jen's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 24 Mar 2025 09:06:39 -0700 60 jen's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Early Work 36263594 Sentimental Education for our time

For young writers of a certain temperament—if they haven’t had such notions beaten out of them by MFA programs and the Internet—the delusion persists that great writing must be sought in what W. B. Yeats once called the “foul rag and bone shop of the heart.� That’s where Peter Cunningham has been looking for inspiration for his novel—that is, when he isn’t teaching at the local women’s prison, walking his dog, getting high, and wondering whether it’s time to tie the knot with his college girlfriend, a medical student whose night shifts have become a standing rebuke to his own lack of direction. When Peter meets Leslie, a sexual adventurer taking a break from her fiancé, he gets a glimpse of what he wishes and imagines himself to be: a writer of talent and nerve. Her rag-and-bone shop may be as squalid as his own, but at least she knows her way around the shelves. Over the course of a Virginia summer, their charged, increasingly intimate friendship opens the door to difficult questions about love and literary ambition.

With a keen irony reminiscent of Sam Lipsyte or Lorrie Moore, and a romantic streak as wide as Roberto Bolaño’s, Andrew Martin’s Early Work marks the debut of a writer as funny and attentive as any novelist of his generation.]]> 240 Andrew Martin 0374146128 jen 3 3.51 2018 Early Work
author: Andrew Martin
name: jen
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
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]]> Peter Pan 34268 Peter Pan, a diferencia de todos los demás, es un niño que se niega a crecer. Él vive con los niños perdidos y con el hada Campanita en el país de Nunca Jamás. Siempre está en busca de nuevas aventuras y también de una madre que cuide de todos y les cuente relatos para dormir.
Una noche, después de que Peter se encuentra con los hermanos Darling, los invita a que lo acompañen en el viaje más fantástico de toda su vida: volar hacia Nunca Jamás para conocer a las engreídas sirenas, jugar con los indios pieles rojas y luchar a muerte contra los terribles piratas.

]]> 155 J.M. Barrie 0805072454 jen 4 4.06 1911 Peter Pan
author: J.M. Barrie
name: jen
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1911
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention� and How to Think Deeply Again]]> 57933306 Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening--and how to get our attention back.

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

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

Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus--as individuals, and as a society--if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.]]> 357 Johann Hari 0593138511 jen 5 4.22 2022 Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again
author: Johann Hari
name: jen
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read [and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did]]]> 42348818 This book is about how we have relationships with our children, what gets in the way of a good connection and what can enhance it


The most influential relationships are between parents and children. Yet for so many families, these relationships go can wrong and it may be difficult to get back on track.

In The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad that You Did), renowned psychotherapist Philippa Perry shows how strong and loving bonds are made with your children and how such attachments give a better chance of good mental health, in childhood and beyond.

She'll help you to:
- Understand how your own upbringing may be impacting upon your parenting style
- Contain, express, accept and validate your own and your child's feelings
- Understand that all behaviour is communication
- Break negative cycles and patterns
- Accept that you will make mistakes and what to do about them

Almost every parent loves their children, but by following the refreshing, sage and sane advice and steps in this book you will also find yourselves liking one another too.

]]> 240 Philippa Perry jen 5 4.10 2019 The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read [and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did]
author: Philippa Perry
name: jen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> You're Safe Here 199798281 Wellness, motherhood, and technology converge in a future California as three women’s seemingly innocuous decisions have consequences greater than they could imagine.

In 2060, the WellPod is the latest launch from the largest tech company the world has ever seen—a fleet of floating personal paradises scattered throughout the Pacific Ocean, focused entirely on health, solitude, and relaxation. Created by an enigmatic founder who will stop at nothing to ensure her company’s success, it is the long-awaited pinnacle of wellness technology. For newly pregnant Maggie, the six-week program is the perfect chance to get away…especially since the baby isn’t her partner’s.

Noa Behar isn’t a perfect fiancée. She’s too distracted, too focused on her work in helping program the WellPod to give Maggie the attention she deserves. But when she discovers something rotten beneath WellPod’s shiny exterior—a history of faulty tech and dangerous cover-ups—she knows one thing: She’ll do whatever it takes to keep Maggie safe.]]> 320 Leslie Stephens 166803431X jen 3 3.31 2024 You're Safe Here
author: Leslie Stephens
name: jen
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> Brightly Shining 208580627 192 Ingvild H. Rishøi 0802163491 jen 4 3.67 2021 Brightly Shining
author: Ingvild H. Rishøi
name: jen
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> The Anthropologists 195391751
As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, spends her days gathering footage from the neighborhood park like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,� chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.� Life back in Asya and Manu's respective home countries continues-parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly beyond their reach. But the world they're making in their new city is growing, too, they hope, into something that will be distinctly theirs. As they open up the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?

