Kerim's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 23:08:16 -0700 60 Kerim's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Mrs. Dalloway 14942 194 Virginia Woolf 0151009988 Kerim 0 currently-reading 3.80 1925 Mrs. Dalloway
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Men of a Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty]]> 230084776 352 Kate Mossman 1788705645 Kerim 0 to-read 4.00 Men of a Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty
author: Kate Mossman
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.00
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]]> <![CDATA[Joe Country (Slough House, #6)]]> 123229152 Ěý
In Slough House, the London outpost for disgraced MI5 spies, memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him an outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process.
Ěý
Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . .
Ěý
And with winter taking its grip, Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible for killing a slow horse breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.]]> 337 Mick Herron 1641291338 Kerim 3 4.23 2019 Joe Country (Slough House, #6)
author: Mick Herron
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
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]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Kerim 0 currently-reading 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
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]]> Hunchback 214986269 A bombshell bestseller in Japan, a provocative, defiant debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life.

Born with a congenital muscle disorder,ĚýShaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (“If I were to live again, I’d want to be a high-class prostituteâ€�). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.

Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body andĚýunrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't aways grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potentialĚýof our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.]]> 112 Saou Ichikawa 0593734718 Kerim 4 3.51 2023 Hunchback
author: Saou Ichikawa
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
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]]> Fair Play 216895124 For fans of Anthony Horowitz, Tana French, and Sally Rooney, a wonderfully original, genre-breaking literary debut from Ireland that’s an homage to the brilliant detective novels of the early twentieth century, a twisty modern murder mystery, and a searing exploration of grief and loss.

A group of friends gather at an Airbnb on New Year’s Eve. It is Benjamin’s birthday, and his sister Abigail is throwing him a jazz-age Murder Mystery themed party. As the night plays out, champagne is drunk, hors d’oeuvres consumed, and relationships forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses the wrong person; someone else’s heart is broken.

In the morning, all of them wake up—except Benjamin.

As Abigail attempts to wrap her mind around her brother’s death, an eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin's killer. In this mansion, suddenly complete with a butler, gardener and housekeeper, everyone is a suspect, and nothing is quite as it seems.Ěý

Will the culprit be revealed? And how can Abigail, now alone, piece herself back together in the wake of this loss?

Gripping and playful, sharp and profoundly moving, Fair Play plumbs the depths of the human heart while subverting one of our most popular genres.


]]> 288 Louise Hegarty 0063360551 Kerim 0 to-read 3.11 Fair Play
author: Louise Hegarty
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.11
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]]> The Homemade God 219520756 Family is everything, even when it falls apart.

After the sudden death of a renowned artist, his four adult children travel to Italy to sort out his affairs with his much-younger wife, in this moving novel from the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

World-famous artist Vic Kemp has relied on his four children ever since their mother died when they were young. Netta, the oldest, is a litigator who often serves as co-parent to her siblings; Susan, a housewife who cooks and cleans for both her husband and her father; Goose's own thwarted artistic ambitions have left him resigned to a job in Vic's studio; and Iris, the baby, drops everything the moment her father calls.Ěý

When Vic summons the siblings with the promise of big news, they hope their father is about to tell them he has finished the mysterious masterpiece he claims will be the capstone to his career. Instead, he announces he’s getting remarried.ĚýBella-Mae, his wife to be,Ěýis apparently beautiful, a fellow artist—and twenty-seven to his seventy-six years. When his children dare to express concern, Vic decamps with Bella-Mae to his summer home in Italy. Six weeks later, he is found dead. There is no sign of his will, or his promised final painting.Ěý

Netta, Susan, Goose, and Iris gather at the house on Lake Orta to piece together what happened and prepare to bring their father’s body home. They spend the summer in a waiting game, living under the same roof as Bella-Mae, and forced to confront Vic's legacy and the buried wounds they have incurred as his children. So who is Bella-Mae? Is she the woman their father believed her to be? Or is she the force that will destroy the family for good? How long can their old bonds hold?Ěý

With sparkling wit, compassion and tender insight, The Homemade God explores memory, identity, grief, healing, and the bonds of siblinghood—what happens when they splinter, and what it might take to find a new way forward.]]> 336 Rachel Joyce 0593448294 Kerim 0 to-read 3.98 The Homemade God
author: Rachel Joyce
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.98
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]]> Gaslight (Philip Taiwo #2) 123195812 In this follow-up to Kayode's "action-packed and spirited debut" Philip Taiwo returns to solve a missing-persons case, and in so doing, uncovers dark secrets the church has worked tirelessly to hide (Oyinkan Braithwaite, author ofĚýMy Sister, the Serial Killer).

A shadow has fallen over the megachurch in Ogun State, Nigeria: the beloved Bishop Dawodu has been arrested for the murder of his wife. Sade Dawodu has vanished without a trace and although no body has been found, the police have acted based on what they claim is damning evidence. Philip Taiwo, hot off the success of solving the Okriki Three case, is brought on to investigate. He quickly learns that Sade, young, impulsive, and outspoken, is no favorite of the congregants. She has also been known to disappear for long stretches of time. As Taiwo and his trusted associate, Chika plunge into the investigation, they unearth secrets that go beyond the missing persons case, ones that if leaked, threaten to shatter not only the Bishop, but the church itself. Taiwo quickly begins to feel like a hired gun, put up to the task with the express purpose to clear the bishop’s name rather than find the naked truth.

As Taiwo strives to crack the vast conspiracy he's up against, he’s tugged away by the demands of family life, and derailed by systemic challenges: in Nigeria, cash is king, there are no viable databases, and records are sparse. Through his eyes, we’re treated to religion’s cult-like grip, the ways in which the state is in bed with the church, and the difference between police corruption in Nigeria and America, where Philip has been living for over two decades. In turns high-octane, dark and political, but always emotionally stirring, this highly-anticipated follow-up to LIGHTSEEKERS has the bones of a classic mystery with a fresh, global tilt.]]> 384 Femi Kayode 0316536644 Kerim 4 3.94 2021 Gaslight (Philip Taiwo #2)
author: Femi Kayode
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> <![CDATA[When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines]]> 218494525 From the pages of Vanity Fair to the red carpets of Hollywood, editor Graydon Carter’s memoir revives the glamorous heyday of print magazines when they were at the vanguard of American culture

When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated. With curiosity, fearlessness, and a love of recent history and glamour that would come to define his storied career in magazines, Carter succeeded in endearing himself to his editors, contributors, and readers, as well as many of the faces that would come to appear in Vanity Fair’s pages. He went on to run the magazine with overwhelming success for the next two and a half decades.

Filled with colorful memories and intimate details, When the Going Was Good is Graydon Carter’s lively recounting of how he made his mark as one of the most talented editors in the business. Moving to New York from Canada, he worked at Time, Life, The New York Observer, and Spy, before catching the eye of Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse, who pulled him in to run Vanity Fair. In Newhouse he found an unwavering champion, a loyal proprietor who gave Carter the editorial and financial freedom to thrive. Annie Leibovitz’s photographs would come to define the look of the magazine, as would the “New Establishment� and annual Hollywood issues. Carter further planted a flag in Los Angeles with the legendary Vanity Fair Oscar party.

With his inimitable voice and signature quip, he brings readers to lunches and dinners with the great and good of America, Britain, and Europe. He assembled one of the most formidable stables of writers and photographers under one roof, and here he re-creates in real time the steps he took to ensure Vanity Fair cemented its place as the epicenter of art, culture, business, and politics, even as digital media took hold. Charming, candid, and brimming with stories, When the Going Was Good perfectly captures the last golden age of print magazines from the inside out.]]> 432 Graydon Carter 0593655907 Kerim 0 to-read 4.18 When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines
author: Graydon Carter
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average rating: 4.18
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]]> The Strange Case of Jane O. 213870076
In the first year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Are Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or are they the manifestation of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever-deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind, and cause him to question everything he thought he knew about so-called reality—including events in his own life.

Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.]]> 288 Karen Thompson Walker 1984853945 Kerim 0 to-read 3.91 2025 The Strange Case of Jane O.
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rest of Our Lives: An Observer Novel to Look Out For 2025 | What's left when your kids grow up and leave home? An unforgettable road trip of a ... and rewards of long-term marriage.]]> 218734847 'Moving, smart and, in the end, life-affirming, it's a wonderful novel about family, hope and the obligations that make us human.' Observer (Fiction to look out for in '25)

What's left when your kids grow up and leave home?


When Tom Layward's wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact.


He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he's been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class - something he hasn't yet told his wife.


So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past - an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son - on route, maybe, to his father's grave in California.

What readers are saying about The Rest of Our Lives:

'What a powerful tale; a really unexpected treasure.'

'Highly recommended if you want to read something real and something that will resonate.'

'The best novel I've read this year. Highly recommended.'

'I absolutely loved it - the perfect mix of funny, poignant and thought-provoking.']]> 218 Benjamin Markovits 0571388566 Kerim 0 to-read 3.67 The Rest of Our Lives: An Observer Novel to Look Out For 2025 | What's left when your kids grow up and leave home? An unforgettable road trip of a ... and rewards of long-term marriage.
author: Benjamin Markovits
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.67
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601 An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 400 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Kerim 4 4.30 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> A Whole Life 226845706 Short-listed, Man Booker International, 2016

Short-listed, International Dublin Literary Award, 2017

Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII—where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus—and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven....

Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. An exquisite novel about a simple life, it has already demonstrated its power to move thousands of people with a message of solace and truth. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are.]]> Robert Seethaler Kerim 0 to-read 4.50 2014 A Whole Life
author: Robert Seethaler
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Revelation (Matthew Shardlake, #4)]]> 820480 550 C.J. Sansom 1405092726 Kerim 4 4.34 2008 Revelation (Matthew Shardlake, #4)
author: C.J. Sansom
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist]]> 214151728 With unprecedented access and unsparing analysis, this is the definitive investigation into Spotify, weaving interviews with incisive cultural criticism, and illuminating how streaming has reshaped music for listeners and artists alike.

Flush with testimony from over a hundred industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us into the inner workings of the highly consolidated modern music business and how it has become personalized, playlisted, autoplayed, and algorithmic.

With an expert’s eye, music journalist Liz Pelly reveals how Spotify’s two-sided marketplace—the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all—has changed music media forever. She also explores how musicians and listeners are coming together to fight this era of musical individualism and advocate for artists� futures.

Amazon Unbound and Weapons of Math Destruction for the music industry, Mood Machine is a timely and unputdownable exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music.]]> 288 Liz Pelly 1668083507 Kerim 0 to-read 3.95 2025 Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
author: Liz Pelly
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> A Little Luck 75582270
Not fully understanding her own reasons for going back to the place where she once lived and raised a family, and that she had been determined to forget forever, both anticipated encounters and unanticipated revelations show her that sometimes life is neither fate nor chance: perhaps her return is nothing more than a little luck…]]> 211 Claudia Piñeiro 1913867552 Kerim 5 4.31 2015 A Little Luck
author: Claudia Piñeiro
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
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]]> Strange Pictures 216670080
A pregnant woman’s sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.

A child’s picture of his home contains a dark secret message.

A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbit hole that will reveal a horrifying reality.

Structured around these nine childlike drawings, every one holding a disturbing clue, this novel invites readers to piece together the harrowing truth behind each and the overarching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the bestselling international debut from mystery-horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.]]> 236 Uketsu 0063433087 Kerim 0 to-read 4.05 2022 Strange Pictures
author: Uketsu
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> Last Evenings on Earth 537640
In the short story "Silva the Eye," Bolano writes in the opening sentence: "It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as The Eye, always tried to escape violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around 20 years old when Salvador Allende died."

Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolano's beloved "failed generation," the stories of Last Evenings on Earth have appeared in The New Yorker and Grand Street.]]> 219 Roberto Bolaño 0811216888 Kerim 3 4.13 1997 Last Evenings on Earth
author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/05
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]]> The Savage Detectives 63033
The explosive first long work by “the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time� (Ilan Stavans, Los Angeles Times), The Savage Detectives follows Belano and Lima through the eyes of the people whose paths they cross in Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. This chorus includes the muses of visceral realism, the beautiful Font sisters; their father, an architect interned in a Mexico City asylum; a sensitive young follower of Octavio Paz; a foul-mouthed American graduate student; a French girl with a taste for the Marquis de Sade; the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky; a Chilean stowaway with a mystical gift for numbers; the anorexic heiress to a Mexican underwear empire; an Argentinian photojournalist in Angola; and assorted hangers-on, detractors, critics, lovers, employers, vagabonds, real-life literary figures, and random acquaintances.

A polymathic descendant of Borges and Pynchon, Roberto Bolaño traces the hidden connection between literature and violence in a world where national boundaries are fluid and death lurks in the shadow of the avant-garde. The Savage Detectives is a dazzling original, the first great Latin American novel of the twenty-first century.]]> 577 Roberto Bolaño 0374191484 Kerim 0 to-read 4.12 1998 The Savage Detectives
author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)]]> 16243 1 A little girl disappears in the night.
2 A beautiful young office worker falls to a maniac's attack.
3 A new mother is overwhelmed by demands from her baby and husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.
Result : Startling connections and discoveries emerge. . . .]]> 389 Kate Atkinson 0316010707 Kerim 3 3.79 2004 Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> The Daughter 216390097 You thought she was safe. You were wrong . . .

Lauren can't wait to see her daughter again, to pick her up from university at the end of her first term. But when she arrives at her hall and knocks at room 309, a stranger opens the door.

For a few minutes, Lauren assumes she must have the wrong room, or the wrong floor. Maybe even the wrong building.

But she soon discovers the Evie's not there. She hasn't been there for weeks. So where is she?

Following one family's desperate race against time as one terrifying moment unravels into a living nightmare, The Daughter is the unmissable new heart-in-mouth thriller from T.M. Logan.]]> 443 T.M. Logan 1804185167 Kerim 0 to-read 4.32 2025 The Daughter
author: T.M. Logan
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/19
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]]> One True Word 222695780 'So gripping I simply couldn't put it down' Eva Björg Ægisdóttir, author of The Creak on the Stairs
'A truly unusual crime novel which kept me reading until the very end... highly enjoyable' KatrĂ­n JakobsdĂłttir, former Icelandic Prime Minister and author of A Crime Story
______Why did she do it?
After a day of simmering tension on a trip to an uninhabited island, JĂşlia snaps and leaves her husband GĂ­Ăł marooned in the middle of a freezing fjord in the depths of the Icelandic winter, with night drawing in.

When she regrets her decision and returns, he is nowhere to be found. The police launch a manhunt, but soon their suspicion falls on his wife. She spins them a story to hide her involvement, but she can feel the net closing in.
Is Gíó alive or dead? In hiding or hunting her down? And can Júlia get to the truth before it destroys her?]]> 361 Snæbjörn Arngrímsson 1805335030 Kerim 0 to-read 3.75 One True Word
author: Snæbjörn Arngrímsson
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.75
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Those Passions: On Art and Politics]]> 216600342 384 T.J. Clark 0500025266 Kerim 0 to-read 5.00 Those Passions: On Art and Politics
author: T.J. Clark
name: Kerim
average rating: 5.00
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]]> <![CDATA[A Case of Matricide (Georges Gorski, #3)]]> 209328306
In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, the troubled Inspector Georges Gorski takes the case of a local woman who has called the to report that she suspects her son, a novelist named Robert, of plotting her death. Between the suspicious death of their dog, Robert’s callous disregard for his mother’s accusations, and her unreliable state of mind, Gorski decides to keep a close eye on their house. He visits with increasing frequency, trying to understand why—and how—a man might murder his mother. As Gorski’s closeness to the Duymanns swiftly slips from curious to dangerous, his grip on the case—and reality—irreversibly loosens.

