggende Overtuigingen Ontdekken") wordt er heel erg gefocused op het feit "dat je zelf je gedrag kunt beïnvloeden". Maar in de meeste ADHD situaties is dat gewoon niet zo. Ik wil heel graag alert zijn, hoofd- en bijzaken scheiden, etc. Ik heb gedragstherapie gevolgd, ik neem medicatie, ik heb vanalles geprobeerd, maar het lukt niet: mijn brein zit anders in elkaar. Als ze vraagt: "Misschien kun je voor jezelf een paar redenen bedenken hoe het is gekomen dat je 'niets wil/mag missen' en dat je zo alert bent." Hier heb ik er één voor je: ik heb ADHD.

In hoofdstuk 5 realiseerde ik me dat veel van de gedachtengang van de auteur gevormd is door NLP (Neurolinguistisch programmeren). Dit is een pseudowetenschappelijke methodiek vooral gericht op communicatie technieken. In principe wordt geloofd dat elke vaardigheid overdraagbaar is op anderen door een "expert". Als het niet lukt, beter je best doen. Dit is natuurlijk onzin. Iedereen kan beter worden in een vaardigheid met geduld, tijd en training. Maar er zit wel een maximum aan wat iemand kan leren. Zeker als je lichaam of brein anders in elkaar zit dan een neurotypisch mens.

Eigenlijk had ik het met de titel al kunnen weten: ADHD: hoe haal je het uit je hoofd? Niet. Je accepteert jezelf zoals je bent, je probeert je niet maximaal te conformeren aan een neurotypisch systeem. Je focust je op wat je zélf kunt doen, en hoe je ervoor kunt zorgen dat je toch kunt meedraaien in een samenleving die niet specifiek voor jou is ingericht. Je zoekt hulp van gecertificeerde mensen die hebben gestudeerd en weten waar ze het over hebben, en niet van "coaches". In plaats van dat je gaat proberen je gedachten ("Van vrolijkheid komt vrolijkheid, van rust komt rust! Je maakt je eigen medicijn!") te herprogrammeren, ga je werken aan zelfacceptatie. Je hoeft niet te veranderen. Je bent perfect zoals je bent, alleen deze samenleving is niet ontwikkeld en gevormd met en door mensen zoals jij en ik in gedachten.

Ik gooi niet vaak een boek weg. Deze heb ik uit een minibieb, maar ik zet dit niet terug. Het gaat bij het oud papier. Zó erg vind ik het. Ik wil voorkomen dat iemand die dit leest denkt dat hun gedachten geherprogrammeerd moeten worden, of dat ze zichzelf met positieve gedachten kunnen medicineren. Zelden voel ik me zó zuur na het lezen van een boek. -60743883 sterren.
]]> <![CDATA[Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History]]> 28110850
In Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, zoologist Bill Schutt sets the record straight, debunking common myths and investigating our new understanding of cannibalism's role in biology, anthropology, and history in the most fascinating account yet written on this complex topic. Schutt takes readers from Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains, where he wades through ponds full of tadpoles devouring their siblings, to the Sierra Nevadas, where he joins researchers who are shedding new light on what happened to the Donner Party--the most infamous episode of cannibalism in American history. He even meets with an expert on the preparation and consumption of human placenta (and, yes, it goes well with Chianti).

Bringing together the latest cutting-edge science, Schutt answers questions such as why some amphibians consume their mother's skin; why certain insects bite the heads off their partners after sex; why, up until the end of the twentieth century, Europeans regularly ate human body parts as medical curatives; and how cannibalism might be linked to the extinction of the Neanderthals. He takes us into the future as well, investigating whether, as climate change causes famine, disease, and overcrowding, we may see more outbreaks of cannibalism in many more species--including our own.

Cannibalism places a perfectly natural occurrence into a vital new context and invites us to explore why it both enthralls and repels us.

]]> 350 Bill Schutt 1616204621 Max 4
Edited to add: the more I talk to people about this book, the more I realize that it really is such a taboo thing to talk about! Maybe it's also because I discuss books during mealtimes.. :-)]]> 3.88 2017 Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History
author: Bill Schutt
name: Max
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: biology, history, non-fiction, morbidly-curious
review:
A great overview of cannibalism in humans and animals. Not too sensational, exactly what I was hoping for. Reads quickly, especially for people used to a bit of scientific writing. Great pick by the Morbidly Curious Book Club!

Edited to add: the more I talk to people about this book, the more I realize that it really is such a taboo thing to talk about! Maybe it's also because I discuss books during mealtimes.. :-)
]]>