Hailed by Lauren Groff and Marina Abramovic, Savas's fine, precise craft turns The Anthropologist's simple apartment search into a soulful, often funny, examination of modern coupledom, home-building, and expat life in the universal modern city.]]> 192 AysegĂĽl Savas 163973306X jen 5 3.88 2024 The Anthropologists
author: AysegĂĽl Savas
name: jen
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/17
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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 jen 4 3.87 2024 Rejection
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: jen
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> Long Island Compromise 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?�

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

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

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 jen 5 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: jen
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> The Husbands 193781998 An exuberant debut, The Husbands delights in how do we navigate life, love, and choice in a world of never-ending options?

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years.

As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actuallyĚýliving?]]> 352 Holly Gramazio 0385550618 jen 3 3.50 2024 The Husbands
author: Holly Gramazio
name: jen
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

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

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

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

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 jen 4 3.87 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: jen
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three]]> 564260 Montessori from the Start is a practical and useful guide to raising calm, competent, and confident children.]]> 304 Paula Polk Lillard 0805211128 jen 3 3.85 2003 Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three
author: Paula Polk Lillard
name: jen
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> Sandwich 200028726 From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.

For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and—thanks to the cottage’s ancient plumbing—septic too.

This year’s vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past—except, perhaps, for Rocky’s hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing—her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.

It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family’s history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.]]> 240 Catherine Newman 0063345161 jen 4 3.55 2024 Sandwich
author: Catherine Newman
name: jen
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> Evvie Drake Starts Over 40514431
Meanwhile, in New York City, Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher and Andy’s childhood best friend, is wrestling with what miserable athletes living out their worst nightmares call the “yips�: he can’t throw straight anymore, and, even worse, he can’t figure out why. As the media storm heats up, an invitation from Andy to stay in Maine seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button on Dean’s future.

When he moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken—and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. To move forward, Evvie and Dean will have to reckon with their pasts—the friendships they’ve damaged, the secrets they’ve kept—but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance—up until the last out.]]> 289 Linda Holmes 0525619240 jen 3 3.80 2019 Evvie Drake Starts Over
author: Linda Holmes
name: jen
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves:
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]]> Trust Exercise 52381081
The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school's walls--until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true--though it's not false, either. It takes until the book's stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place--revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.]]> 257 Susan Choi 1250231264 jen 4 3.13 2019 Trust Exercise
author: Susan Choi
name: jen
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/08/09
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]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 jen 4 3.52 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: jen
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/08/09
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen jen 2 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: jen
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Worry 176443441
It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.

Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls� mother—a newly devout Messianic Jew—starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. A trip home to Florida ends in disaster. Amy Klobuchar may or may not have rabies. And Jules struggles halfheartedly to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly coming to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, permanent fixtures in each other’s lives—must ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.

Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 304 Alexandra Tanner 1668018616 jen 4 3.32 2024 Worry
author: Alexandra Tanner
name: jen
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/06/10
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]]> Water 195100472
But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes?

Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences. Here, on the island, Vanessa must reflect on what she did - and did not do. Only then can she discover whether she is worthy of finding peace at all.]]> 176 John Boyne 0857529811 jen 4 4.29 2023 Water
author: John Boyne
name: jen
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/06/10
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]]> The Rachel Incident 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 jen 5 4.06 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: jen
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> Come and Get It 127482608
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardised by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue.

A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior.]]> 400 Kiley Reid 0593328205 jen 4 3.32 2024 Come and Get It
author: Kiley Reid
name: jen
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/18
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]]> Funny Story 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry jen 4 4.21 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: jen
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/18
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The White Coat Investor: A Doctor's Guide to Personal Finance and Investing (The White Coat Investor Series)]]> 20799512 ĚýĚýĚýĚý Written by a practicing emergency physician, The White Coat Investor is a high-yield manual that specifically deals with the financial issues facing medical students, residents, physicians, dentists, and similar high-income professionals. Doctors are highly-educated and extensively trained at making difficult diagnoses and performing life saving procedures. However, they receive little to no training in business, personal finance, investing, insurance, taxes, estate planning, and asset protection.