In his unmistakably Nabokovian style, in which the line between fiction and reality blurs and narration and truth are questioned at every turn, Burnet constructs an elegant, bizarre, and destabilizing account of the ways guilt moves between mind and body, suspect and investigator, and writer and reader.]]> 256 Graeme Macrae Burnet 1771966475 Kerim 0 to-read 3.87 2024 A Case of Matricide (Georges Gorski, #3)
author: Graeme Macrae Burnet
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
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date added: 2025/02/11
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]]> Rejection 199635125
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.

In “The Feminist,� a young man’s passionate allyship turns to furious nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that it isn’t getting him laid. A young woman’s unrequited crush in “Pics� spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of her sense of self. And in “Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,� a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship leads to a life-upending mistake. As the characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways our delusions can warp our desire for connection.

These brilliant satires explore the underrated sorrows of rejection with the authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a manifesto. Audacious and unforgettable, Rejection is a stunning mosaic that redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society, and oneself.]]> 272 Tony Tulathimutte 0063337878 Kerim 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Rejection
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> Lion 212808262 An engrossing work of autobiographical fiction about the relationship between an actress daughter and her larger-than-life father—the astonishingly assured debut novel of Sonya Walger, actress on Lost, For All Mankind, and more.

Lion, as his friends call him, is an unlikely parent, more legend than presence in his daughter’s life. He is a charismatic, dashing bon-vivant, a polo player, race car driver, cocaine addict, ex-con, pilot, and sky-diver. Born in the aftershocks of Argentina’s greatest earthquake,ĚýLionĚýis like a minor god who comes down to earth in a grand manner, falling in all the ways there are to fall.

“It is hard to compete with adrenalin when you are a child,â€� his daughter writes, now a mother herself to young children whose settled upbringing prompts her to consider her unconventional youth and the source of its chaos, her, by turns, loving, maddening, and magnetic father.Ěý

Lion is a double portrait told in a perpetual present tense that moves back and forth between present-day Los Angeles, where the narrator lives with her family and works as an actress, and the past of her peripatetic childhood, spent shuttling between her mother in England, boarding school, and her father and his successive wives in Buenos Aires and Lima.

Sonya Walger’s stunning autobiographical debut is an emotionally acute palimpsest of a novel about a father and daughter, in which the drama and incident, love and tragedy that make up his life make up hers as well. The legend of his life and her distinctive and imaginatively charged telling of it make for an engrossing and unforgettable family saga.]]> 176 Sonya Walger 1681379031 Kerim 0 to-read 4.44 2025 Lion
author: Sonya Walger
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> The Bee Sting 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Kerim 0 currently-reading 3.92 2023 The Bee Sting
author: Paul Murray
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor]]> 27258388
We see Taylor the child actress exchanging dogs and horses for husbands. We see Burton emerging from the mists and brimstone of Wales to be the greatest theatrical animal of his generation. The pair come together in Rome during the making of Cleopatra, which gives Lewis the opportunity for a major farcical set-piece. We then enter a world of jewels and private jets, vodka, yachts and furs - the splendid vulgarity of the Sixties, where the narrative of Taylor and Burton becomes a Pop Art story.

Then, inevitably, it all goes wrong, with alcoholism, violence, recrimination and divorce ( twice ) - with Burton, whom Lewis depicts as a Faustus figure, damned by fame, dead at fifty-eight.

Stephen Fry has said, 'It is one of the very best biographies I have ever read. One of the best books about fame, desire, Hollywood and mid-to-late twentieth century culture ever written. Inside which, brilliant, hilarious and sensitive insights on all manner of subjects fizz and froth. Magnificent, terrible, tragic, triumphant.']]> 605 Roger Lewis 0857381725 Kerim 4 3.64 Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor
author: Roger Lewis
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
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]]> Homesickness 59577175 New York Times) author of critical smash Young Skins, winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35, Homesickness� is an emotionally resonant and wonderfully wry collection that follows the lives of outcasts, misfits, and malcontents from County Mayo to Canada.

When Colin Barrett's debut Young Skins published, it swept up several major literary awards, and, in both its linguistic originality and sharply drawn portraits of working-class Ireland, earned Barrett comparisons to Faulkner, Hardy, and Musil. Now, in a blistering follow-up collection, Barrett brings together eight character-driven stories, each showcasing his inimitably observant eye and darkly funny style.

A quiet night in a local pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword-wielding fugitive; a funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts simply won't lay in wake; a shooting sees a veteran policewoman confront the banality of her own existence; and an aspiring writer grapples with his father's cancer diagnosis and in his despair wreaks havoc on his mentor's life.

The second piece of fiction from a "lyrical and tough and smart" (Anne Enright) voice in contemporary Irish literature, Homesickness� marks Colin Barrett out as our most brilliantly original and captivating storyteller.]]> 224 Colin Barrett 0802159648 Kerim 0 to-read 3.84 2022 Homesickness
author: Colin Barrett
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> My Sister, the Serial Killer 40317428 My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water...

When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...]]> 242 Oyinkan Braithwaite Kerim 0 currently-reading 3.80 2018 My Sister, the Serial Killer
author: Oyinkan Braithwaite
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> Caledonian Road 199126293 A biting portrait of British class, politics, and money told through five interconnected families and their rising―and declining―fortunes.

Campbell Flynn, art historian and biographer of Vermeer, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public―yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much. Entangled with a brilliant student, he begins to see trouble brewing for his family and friends. All his worlds collide―the art scene and academia, fashion and the English aristocracy, journalism and the internet―as dangerous forces enter his life and Caledonian Road gives up its secrets.
Andrew O’Hagan has written a social novel in the Victorian style, drawing a whole cast of characters into company with each other and revealing the inner energies of the way we live now.

“Not only a peerless chronicler of our times, O’Hagan has generosity, humour and tenderness, which make this novel an utter joy to read.”―Monica Ali, author of Love Marriage and Brick Lane]]> 614 Andrew O'Hagan 1324074876 Kerim 4 3.73 2024 Caledonian Road
author: Andrew O'Hagan
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth]]> 216654637 AN IRISH INDEPENDENT AND IRISH TIMES BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2025

'An original voice' Colm TĂłibĂ­n

'Duncan brings a new way of seeing' Irish Times

'A deliberative and delicate reading experience, revelatory in the truest sense of that word' Guardian

During winter season in a secluded Alpine city, John Molloy, an Irish restorative sculptor, meets Bernadette, an enigmatic Italian sociologist. As John falls in love, a distressing moment from his youth rises into view, the disastrous fallout of which has reverberated unchecked through his life.

Years later, a letter from home arrives, asking him to pray for the speedy death of an ailing friend. Over a day-long odyssey through the ancient streets and churches of Bologna, John is forced to confront his present, his past and the bedrock of his psyche. A delicately crafted novel of two halves, a decade apart, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth is a masterful excavation of human desires, inhibitions, and the patterns of habit to which we unwittingly fall prey.]]> 224 Adrian Duncan 1805221957 Kerim 0 to-read 3.72 The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth
author: Adrian Duncan
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.72
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date added: 2025/01/26
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]]> The Note 211399773 A vacation in the Hamptons goes terribly wrong for three friends with a complicated history.

It was meant to be a harmless prank.

Growing up, May Hanover was a good girl, always. Well-behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May didn’t have room to slip up, let alone fail. Her friends didn’t call her the Little Sheriff for nothing.

But even good girls have secrets. And regrets. When it comes to her friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she's had her fair share of both. Their bond—forged when May was just twelve years old—has withstood a tragic accident, individual scandals, heartbreak and loss. Now the three friends have reunited for the first time in years for a few days of sun and fun in the Hamptons. But a chance encounter with a pair of strangers leads to a drunken prank that goes horribly awry.Ěý

When she finds herself at the center of an urgent police investigation, May begins to wonder whether Lauren and Kelsey are keeping secrets from her, testing the limits of her loyalty to lifelong friends.

What had they gone and done?

The Note is a page-turner of the highest orderĚýfrom one of our greatest contemporary suspense writers.]]> 287 Alafair Burke 0593537084 Kerim 0 to-read 3.35 2025 The Note
author: Alafair Burke
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/24
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]]> The Sellout 22237161
Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens―on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles―the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident―the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins―he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.]]> 289 Paul Beatty 0374260508 Kerim 4 3.75 2015 The Sellout
author: Paul Beatty
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> Quarterlife 205478780 Quarterlife is] by a distance the best debut of the year." —Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

India’s literary novel of the year—an enthralling, award-winning debut from a “blazingly original voice� (Vauhini Vara).