ĚýĚýĚýĚý This book fills in the gaps and will teach you to use your high income to escape from your student loans, provide for your family, build wealth, and stop getting ripped off by unscrupulous financial professionals. Straight talk and clear explanations allow the book to be easily digested by a novice to the subject matter yet the book also contains advanced concepts specific to physicians you won’t find in other financial books.


This book will teach you how to:



Graduate from medical school with as little debt as possible
Escape from student loans within two to five years of residency graduation
Purchase the right types and amounts of insurance
Decide when to buy a house and how much to spend on it
Learn to invest in a sensible, low-cost and effective manner with or without the assistance of an advisor
Avoid investments which are designed to be sold, not bought
Select advisors who give great service and advice at a fair price
Become a millionaire within five to ten years of residency graduation
Use a “Backdoor Roth IRA� and “Stealth IRA� to boost your retirement funds and decrease your taxes
Protect your hard-won assets from professional and personal lawsuits
Avoid estate taxes, avoid probate, and ensure your children and your money go where you want when you die
Minimize your tax burden, keeping more of your hard-earned money
Decide between an employee job and an independent contractor job
Choose between sole proprietorship, Limited Liability Company, S Corporation, and C Corporation

Take a look at the first pages of the book by clicking on the Look Inside feature


Praise For The White Coat Investor


“Much of my financial planning practice is helping doctors to correct mistakes that reading this book would have avoided in the first place.� � Allan S. Roth, MBA, CPA, CFP®, Author of How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street



“Jim Dahle has done a lot of thinking about the peculiar financial problems facing physicians, and you, lucky reader, are about to reap the bounty of both his experience and his research.� � William J. Bernstein, MD, Author of The Investor’s Manifesto and seven other investing books



“This book should be in every career counselor’s office and delivered with every medical degree.

]]> 225 James M. Dahle jen 5 4.40 2014 The White Coat Investor: A Doctor's Guide to Personal Finance and Investing (The White Coat Investor Series)
author: James M. Dahle
name: jen
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/06
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]]> Dear Dolly 61343296 'What I learnt from sharing my most private pain with a semi-professional problem-solver was that the mere act of asking for help was, in itself, healing. It was as if I had crept down to the docks under cover of darkness and floated a message out in a bottle, imagining how it might be received. By writing it, I was acknowledging that someone might care about me; that they'd be able to say the right thing without knowing me. Because I was feeling something that other people had felt and therefore I wasn't, as I suspected, the loneliest and strangest woman in the world.'

Since early 2020, Dolly Alderton has been sharing her wisdom, warmth and wit with the countless people who have written in to her Dear Dolly agony aunt column in The Sunday Times Style. Their questions range from the painfully - and sometimes hilariously - relatable to the occasionally bizarre. They include breakups and body issues, families, friendships, dating, divorce, the pleasures and pitfalls of social media, sex, loneliness, longing, love and everything in between.

Without judgement, and with deep empathy informed by her own, much-chronicled adventures in love, friendship and dating, Dolly leads us by the hand through the various labyrinths of life, proving that a problem shared is truly a problem halved.]]> 224 Dolly Alderton 0241623642 jen 4 3.80 2022 Dear Dolly
author: Dolly Alderton
name: jen
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/30
date added: 2024/05/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids]]> 6129974
Based on Payne’s twenty year’s experience successfully counseling busy families, Simplicity Parenting teaches parents how to worry and hover less–and how to enjoy more. For those who want to slow their children’s lives down but don’t know where to start, Payne offers both inspiration and a blueprint for change.

� Streamline your home environment. The average child has more than 150 toys. Here are tips for reducing the amount of toys, books, and clutter–as well as the lights, sounds, and general sensory overload that crowd the space young imaginations need in order to grow.

� Establish rhythms and rituals. Predictability (routines) and transparency (knowing the day’s plan) are soothing pressure valves for children. Here are ways to ease daily tensions, create battle-free mealtimes and bedtimes, and tell if your child is overwhelmed.

� Schedule a break in the schedule. Too many activities may limit children’s ability to motivate and direct themselves. Learn how to establish intervals of calm in your child’s daily torrent of constant doing–and familiarize yourself with the pros and cons of organized sports and other “enrichment� activities.

� Scale back on media and parental involvement. Back out of hyperparenting by managing your children’s “screen time� to limit the endless and sometimes scary deluge of information and stimulation.

Parental hovering is really about anxiety; by doing less and trusting more, parents can create a sanctuary that nurtures children’s identity, well-being, and resiliency as they grow–slowly–into themselves. A manifesto for protecting the grace of childhood, Simplicity Parenting is an eloquent guide to bringing new rhythms to bear on the lifelong art of parenting.]]> 256 Kim John Payne 0345507975 jen 5 4.21 2009 Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids
author: Kim John Payne
name: jen
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
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]]> <![CDATA[You Are Your Child's First Teacher: What Parents Can Do With and For Their Chlldren from Birth to Age Six]]> 163676 400 Rahima Baldwin Dancy 0890879672 jen 4 4.01 1989 You Are Your Child's First Teacher: What Parents Can Do With and For Their Chlldren from Birth to Age Six
author: Rahima Baldwin Dancy
name: jen
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/04/18
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]]> Splinters 155685405 Ěý
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. She has been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling, and electric prose. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material—scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books� Splinters enters a new realm.
Ěý
In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents� complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once—a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover—Jamison places the magical and the mundane side by side in surprising ways: pumping breastmilk in a shared university office, driving the open highway in the throes of new love, growing a tender second skin of consciousness as she watches her daughter come alive to the world. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, an almost impossibly deep reckoning with the muchness of life and art, and a book that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another.
Ěý
How do we move forward into joy when we are haunted by loss? How do we claim hope alongside the harm we’ve caused? A memoir for which the very term tour de force seems to have been coined, Splinters plumbs these and other pressing questions with writing that is revelatory to the last page. Jamison has delivered a book with the linguistic daring and emotional acuity that made The Empathy Exams and The Recovering instant classics, even as she reaches new depths of understanding, piercing the reader to the core. A master of nonfiction, she evinces once again her ability to “stitch together the intellectual and the emotional with the finesse of a crackerjack surgeon� (NPR).]]> 272 Leslie Jamison 0316374881 jen 5 3.79 2024 Splinters
author: Leslie Jamison
name: jen
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/04/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: Nurturing Our Children from Birth to Seven]]> 189644 207 Barbara J. Patterson 0964783231 jen 3 4.00 2000 Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: Nurturing Our Children from Birth to Seven
author: Barbara J. Patterson
name: jen
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/04/01
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]]> The Glow 62802760
“A satire both cutting and careful in its approach, The Glow is a triumph.”� Elle (Best New Books to Read in Summer 2023)

Jane Dorner has two PR Jane, twenty-five, chummy, and eager to sell you a feminist vibrator or a self-care/bereavement subscription box; and Actual Jane, twenty-nine, drifting through mediocre workdays and lackluster dates while paralyzed by her crushing mountain of overdue medical bills. When her job performance is called into question, Jane’s last-ditch effort to preserve her livelihood and pay off her debt is to land a white whale of a client.

Enter the impossibly gorgeous Cass—whom Jane discovers scrolling through Instagram—and her unassuming husband, Tom—proprietors of a “wellness retreat� based out of a ramshackle country house that may or may not be giving off cult vibes. Suddenly Jane realizes she might have found the one ladder she can climb—if she can convince them that transforming Cass herself into a high-end wellness brand is the key to all three of their futures. Magnetic yet mysterious, Cass is primed to be an She speaks in a mix of inspirational quotes and Zen koans, eats only zucchini (the most spiritually nourishing vegetable), and has baby-perfect skin. Despite Tom’s reticence about selling out, Jane sets out to mold Cass into the kind of guru who can offer inner peace and make your skin glow—all at a hefty price, of course. As Jane reckons with her own long-dormant ambitions, she Can a person really “do good� for others while profiting off them? And what parts of our selves do we lose when we trade power, influence, and beauty?

Sparklingly plotted, deliciously deadpan, and irresistibly entertaining, The Glow is a razor-sharp sendup of an industry built on the peculiar intersection of money and wellness, where health is a commodity and self-care a luxury.]]> 320 Jessie Gaynor 0593447875 jen 4 3.17 2023 The Glow
author: Jessie Gaynor
name: jen
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/03/18
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]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.ĚýFast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.Ěý]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 jen 5 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: jen
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/02
date added: 2024/03/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath]]> 35959632 New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams, an exploration of addiction, and the stories we tell about it, that reinvents the traditional recovery memoir.

With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and journalistic reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction--both her own and others'--and examines what we want these stories to do, and what happens when they fail us.

All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Raymond Carver, Billie Holiday, David Foster Wallace, and Denis Johnson, as well as brilliant figures lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here.