“In the fashion of the big novels by Salman Rushdie or Amitav Gosh� (Biblio), Quarterlife is a groundbreaking portrait of a nation on the cusp of a new age. When the Bharat Party comes to power after a divisive election, Naren, a jaded Wall Street consultant, is lured home to Mumbai. With him is Amanda, a restless New Englander eager to embody her ideals through a teaching fellowship in a Muslim-majority slum. Meanwhile, Naren’s charismatic brother Rohit, an amateur filmmaker, sets out to explore his roots and befriends the fiery young men of the Hindu nationalist machine. Their journeys lead them into an astonishing milieu of brutal debates and infatuations as fraught as they are addictive, feeding into a festive night when all of Mumbai is on the streets—where the simmering unrest erupts. Hailed as “a landmark novel� (Indian Express), Quarterlife is a brilliantly innovative work that tests the limits of what the novel can achieve.]]> 416 Devika Rege 1324095490 Kerim 0 to-read 3.60 Quarterlife
author: Devika Rege
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.60
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> Confessions 211642069 For fans ofĚýThe GoldfinchĚýandĚýTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, an ambitious and absorbing debut that follows three generations of women from New York to rural Ireland and back again.

New York City, late September 2001. The walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady’s father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. When a letter arrives from an aunt she didn’t know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life, the name jogs a an old videocassette game Cora used to play as a child where two sisters must save the students of a mysterious boarding school.

County Donegal, 1974. An eclectic group of artists known as the Screamers arrives in Burtonport and moves into the old schoolhouse down the road from where Roisin lives with her older sister Moira. Alternately kind and cruel, brilliant artist Moira is a mystery to Roisin, as is Moira’s relationship with the boy next door, Michael. When the Screamers look to hire an artist in residence, Roisin enlists Michael’s help to get Moira the job, setting in motion a chain of events that will put an ocean between the sisters and threaten to tear them apart forever.

Burtonport, 2018. Lyca Brady lives in a sprawling old house with her mother, Cora, and great aunt, Ro. Abortion has just been legalized in Ireland, and Lyca is struggling to find herself outside her mother’s activism. An unexpected message from a childhood friend sends Lyca searching her house’s mysterious attic, with its strange collection of old medical equipment, piles of paperwork, and dusty boxes of ancient video games. There, she unearths secrets hidden for decades—secrets perhaps better left unknown.

Catherine Airey’s haunting debut spins a mesmerizing story of family and fate, survival and revelation, examining the irresistible gravity of the past—how it endures through generations, pervasively present even when buried or forgotten.


]]> 480 Catherine Airey 0063380137 Kerim 0 to-read 3.82 2025 Confessions
author: Catherine Airey
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> Dealing with the Dead 211942002
Against all ghostly advice. Liwa makes his way back to his childhood home in Ponte Noire to see his devoted grandmother one last time. Disturbing rumours and political corruption swirl together with Liwa's jumbled memories of his last night on earth, leaving him to solve the riddle of his own untimely demise.

Dealing with the Dead is a darkly humorous and phantasmagorical tale of ambition, community and forces beyond human control by the foremost chronicler of Congolese history.]]> 215 Alain Mabanckou 180081772X Kerim 0 to-read 3.76 Dealing with the Dead
author: Alain Mabanckou
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.76
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date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)]]> 4921
"We agree that we are overworked, and need a rest - A week on the rolling deep? - George suggests the river -"

And with the co-operation of several hampers of food and a covered boat, the three men (not forgetting the dog) set out on a hilarious voyage of mishaps up the Thames. When not falling in the river and getting lost in Hampton Court Maze, Jerome K. Jerome finds time to express his ideas on the world around - many of which have acquired a deeper fascination since the day at the end of the 19th century when this excursion was so lightly undertaken.]]> 185 Jerome K. Jerome Kerim 0 currently-reading 3.86 1889 Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)
author: Jerome K. Jerome
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1889
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]> 2956 327 Mark Twain 0142437174 Kerim 3 classics 3.82 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
author: Mark Twain
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: classics
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]]> <![CDATA[Astonish Me!: First Nights That Changed the World]]> 60375278
Astonish Me! is an adrenaline-charged rollercoaster through history's seismic first nights, exploring how individual artists can change and shape the story of culture - and allow us to see ourselves in new ways.

It tells of times when 'the air between people seems to alter' as art achieves profound change, across the globe and across history.

Dominic Dromgoole has created a radical and fresh canon. He begins in New York in 1963, as Lorraine Hansberry remakes American theatre and a nation's perception of race. And then, as the lights go up, we find ourselves in Renaissance Florence, watching Michelangelo's David being hauled into the Piazza della Signoria. The dust settles and we are transported to the birth of theatre in fifth-century Athens - and then to Paris to meet with Diaghilev and Stravinsky for the Rite of Spring. We witness kabuki's creation, as a radical women's performance, in Kyoto; the Sex Pistols shattering Thatcherite Britain at Manchester's Free Trade Hall; and watch as Hitchcock directs Psycho.]]> 384 Dominic Dromgoole 1788166809 Kerim 0 to-read 3.63 Astonish Me!: First Nights That Changed the World
author: Dominic Dromgoole
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.63
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date added: 2025/01/08
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]]> Not a River 203176874
One of the Best Books of 2020 in **ClarĂ­n **and La NaciĂłn. Shortlisted for the Mario Vargas Llosa Novel Prize]]> 99 Selva Almada 1913867455 Kerim 0 to-read 3.73 2020 Not a River
author: Selva Almada
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/26
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]]> Two Hours 199634644
When Clara’s parents transplant her from Paris to New York at the age of sixteen, a fleeting encounter with a young man seems, for a brief period, to open up new possibilities. As she strives to fulfil her vocation as a writer, and as she struggles in later years with the cumulative constraints of an unhappy marriage, Clara’s imagination is strangely haunted by a life that might have been.

Tracing Clara’s story from her adolescence to her experience of motherhood, and then through to a pivotal bid for freedom, Two Hours is an exceptional novel. Witty, perceptive, and profoundly humane, this is the work of a writer at the height of her powers.]]> 160 Alba Arikha 1999798147 Kerim 0 to-read 4.24 Two Hours
author: Alba Arikha
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality]]> 176443264 Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.

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

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

In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “Halo effect� cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the “Sunk Cost Fallacy� can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.]]> 259 Amanda Montell 1668007975 Kerim 3 3.45 2024 The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
author: Amanda Montell
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> Uncanny Valley 45186565 The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age

In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial--left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.

Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.

Part coming-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.

Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.]]> 281 Anna Wiener 0374278016 Kerim 0 to-read 3.64 2020 Uncanny Valley
author: Anna Wiener
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/15
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]]> Imperium 13346578
In »Imperium« erzählt Christian Kracht eine Aussteigergeschichte in den deutschen Kolonien der Südsee, indem er virtuos und gut gelaunt mit den Formen des historischen Abenteuerromans eines Melville, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson oder Jack London spielt.