For the power of her striking language and the sharpness of her piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. Yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.]]> 534 Leslie Jamison 0316259616 jen 4 3.99 2018 The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath
author: Leslie Jamison
name: jen
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/02/20
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]]> People Collide 75302296 256 Isle McElroy 0063283751 jen 3 3.53 2023 People Collide
author: Isle McElroy
name: jen
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/02/20
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]]> Pet 86546624
Set in New Zealand in 1984 and 2014, and probing themes of racism and misogyny, Pet is an elegant and chilling psychological thriller by the bestselling author of The Wish Child, Remote Sympathy and The Axeman’s Carnival.]]> 352 Catherine Chidgey 1776920740 jen 4 3.99 2023 Pet
author: Catherine Chidgey
name: jen
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/02/08
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]]> North Woods 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire.ĚýA crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 jen 5 4.11 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: jen
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/01/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 jen 3 3.66 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: jen
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/03
date added: 2024/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting]]> 22052330 150 Janet Lansbury 1499103670 jen 5 4.25 2014 Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting
author: Janet Lansbury
name: jen
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love]]> 9547888 Is there a science to love?

In this groundbreaking book, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel S. F. Heller reveal how an understanding of attachment theory-the most advanced relationship science in existence today-can help us find and sustain love. Attachment theory forms the basis for many bestselling books on the parent/child relationship, but there has yet to be an accessible guide to what this fascinating science has to tell us about adult romantic relationships-until now.

Attachment theory owes its inception to British psychologist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who in the 1950s examined the tremendous impact that our early relationships with our parents or caregivers has on the people we become. Also central to attachment theory is the discovery that our need to be in a close relationship with one or more individuals is embedded in our genes.

In Attached, Levine and Heller trace how these evolutionary influences continue to shape who we are in our relationships today. According to attachment theory, every person behaves in relationships in one of three distinct ways:

*ANXIOUS people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back.
*AVOIDANT people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.
*SECURE people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving.

Attached guides readers in determining what attachment style they and their mate (or potential mates) follow. It also offers readers a wealth of advice on how to navigate their relationships more wisely given their attachment style and that of their partner. An insightful look at the science behind love, Attached offers readers a road map for building stronger, more fulfilling connections.]]> 304 Amir Levine 1585428485 jen 5 4.11 2010 Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love
author: Amir Levine
name: jen
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/01
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool]]> 40121328
With EXPECTING BETTER, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In CRIBSHEET, she now tackles an even great challenge: decision making in the early years of parenting.

As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There's a rule--or three--for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the tradeoffs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision?]]> 352 Emily Oster 0525559256 jen 4 4.12 2019 Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool
author: Emily Oster
name: jen
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/01
date added: 2023/12/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Catastrophic Happiness: Finding Joy in Childhood's Messy Years]]> 26030709
Much is written about a child's infancy and toddler years, which is good since children will never remember it themselves. It is ages 4-14 that make up the second act, as Catherine Newman puts it in this delightfully candid, outlandishly funny new memoir about the years that "your children will remember as childhood."

Following Newman's son and daughter as they blossom from preschoolers into teenagers, Catastrophic Happiness is about the bittersweet joy of raising children -- and the ever-evolving landscape of issues parents traverse. In a laugh out-loud, heart-wrenching, relatable voice, Newman narrates events as momentous as grief and as quietly moving as the moonlit face of a sleeping child.

From tantrums and friendship to fear and even sex, Newman's fresh take will appeal to any parent riding this same roller coaster of laughter and heartbreak.]]> 224 Catherine Newman 0316337501 jen 4 3.93 2016 Catastrophic Happiness: Finding Joy in Childhood's Messy Years
author: Catherine Newman
name: jen
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/19
date added: 2023/11/20
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]]> I Have Some Questions for You 61053829
But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.]]> 438 Rebecca Makkai 0593490142 jen 4 3.57 2023 I Have Some Questions for You
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: jen
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/17
date added: 2023/11/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans]]> 54304028
In Hunt, Gather, Parent, Doucleff sets out with her three-year-old daughter in tow to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world’s most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She sees that these cultures don’t have the same problems with children that Western parents do. Most strikingly, parents build a relationship with young children that is vastly different from the one many Western parents develop—it’s built on cooperation instead of control, trust instead of fear, and personalized needs instead of standardized development milestones.