Die Welt wollte er retten, eine neue Religion stiften, gar ein eigenes Reich gründen � eine Utopie verwirklichen, die nicht nur ihn selbst, sondern die Menschheit erlöst, fernab der zerstörerischen europäischen Zivilisation, die gerade aufbricht in die Moderne und in die Katastrophen des Ersten und Zweiten Weltkriegs. Doch in der Abgeschiedenheit der Südsee, in einer Kolonie des wilhelminischen Deutschland, gerät ein von einem vegetarischen Spleen besessener Sonnenanbeter in eine Spirale des Wahnsinns, die die Abgründe des 20. Jahrhunderts ahnungsvoll vorwegnimmt. In seinem vierten Roman zeichnet Christian Kracht die groteske, verlorene Welt von Deutsch-Neuguinea, eine Welt, die dem Untergang geweiht ist und in der sich doch unsere Gegenwart seltsam spiegelt. Zugleich aber ist Christian Krachts »Imperium« eine erstaunliche, immer wieder auch komische Studie über die Zerbrechlichkeit und Vermessenheit menschlichen Handelns.]]> 242 Christian Kracht 3462041312 Kerim 0 to-read 3.75 2012 Imperium
author: Christian Kracht
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> Eurotrash 55834180
»Also, ich musste wieder auf ein paar Tage nach Zürich. Es war ganz schrecklich. Aus Nervosität darüber hatte ich mich das gesamte verlängerte Wochenende über so unwohl gefühlt, dass ich unter starker Verstopfung litt. Dazu muss ich sagen, dass ich vor einem Vierteljahrhundert eine Geschichte geschrieben hatte, die ich aus irgendeinem Grund, der mir nun nicht mehr einfällt, ›Faserland� genannt hatte. Es endet in Zürich, sozusagen auf dem Zürichsee, relativ traumatisch.« Christian Krachts lange erwarteter neuer Roman beginnt mit einer Erinnerung: vor 25 Jahren irrte in »Faserland« ein namenloser Ich-Erzähler (war es Christian Kracht?) durch ein von allen Geistern verlassenes Deutschland, von Sylt bis über die Schweizer Grenze nach Zürich. In »Eurotrash« geht derselbe Erzähler erneut auf eine Reise � diesmal nicht nur ins Innere des eigenen Ichs, sondern in die Abgründe der eigenen Familie, deren Geschichte sich auf tragische, komische und bisweilen spektakuläre Weise immer wieder mit der Geschichte dieses Landes kreuzt. »Eurotrash« ist ein berührendes Meisterwerk von existentieller Wucht und sarkastischem Humor.]]> 209 Christian Kracht 3462050834 Kerim 0 to-read 3.65 2021 Eurotrash
author: Christian Kracht
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> <![CDATA[From Here to the Great Unknown]]> 204905217
A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.]]> 304 Lisa Marie Presley 0593733878 Kerim 5 4.26 2024 From Here to the Great Unknown
author: Lisa Marie Presley
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel]]> 212403610 A legendary editor’s survey of the twentieth-century novel and how it shaped the fiction of the future

'Edwin Frank’s masterly account of the novel gone modern and the modern gone global is a critical history of the last literary century. Epic, personal, smart, wise, witty' JOSHUA COHEN

'Stranger Than Fiction sizzles with passion as it tracks the contortions of a volatile form in a volatile time' TOM McCARTHY

'Living as we do in a world where book culture is on the decline, Stranger Than Fiction comes as a comfort, a solace and a revelation: a wealth of remarkable writing about even more remarkable writing' VIVIAN GORNICK

For more than two decades, Edwin Frank has introduced readers to forgotten or overlooked texts as director of the acclaimed publisher New York Review Books. In Stranger than Fiction, he offers a legendary editor’s survey of the key works that defined the twentieth-century novel.

Starting with Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Frank shows how its twitchy, self-undermining narrator established a voice that would echo through the coming century. He illuminates Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway’s reinvention of the American sentence; Colette and André Gide’s subversions of traditional gender roles; and the monumental ambitions of works such as Mrs Dalloway, The Magic Mountain and The Man Without Qualities to encompass their times. Also included are Japan's Natsume Soseki and Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe, as well as Vasily Grossman, Hans Erich Nossack and Elsa Morante. Later chapters range from Ralph Ellison and Marguerite Yourcenar to Gabriel García Márquez and WG Sebald.

Frank makes sense of the century by mixing biographical portraiture, cultural history and close encounters with great works of art. In so doing he renews our appreciation of the paradigmatic art form of our times.]]> 454 Edwin Frank 1529925738 Kerim 0 to-read 4.50 2024 Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel
author: Edwin Frank
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Paris in Ruins: Love, War and the Birth of Impressionism]]> 214991711 Paris in Ruins, a book of great narrative sweep and vivid detail, Impressionism was a complex reaction to an age of violence, civil war, and political intrigue.

From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the â€Terrible Yearâ€�, Paris and its people were cut off, starved, and forced to surrender by Germans—before rebel republicans established a breakaway government or Commune. After street fighting and the burning of central Paris, the republicans were crushed by the French army.

In Paris in Ruins Smee tells this story through the eyes of these key artists, with a special focus on the intimate, enigmatic relationship between Manet—the father of Impressionism—and Morisot, the group’s only female member in its early years. An indelible portrait of the city, Paris in Ruins captures the shifting passions and politics of the art world, and reveals how the chaos of that year had an incalculable effect on the development of modern art.]]> 368 Sebastian Smee 1923058053 Kerim 0 to-read 4.67 Paris in Ruins: Love, War and the Birth of Impressionism
author: Sebastian Smee
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/12
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]]> Human Acts 28172483 Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend’s corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalized country searches for a voice.

Human Acts is a riveting, poetic and unrelentingly powerful examination of humanity at its most appalling, and its most hopeful. It is an act of extraordinary resistance and a refusal to forget.

In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma. Throughout Human Acts the ghost memory of the boy Dong-Ho wanders, refusing to disappear, and so in turn other characters refuse to stop asking â€Why?â€� Why does power exert itself with brutality? Why does the state silence the enquiries of the bereaved? Why does remembrance pose such a threat to the powerful?

Human Acts is a radically brave novel about an atrocious episode in Korean history, but it is also a universal book, utterly modern but profoundly timeless. Already a controversial bestseller and award-winning book in Korea, it confirms Han Kang as a writer of immense importance.]]> 224 Han Kang 1846275962 Kerim 0 to-read 4.22 2014 Human Acts
author: Han Kang
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> All My Precious Madness 218132975 242 Mark Bowles 191311158X Kerim 5 3.91 All My Precious Madness
author: Mark Bowles
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
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]]> The Secret Hours 123727738
But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain.

Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.

TheĚýSecretĚýHours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron’s body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtakingĚýsecretĚýhistory that Slough House fans have been waiting for.]]> 384 Mick Herron 164129521X Kerim 4 4.08 2023 The Secret Hours
author: Mick Herron
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> Die, My Love 36098957 Die, My Love faces all this with a raw intensity.

It's not a question of if a breaking point will be reached, but rather when and how violent a form will it take?]]> 128 Ariana Harwicz 1999722787 Kerim 5 3.62 2012 Die, My Love
author: Ariana Harwicz
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> Of Fathers and Fugitives 199753976 195 S.J. Naudé 0798183969 Kerim 0 to-read 3.59 Of Fathers and Fugitives
author: S.J. Naudé
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.59
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Odyssey (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #4)]]> 55886800 Pre-order the final book in Stephen Fry's acclaimed internationally bestselling Greek myths series telling the story of The Odyssey—Can a hero find his way home? Follow Odysseus after he leaves the fallen city of Troy and takes ten long dramatic years—battling monsters, the temptations of goddesses and suffering the curse of Poseidon—to voyage home to his wife Penelope on the island of Ithaca.


Praise for Stephen Fry's Greek Myths

“Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased� � The Times'

“Brilliant . . . all hail Stephen Fry� � The Daily Mail

“A head-spinning marathon of legends� � The Guardian

“A rollicking good read� � The Independent

“An Olympian feat. The gods seem to be smiling on Fry - his myths are definitely a hit� � The Evening Standard
]]> 400 Stephen Fry 1405948418 Kerim 4 4.31 2024 Odyssey (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #4)
author: Stephen Fry
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Kerim 3 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
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]]> The Peacock and the Sparrow 62919887
During the Arab Spring, an American spy's final mission goes dangerously awry in this "crackling debut thriller" (The New Yorker) written by a former CIA officer and hailed as "an instant classic" (Paul Vidich, author of Beirut Station).

Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain off the coast of Saudi Arabia for his final tour, he's anxious to dispense with his mission—uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency against the monarchy. But then he meets Almaisa, a beautiful and enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask.

When his trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, Collins finds himself drawn deep into the conflict. His budding romance with Almaisa—and his loyalties—are upended; in an instant, he's caught in the crosswinds of a revolution. Drawing on all his skills as a spymaster, he sets out to learn the truth behind the Arab Spring, win Almaisa's love, and uncover the murky border where Bahrain's secrets end and America's begin.]]> 308 I.S. Berry 1982194545 Kerim 0 to-read 3.61 2023 The Peacock and the Sparrow
author: I.S. Berry
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Moscow X (Damascus Station #2)]]> 77265038 454 David McCloskey 1324050756 Kerim 0 to-read 4.11 2023 Moscow X (Damascus Station #2)
author: David McCloskey
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Box Office Poison: Hollywood's Story in a Century of Flops]]> 214918704 Box Office Poison tells an alternative history of Hollywood, through a century of its most notable flops.

Freaks, Land of the Pharaohs, Dune, Speed 2, Catwoman, what can these films tell us about the Hollywood system, the public's appetite -- or lack of it -- and the circumstances that saw such box office disasters actually made? Away from the canon, here is the definitive take on these ill-fated, but essential celluloid failures.]]> 387 Tim Robey 0571381227 Kerim 3 3.61 2024 Box Office Poison: Hollywood's Story in a Century of Flops
author: Tim Robey
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
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]]> Society of the Spectacle 53092 124 Guy Debord 0946061122 Kerim 0 to-read 4.00 1967 Society of the Spectacle
author: Guy Debord
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Flying Too Close to the Sun: Myths in Art from Classical to Contemporary]]> 36423228 264 James Cahill 0714875236 Kerim 0 currently-reading 4.37 Flying Too Close to the Sun: Myths in Art from Classical to Contemporary
author: James Cahill
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The American No: Stories 214152082 Eight masterful stories of love and loss, drama and glamour, and hope and rejection from the acclaimed actor and “supremely gifted writer� (The Sunday Times, London) Rupert Everett.

In his first, glorious collection of stories, Rupert Everett takes us on exhilarating journeys with a cast of extraordinary characters. From Oscar Wilde’s last night in Paris to the ferociously unforgiving world of a Los Angeles talent agency and beyond, these stories are evocative, moving, and tender. Brilliantly witty, elegiac, and drawing from the wealth of film and TV ideas Everett has worked on over the course of his illustrious career, The American No will delight and surprise his many fans.]]> 320 Rupert Everett 1668076454 Kerim 0 to-read 3.13 2024 The American No: Stories
author: Rupert Everett
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Scattered All Over the Earth 58470813
As she searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue, Hiruko soon makes new friends. Her troupe travels to France, encountering an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra-nationalist named Breivik; unrequited love; Kakuzo robots; red herrings; uranium; an Andalusian matador. Episodic and mesmerizing scenes flash vividly along, and soon they’re all next off to Stockholm.]]> 256 Yōko Tawada 0811229289 Kerim 0 to-read 3.28 2018 Scattered All Over the Earth
author: YĹŤko Tawada
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Thérèse Desqueyroux 18342937
Nobel-prize winner François Mauriac's masterpiece is Thérèse Desqueyroux, the story of a complex woman trapped by provincial life. First published in 1927, this astonishing and daring novel has echoes of Madame Bovary and has recently been made into a ravishing film starring Amélie actress Audrey Tautou.]]> 128 François Mauriac 0141394056 Kerim 0 to-read 3.65 1927 Thérèse Desqueyroux
author: François Mauriac
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1927
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder]]> 58045504 An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here.

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.]]> 480 Evelyn Waugh 0141182482 Kerim 4 4.04 1945 Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1945
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage]]> 62192505
“This book takes you so close to the action that you can smell the sweat, cigar smoke, and bad cologne that brought these movies to life.”—Paul Scheer

The Last Action Heroes opens in May 1990 in Cannes, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone waltzing together, cheered on by a crowd of famous faces. After years of bitter combat—Stallone once threw a bowl of flowers at Schwarzenegger’s head, and the body count in Schwarzenegger’s Commando was increased so the film would “have a bigger dick than Rambo ”—the world’s biggest action stars have at last made peace.

In this wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie, Nick de Semlyen charts Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War. He also reveals fascinating untold stories of the colorful characters who ascended in their high-kickers Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan, glowering tough guys Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal, and quipping troublemakers Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis. But as time rolled on, the era of the invincible action hero who used muscle, martial arts, or the perfect weapon to save the day began to fade. When Jurassic Park trounced Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero in 1993, the glory days of these macho men—and the vision of masculinity they celebrated—were officially over.

Drawing on candid interviews with the action stars themselves, plus their collaborators, friends, and foes, The Last Action Heroes is a no-holds-barred account of a period in Hollywood history when there were no limits to the heights of fame these men achieved, or to the mayhem they wrought, on-screen and off.]]> 352 Nick de Semlyen 059323880X Kerim 3 4.10 2023 The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage
author: Nick de Semlyen
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/15
date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> Prophet 121021578
This is Prophet. It knows when you were happiest. It gives life to your fondest memories and uses them to destroy you. But who has created it? And what do they want?

An all-American diner appears overnight in a remote British field. It's brightly lit, warm and inviting but it has no power, no water, no connection to the real world. It's like a memory made flesh - a nostalgic flight of fancy. More and more objects toys, fairground rides, pets and other treasured mementos of the past.

And the deaths quickly follow.
Something is bringing these memories to life, then stifling innocent people with their own joy. This is a weapon like no other. But nobody knows who created it, or why.

Sunil Rao seems a surprising choice of investigator. Chaotic and unpredictable, the former agent is the antithesis of his partner Colonel Adam Rubenstein, the model of a military man. But Sunil has the unique ability to distinguish truth from in objects, words and people, in the past and in real time. And Adam is the only one who truly knows him, after a troubled past together. Now, as they battle this strange new reality, they are drawn closer than ever to defend what they both hold most dear.

For Prophet can weaponise the past. But only love will protect the future.]]> 464 Sin Blaché 152990143X Kerim 2 3.88 2023 Prophet
author: Sin Blaché
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Wrong Hands (Detective Miller #2)]]> 197525319
The second rip-roaring mystery from multi-award-winning number international bestseller Mark Billingham starring Detective Miller: unique, unconventional, and criminally underestimated...

Unconventional Detective Declan Miller has a problem. Well, two problems. First, there's his dead wife and her yet-to-be-solved murder. He really should stop talking to her ghosts...

Second, and most pressing, a young man has just appeared on his doorstep with a briefcase . . . containing a pair of severed hands. Miller knows this case is proof of a contract killing commissioned by local ne'er do well Wayne Cutler—a man he suspects might also be responsible for his wife's death. Now Miller has leverage, but unfortunately, he also has something that both Cutler and a villainous fast-food kingpin are desperate to get hold of.

Sprinkle in a Midsomer Murders-obsessed hitman, a psychotic welder, and a woman driven over the edge by a wayward Crème Egg, and Miller is in a mess that even he might not be able to dance his way out of.]]> 405 Mark Billingham 0802163092 Kerim 3 4.08 2024 The Wrong Hands (Detective Miller #2)
author: Mark Billingham
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, MieczysĹ‚aw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inĚýGörbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Kerim 0 to-read 3.66 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Perfect Golden Circle 59386098 From a British literary sensation, the story of two rural outcasts and the crop circles they create over the course of a long, hot and very strange summer.

Summer 1989, rural England, the tail end of long decade of mass unemployment, class war and rebellion, and the continued destruction of the English countryside.

Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men - traumatized ex-soldier Calvert, and affable and chaotic Redbone - set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns, designs so intricate that they inspire the kind of awe that the ancient Gothic cathedral in nearby Salisbury once inspired.

As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation - and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.

But as harvest-time beckons -- and as media and the authorities begin to take too much interest in their work-- Calvert and Redbone have to race against time to finish the most stunning and original crop circle ever conceived: the Honeycomb Double Helix.