Maya parents are masters at raising cooperative children. Without resorting to bribes, threats, or chore charts, Maya parents rear loyal helpers by including kids in household tasks from the time they can walk. Inuit parents have developed a remarkably effective approach for teaching children emotional intelligence. When kids cry, hit, or act out, Inuit parents respond with a calm, gentle demeanor that teaches children how to settle themselves down and think before acting. Hadzabe parents are world experts on raising confident, self-driven kids with a simple tool that protects children from stress and anxiety, so common now among American kids.

Not only does Doucleff live with families and observe their techniques firsthand, she also applies them with her own daughter, with striking results. She learns to discipline without yelling. She talks to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explains how these strategies can impact children’s mental health and development. Filled with practical takeaways that parents can implement immediately, Hunt, Gather, Parent helps us rethink the ways we relate to our children, and reveals a universal parenting paradigm adapted for American families.]]> 352 Michaeleen Doucleff 1982149671 jen 5 4.11 2021 Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans
author: Michaeleen Doucleff
name: jen
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/09
date added: 2023/11/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Brother of the More Famous Jack]]> 910343 224 Barbara Trapido 014027491X jen 4 3.89 1982 Brother of the More Famous Jack
author: Barbara Trapido
name: jen
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/03
date added: 2023/11/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old: A Step-by-Step Plan for Baby Sleep Success]]> 719836
Giordano is the mother of five children and one of the most sought-after baby sleep specialists in the country. The Washington Post calls her a baby sleep "guru" and "an underground legend in the Washington area for her ability to teach newborns how to achieve that parenting nirvana: sleeping through the night." Her sleep plan has been tested with singletons, twins, triplets, babies with special needs, and colicky babies—and it has never failed.

Whether you are pregnant, first-time parents, or parents who seek a different path with your second or third child, anyone can benefit from the Baby Coach’s popular system of regular feeding times, twelve hours of sleep at night and three hours of sleep during the day, and the peace of mind that comes with taking the parent and child out of a sleep- deprived world.]]> 176 Suzy Giordano 0525949593 jen 3 3.69 2006 Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old: A Step-by-Step Plan for Baby Sleep Success
author: Suzy Giordano
name: jen
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2023/10/30
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]]> The Dinner 40718205 Alternate cover edition can be found here

An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives - all over the course of one meal.

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.]]> 306 Herman Koch jen 4 3.19 2009 The Dinner
author: Herman Koch
name: jen
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2023/10/30
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]]> Convenience Store Woman 36739755 Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,� she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal� person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action�

A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata 0802128254 jen 3 3.65 2016 Convenience Store Woman
author: Sayaka Murata
name: jen
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2023/10/25
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]]> A Heart That Works 61295403 196 Rob Delaney 1954118317 jen 4 4.61 2022 A Heart That Works
author: Rob Delaney
name: jen
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/08
date added: 2023/10/10
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]]> The Girls of Summer 61214149 "That place has been my whole life. Everything I thought I knew about myself was constructed in those few months I spent within touching distance of the sea. Everything I am is because Alistair loved me."

Rachel has been in love with Alistair for fifteen years. Even though she’s now married to someone else. Even though she was a teenager when they met. Even though he is twenty years older than her.

Rachel and Alistair’s summer love affair on a remote, sun-trapped Greek island has consumed her since she was seventeen, obliterating everything in its wake. But as Rachel becomes increasingly obsessed with reliving the events of so long ago, she reconnects with the other girls who were similarly drawn to life on the island, where the nights were long, the alcohol was free-flowing and everyone acted in ways they never would at home. And as she does so, dark and deeply suppressed secrets about her first love affair begin to rise to the surface, as well as the truth about her time working for an enigmatic and wealthy man, who controlled so much more than she could have ever realized.

Joining a post #MeToo discourse, The Girls of Summer grapples with themes of power, sex, and consent, as it explores the complicated nature of memory and trauma––and what it takes to reframe, and reclaim, your own story.]]> 320 Katie Bishop 1250283914 jen 3 3.47 2023 The Girls of Summer
author: Katie Bishop
name: jen
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/05
date added: 2023/10/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Seven Brief Lessons on Physics]]> 25734172 All the beauty of modern physics in fewer than a hundred pages.

This is a book about the joy of discovery. A playful, entertaining, and mind-bending introduction to modern physics, it's already a major bestseller in Italy and the United Kingdom. Carlo Rovelli offers surprising—and surprisingly easy to grasp—explanations of general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, and the role humans play in this weird and wonderful world. He takes us to the frontiers of our knowledge: to the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, back toĚýthe origins of the cosmos, and into the workings of our minds. “Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world,â€� Rovelli writes. “And it’s breathtaking.”]]> 81 Carlo Rovelli 0399184414 jen 4 3.97 2014 Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
author: Carlo Rovelli
name: jen
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/04
date added: 2023/10/04
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]]> <![CDATA[A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)]]> 40864030
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?