Moving and exhilarating, and recalling the apocalyptic visions of William Blake, Alan Moore and Cormac MacCarthy, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating, tender and slyly witty novel about the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.]]> 211 Benjamin Myers 1612199585 Kerim 5 3.95 2022 The Perfect Golden Circle
author: Benjamin Myers
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
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]]> A Place of Greater Safety 101921 749 Hilary Mantel 0312426399 Kerim 0 to-read 3.98 1992 A Place of Greater Safety
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Duel: Now a major film starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer]]> 21307797 The gripping, atmospheric true story of the "duel to end all duels" in medieval France: a trial by combat pitting a knight against a squire accused of violating the knight's beautiful young wife.



In 1386, a few days after Christmas, a massive crowd gathered at a Paris monastery to watch the two men fight a duel to the death - a trial by combat meant to 'prove' which man's cause was right in God's sight. The dramatic true story of the knight, the squire, and the lady unfolds during the tumultuous fourteenth century, a time of war, plague, and anarchy, as well as of honour, chivalry, and courtly love. The notorious quarrel appears in many histories of France, but no writer has recounted it in full, until now.


]]> 268 Eric Jager Kerim 0 to-read 4.24 2004 The Last Duel: Now a major film starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer
author: Eric Jager
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> The Sea, the Sea 55566310 With an introduction by John Burnside

When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroying her marriage. His equilibrium is further disturbed when his friends all decide to come and keep him company and Charles finds his seaside idyll severely threatened by his obsessions.]]> 595 Iris Murdoch Kerim 0 to-read 3.96 1978 The Sea, the Sea
author: Iris Murdoch
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Girl A 56448913 334 Abigail Dean Kerim 0 to-read 3.95 2021 Girl A
author: Abigail Dean
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Matrix 58815085 Lauren Groff returns with her exhilarating first new novel since the groundbreaking Fates and Furies. Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, 17-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.
]]> 262 Lauren Groff 1473558506 Kerim 0 to-read 3.83 2021 Matrix
author: Lauren Groff
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Luster 53680822
Razor sharp, provocatively page-turning and surprisingly tender, Raven Leilani's Luster is a painfully funny debut about what it means to be young now.]]> 203 Raven Leilani Kerim 0 to-read 3.51 2020 Luster
author: Raven Leilani
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Spring (Seasonal #3) 41256899 SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER A once-in-a-generation series, Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet is a tour-de-force about love, time, art, politics, and how we live now. 'Her best yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and present with a chorus of voices' Observer What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times? Spring. The great connective. With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door. The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal.Discover all four Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer. Ali Smith's new novel, Companion piece, is available now.'An astonishing accomplishment and a book for all seasons' Independent'Smith is a masterful storyteller . . . Savour it' Evening Standard'Infectious in its energy and warmth' Daily Telegraph]]> 320 Ali Smith Kerim 0 to-read 4.17 2019 Spring (Seasonal #3)
author: Ali Smith
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> Black Cat Bone 12553973
Drawing on sources as various as the paintings of Pieter Brueghel and the lyrics of Delta blues, Black Cat Bone examines varieties of love, faith, hope and illusion, to suggest an unusual possibility: that when the search for what we expected to find � in the forest or in our own hearts � ends in failure, we can now begin the hard and disciplined quest for what is actually there.

Full of risk and wonder, Black Cat Bone shows the range of Burnside's abilities, but also strikes out for new territories. He remains consistently, though, one of our finest living lyric poets and each of these astonishing poems is as clear and memorable as 'a silver bracelet // falling for days / through an inch and a half / of ice'.]]> 80 John Burnside 0224093851 Kerim 0 to-read 4.15 2011 Black Cat Bone
author: John Burnside
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> Reptile Memoirs 59605628
Thirteen years later, in the nearby town of Kristiansund, Mariam Lind goes on a shopping trip with her eleven-year-old daughter, Iben. Following an argument Mariam storms off, expecting her young daughter to make her own way home . . . but she never does. Detective Roe Olsvik, new to the Kristiansund police department, is assigned to the case of Iben's disappearance. As he interrogates Mariam, he instantly suspects her - but there is much more to this case and these characters than their outer appearances would suggest.

A biting and constantly shifting tale of family secrets, rebirth and the legacy of trauma, Reptile Memoirs is a brilliant exploration of the cold-bloodedness of humanity.]]> 447 Silje O. Ulstein 1611858844 Kerim 0 to-read 4.09 2021 Reptile Memoirs
author: Silje O. Ulstein
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)]]> 45314417
Jackson Brodie, a private investigator and former police detective, is quietly contemplating life as a divorced father when he is flung into the midst of these resurrected old crimes. Julia and Amelia Land enlist Jackson’s help to find out the truth about their younger sister. They embroil him in the complexities of their own jealousies, obsessions and lust.

Another woman named Shirley needs Jackson to help find her lost niece. Jackson meets solicitor Theo Wyre whose daughter, Laura, was murdered in his office and is desperate for Jackson to help him lay Laura's ghost to rest.

As he starts his investigations Jackson has the sinister feeling that someone is following him. In digging into the past Jackson seems to have unwittingly threatened his own future. This wonderfully crafted, intricately plotted novel is heartbreaking, uplifting, full of suspense and often very funny.]]> 405 Kate Atkinson Kerim 0 to-read 4.06 2004 Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The House of Gucci: A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed]]> 19386671 Did Patrizia Reggiani murder her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci, in 1995 because his spending was wildly out of control? Did she do it because her glamorous ex was preparing to marry his mistress, Paola Franchi? Or is there a possibility she didn't do it at all?

In this gripping account of the ascent, eventual collapse, and resurrection of the Gucci dynasty, Sara Gay Forden takes us behind the scenes of the trial and exposes the passions, the power, and the vulnerabilities of the greatest fashion family of our times.

]]> 400 Sara Gay Forden 0062222678 Kerim 0 to-read 3.74 2000 The House of Gucci: A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed
author: Sara Gay Forden
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> Americanah 33601829
Source: chimamanda.com]]> 610 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Kerim 0 to-read 4.37 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> Notes on an Execution 59527287
Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. He hoped it wouldn’t end like this, not for him.

Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the homicide detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake.

Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.]]> 309 Danya Kukafka 1474625983 Kerim 0 to-read 4.13 2022 Notes on an Execution
author: Danya Kukafka
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2022
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]]> Companion piece 60779514 The unmissable new work from Ali Smith, following the dazzling Man Booker-shortlisted Seasonal quartet


'A story is never an answer. A story is always a question.'


Here we are in extraordinary times.
Is this history?

What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other?
What have we lost?
What stays with us?
What does it take to unlock our future?

Following her astonishing quartet of Seasonal novels, Ali Smith again lights a way for us through the nightmarish now, in a vital celebration of companionship in all its forms.

'Every hello, like every voice, holds its story ready, waiting.']]> 228 Ali Smith 0241541360 Kerim 0 to-read 3.99 2022 Companion piece
author: Ali Smith
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
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]]> Anathem 11218177
But they now prepare to open the Concent's gates to the outside world, in celebration of a once-a-decade rite. Suddenly, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world - as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet...and beyond.]]> 1010 Neal Stephenson Kerim 0 to-read 4.32 2008 Anathem
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2008
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]]> Agency (Jackpot #2) 40179612 THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING NOVEL FROM WILLIAM GIBSON, THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF NEUROMANCER-----San Francisco, 2017. Clinton's in the White House, Brexit never happened - and Verity Jane's got herself a new job.They call Verity 'the app-whisperer,' and she's just been hired to evaluate a pair-of-glasses-cum-digital-assistant called Eunice...Only Eunice has other ideas.Pretty soon, Verity realises that Eunice is smarter than anyone she's ever met. Which is just as well since suddenly some very bad people are after Verity.Meanwhile, in a post-apocalyptic London a century from now, PR fixer Wilf Netherton is tasked with interfering in the alternative past in which Verity and Eunice exist. It appears something nasty is about to happen there - and fixing it will require not only Eunice's unique human-AI skillset but also a little help from the future.A future that Verity fears may never be . . .-----'Dazzling, astoundingly inventive' The Times'Wild, richly satisfying' Guardian'Terrific' Spectator'Rattles along with great pace and suspense' Sunday Times'One of our greatest science-fiction writers' New York Times'A sensual, remarkably visual ride' Guardian'Among our most fascinating novelists' Daily Telegraph]]> 406 William Gibson Kerim 0 to-read 4.03 2020 Agency (Jackpot #2)
author: William Gibson
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Open Water 55776846
At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.]]> 151 Caleb Azumah Nelson Kerim 0 to-read 3.90 2021 Open Water
author: Caleb Azumah Nelson
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Red Queen (Antonia Scott, #1) 59413796
Antonia Scott is special. Very special. She is not a policewoman or a lawyer. She has never wielded a weapon or carried a badge, and yet, she has solved dozens of crimes.