They're going to need to ask it a lot.]]> 152 Becky Chambers jen 4 4.40 2022 A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)
author: Becky Chambers
name: jen
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2023/10/01
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]]> <![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]> 151 Becky Chambers jen 4 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: jen
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/30
date added: 2023/10/01
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]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

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

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X jen 5 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: jen
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/23
date added: 2023/09/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer]]> 132900
No wonder pediatricians across the country are praising him and thousands of Los Angeles parents, from working moms to superstars like Madonna and Pierce Brosnan, have turned to him to learn the secrets for making babies happy.

Never again will parents have to stand by helpless and frazzled while their poor baby cries and cries. Dr. Karp has found there is a remedy for colic. “I share with parents techniques known only to the most gifted baby soothers throughout history …and I explain exactly how they work.�

In an innovative and thought-provoking reevaluation of early infancy, Dr. Karp blends modern science and ancient wisdom to prove that newborns are not fully ready for the world when they are born. Through his research and experience, he has developed four basic principles that are crucial for understanding babies as well as improving their sleep and soothing their senses. ·The Missing Fourth Trimester: as odd as it may sound, one of the main reasons babies cry is because they are born three months too soon.

·The Calming Reflex: the automatic reset switch to stop crying of any baby in the first few months of life.

·The 5 “S’s�: the simple steps (swaddling, side/stomach position, shushing, swinging and sucking) that trigger the calming reflex. For centuries, parents have tried these methods only to fail because, as with a knee reflex, the calming reflex only works when it is triggered in precisely the right way. Unlike other books that merely list these techniques Dr. Karp teaches parents exactly how to do them, to guide cranky infants to calm and easy babies to serenity in minutes…and help them sleep longer too.

·The Cuddle Cure: the perfect mix the 5 “S’s� that can soothe even the most colicky of infants.

In the book, Dr. Karp also explains:

What is colic?

Why do most babies get much more upset in the evening?

How can a parent calm a baby--in mere minutes?

Can babies be spoiled?

When should a parent of a crying baby call the doctor?

How can a parent get their baby to sleep a few hours longer?

Even the most loving moms and dads sometimes feel pushed to the breaking point by their infant’s persistent cries. Coming to the rescue, however, Dr. Karp places in the hands of parents, grandparents, and all childcare givers the tools they need to be able to calm their babies almost as easily as…turning off a light.]]> 336 Harvey Karp 0553588729 jen 4 3.86 2002 The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer
author: Harvey Karp
name: jen
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/18
date added: 2023/09/19
shelves:
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]]> Hope 63024304
But when Scott is caught falsifying blood samples at work, he sets in motion a series of scandals that threatens to shatter his family. Deb leaves him for a female power broker; Maya rekindles a hazardous affair from her youth; and Gideon drops out of college to go on a dangerous journey that will put his principles to the test.

From Brookline to Berlin to the battlefields of Syria, Hope follows the Greenspans over the course of one tumultuous year as they question, and compromise, the values that have shaped their lives. But in the midst of their disillusionment, they’ll discover their own capacity for resilience, connection, and, ultimately, hope.]]> 432 Andrew Ridker 0593493338 jen 4 3.59 2023 Hope
author: Andrew Ridker
name: jen
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/01
date added: 2023/09/17
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]]> Little Monsters 62919906
Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated—and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings� lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.

As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he’s determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family—Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit.

Set in the fraught summer of 2016, and drawing on the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, Little Monsters is an absorbing, sharply observed family story by a writer who knows Cape Cod inside and out—its Edenic lushness and its snakes.]]> 320 Adrienne Brodeur 1982198109 jen 4 3.63 2023 Little Monsters
author: Adrienne Brodeur
name: jen
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/01
date added: 2023/09/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Doing Psychotherapy: A Trauma and Attachment-Informed Approach]]> 46260976 240 Robin Shapiro 0393713334 jen 5 4.24 Doing Psychotherapy: A Trauma and Attachment-Informed Approach
author: Robin Shapiro
name: jen
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2023/08/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Solution Focused Brief Therapy (100 Key Points)]]> 13713861 272 Harvey Ratner 0415606136 jen 4 4.16 2012 Solution Focused Brief Therapy (100 Key Points)
author: Harvey Ratner
name: jen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2023/08/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mindful Hypnobirthing: Hypnosis and Mindfulness Techniques for a Calm and Confident Birth]]> 21183448 273 Sophie Fletcher jen 4 4.15 2014 Mindful Hypnobirthing: Hypnosis and Mindfulness Techniques for a Calm and Confident Birth
author: Sophie Fletcher
name: jen
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2023/08/11
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]]> Bliss Montage 60243188 A new creation by the author of Severance, the stories in Bliss Montage crash through our carefully built mirages