But it's been awhile since Antonia left her attic in Madrid. The things she has lost are much more important to her than the things awaiting her outside.

She also doesn't receive visitors. That's why she really, really doesn't like it when she hears unknown footsteps coming up the stairs.

Whoever it is, Antonia is sure that they are coming to look for her.

And she likes that even less.

Juan GĂłmez-Jurado's internationally bestselling thriller series has sold more than 1.5 million copies to date in Spain alone. Translated by Nick Caistor.]]> 392 Juan GĂłmez-Jurado 1529093651 Kerim 0 to-read 4.12 2018 Red Queen (Antonia Scott, #1)
author: Juan GĂłmez-Jurado
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Mrs. Dalloway 20748549 122 Virginia Woolf 8074844978 Kerim 0 to-read 3.60 1925 Mrs. Dalloway
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1925
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]]> Lessons 60863621
Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.

From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means - music, literature, friends, sex, politics and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?

Epic, mesmerising and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times - a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.]]> 484 Ian McEwan 1529193826 Kerim 0 to-read 4.24 2022 Lessons
author: Ian McEwan
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.24
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]]> Summer (Seasonal Quartet, #4) 51219017 The unmissable finale to Ali Smith's dazzling literary tour de force: the Seasonal quartet concludes in 2020 with Summer

PRAISE FOR SEASONAL:

'The novel of the year is obviously Autumn' Observer on Autumn

'Masterful... Winter is utterly original' New York Times Book Review on Winter

'Luminous, generous, hope-filled... A dazzling hymn to hope. Ali Smith is lighting us a path out of the nightmarish now' Observer on Spring

'Smith's seasonal quartet of novels is a bold and brilliant experiment' Independent



“A prose poem in praise of memory, forgiveness, getting the joke and seizing the moment.�
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

In the present, Sacha knows the world’s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile, the world’s in meltdown­—and the real meltdown hasn’t even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they’re living on borrowed time.

This is a story about people on the brink of change. They’re family, but they think they’re strangers. So: Where does family begin? And what do people who think they’ve got nothing in common have in common?]]> 400 Ali Smith Kerim 0 to-read 4.12 2020 Summer (Seasonal Quartet, #4)
author: Ali Smith
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.12
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]]> On Chesil Beach 11165610 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE AND NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREIt is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night to come and, unbeknownst to them both, the events of the evening will haunt them for the rest of their lives.'McEwan brings Florence and Edward touchingly alive for us' Guardian]]> 226 Ian McEwan Kerim 0 to-read 3.94 2007 On Chesil Beach
author: Ian McEwan
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Beauty Of The Husband (Cape Poetry)]]> 20116032 Since Glass and God, which was her first full-length collection published in Britain and which was nominated for the 1998 Forward Prize, Anne Carson has published a book a year to extraordinary critical acclaim. Her last two volumes, Autobiography of Red and Men in the Off Hours were both shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and she has received numerous North American awards, including the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.



In her brilliant new book, she tells a single story. A long-time love, now a crumbling marriage, unfolds in 29 'tangos' of narrative verse, informed by the romanticism of Keats, the wisdom of the classical world and, most importatnly, by Carson's own unique sensibility.



The unnamed narrator - sometimes 'I', sometimes 'the wife' - speaks of the man she calls only 'the husband', illuminating moments that are by turn sensual, erotic, painful and heartbreaking. The Beauty of the Husband is a work that explores these oldest of lyrical subjects - beauty, desire, love, betrayal - with freshness and devastating power.

]]> 162 Anne Carson Kerim 0 to-read 4.00 2001 The Beauty Of The Husband (Cape Poetry)
author: Anne Carson
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
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]]> <![CDATA[The Magic Mountain: As Seen on BBC Between the Covers]]> 39991247 As Seen on BBC Between the CoversThis European masterpiece from the Nobel prizewinner explores the lure and degeneration of ideas in an introverted community on the eve of the First World War.Hans Castorp is 'a perfectly ordinary, if engaging young man' when he goes to visit his cousin in an exclusive sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. What should have been a three week trip turns into a seven year stay. Hans falls in love and becomes intoxicated with the ideas he hears at the clinic - ideas which will strain and crack apart in a world on the verge of the First World War.'Magnificent... a beautiful, feverish account of obsessive love' Jonathan Coe, Guardian'The greatest German novelist of the 20th century' Spectator]]> 739 Thomas Mann Kerim 0 to-read 3.77 1924 The Magic Mountain: As Seen on BBC Between the Covers
author: Thomas Mann
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1924
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]]> In Memoriam 61034676
When Gaunt's mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches. Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.

An epic tale of the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.]]> 380 Alice Winn 024156784X Kerim 0 to-read 4.56 2023 In Memoriam
author: Alice Winn
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
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]]> Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2) 60751149 Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. Alex Stern is back and the Ivy League is going straight to hell.

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy "Alex" Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory—even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.

Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can't call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies' most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren't just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she'll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university's very walls.

Thick with history and packed with Bardugo's signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.]]> 481 Leigh Bardugo 1473228042 Kerim 0 to-read 4.24 2023 Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
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]]> Close to Home 62609610 WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023
WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION 2023
WATERSTONES IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE EWART-BIGGS PRIZE 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS� CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024
LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2024
ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE TIMES AND IRISH TIMES

Sean is back. Back in Belfast and back into old habits. Back on the mad all-nighters, the borrowed tenners and missing rent, the casual jobs that always fall through. Back in these scarred streets, where the promised prosperity of peacetime has never arrived. Back among his brothers, his ma, and all the things they never talk about. Until one night Sean finds himself at a party � dog-tired, surrounded by jeering strangers, his back against the wall � and he makes a big mistake.

'Staggeringly humane, unfaltering, taut and tender... [It] feels like that rarest of a genuinely necessary book' Guardian

'Every detail rings true, every character is fleshy and real and heartbreaking... Michael Magee has a remarkable talent' Sunday Times]]> 277 Michael Magee Kerim 0 to-read 3.97 2023 Close to Home
author: Michael Magee
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
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]]> The Line of Beauty 25327440 Winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2004, a classic novel about class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatcher's 1980s Britain.


There was the soft glare of the flash -- twice -- three times -- a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, 'Prime Minister, would you like to dance?



In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife Rachel and their children Toby and Catherine. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens' world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty.



The Line of Beauty is Alan Hollinghurst's Man Booker Prize-winning masterpiece. It is a novel that defines a decade, exploring with peerless style a young man's collision with his own desires, and with a world he can never truly belong to.

]]> 524 Alan Hollinghurst Kerim 0 to-read 4.09 2004 The Line of Beauty
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2004
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]]> Meantime 60066611
Their investigation sends them on a bewildering expedition that takes in Scottish radical politics, Artificial Intelligence, cults, secret agents, smugglers and vegan record shops.]]> 359 Frankie Boyle Kerim 0 to-read 3.54 Meantime
author: Frankie Boyle
name: Kerim
average rating: 3.54
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]]> The Marriage Portrait 60796177 'I thought I had made myself clear. I want something that conveys her majesty, her bloodline. Do you understand? She is no ordinary mortal. Treat her thus.'

Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de' Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings. But when her older sister dies on the eve of marriage to Alfonso d'Este, heir to the Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: Alfonso is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appears before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in uncomfortable finery for the painting which is to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferrarese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, her future hangs entirely in the balance.]]> 448 Maggie O'Farrell Kerim 0 to-read 4.32 2022 The Marriage Portrait
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Kerim
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
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]]>