What happens when fantasy tears through the screen of the everyday to wake us up? Could that waking be our end?

In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. From a woman who lives in a house with all of her ex-boyfriends, to a toxic friendship built around a drug that makes you invisible, to an ancient ritual that might heal you of anything if you bury yourself alive, these and other scenarios reveal that the outlandish and the everyday are shockingly, deceptively, heartbreakingly similar.]]> 228 Ling Ma 0374293511 jen 4 3.91 2022 Bliss Montage
author: Ling Ma
name: jen
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/30
date added: 2023/07/30
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]]> Goddess 61360564 An entrancing novel about a wellness retreat on a remote Greek island hosted by a celebrity guru who is more than meets the eye.

On a flight to New York at the end of her first book tour, up-and-coming writer Agnes Oliver meets Jack Verity, the handsome filmmaker and ex-husband of Geia Stone, a famous actress turned wellness guru, whose popular lifestyle brand Goddess promotes controversial therapies and expensive beauty tools in the name of self-care and inner nourishment. Jack invites Agnes to a party in the Hamptons, where she meets Geia and finds herself welcomed into the guru’s inner circle.

That summer, Geia arranges for Agnes to attend the Goddess summit, an exclusive wellness retreat held on a remote Greek island. There, Agnes observes many strange happenings she can’t explain, as one by one the other guests seem to fall under the spell of their enchanting host. When Agnes begins to discover who Geia really is, she realizes it’s up to her to protect the other women at the summit from an unexpected and unwelcome fate. A propulsive and captivating story about beauty and influence, self-doubt and seduction, Goddess is the electrifying new novel from a talented writer to watch.]]> 288 Deborah Hemming 1487011113 jen 4 3.20 2023 Goddess
author: Deborah Hemming
name: jen
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/15
date added: 2023/07/15
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]]> The Guest 61986136 A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.

With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline's The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.]]> 304 Emma Cline 0812998626 jen 4 3.29 2023 The Guest
author: Emma Cline
name: jen
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/07/15
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]]> The Best of Roald Dahl 525926
Twenty tales to curdle your blood and scorch your soul, chosen from his bestsellers—Over to You, Someone Like You, Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch.

Hypnotized from the first sentence, you will remain spellbound as Roald Dahl unravels his fiendish fictions with their satisfying twist-in-the-tale finales, as he leads you through the dangers of gambling for high stakes over wine, the perils of being vegetarian and the macabre consequences of a night-time seduction.]]> 366 Roald Dahl jen 4 4.13 1978 The Best of Roald Dahl
author: Roald Dahl
name: jen
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2011/05/09
date added: 2023/07/06
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this man is a really, really good storyteller. i knew this when i was seven, but i forgot. this book made me remember. "royal jelly" is amazing, as are the really fucked up stories about killing husbands and chopping off fingers. i love you roald dahl.
]]> <![CDATA[Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family]]> 177393 Bringing Up Ben & Birdy, a weekly column on babycenter.com. Now in the delightfully candid, outlandishly funny Waiting for Birdy, Newman charts the year she anticipated the birth of her second child while also coping with the realities of raising a toddler. As she navigates life with her existentially curious and heartbreakingly sweet three-year-old, and her doozy of a pregnancy, she lends her irresistibly unique voice to the secret thoughts and fears of parents everywhere. Filled with quirky warmth and razor-sharp wit, Waiting for Birdy captures the universal wonder, terror, humor, and tenderness of raising a family.]]> 272 Catherine Newman 0143034774 jen 3 4.10 2005 Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family
author: Catherine Newman
name: jen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/03
date added: 2023/07/05
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]]> Happy Place 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends� hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week� in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 jen 3 3.95 2023 Happy Place
author: Emily Henry
name: jen
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/01
date added: 2023/07/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year]]> 12540 Crooked Little Heart) is a single mother and ex-alcoholic with a pleasingly warped social circle and a remarkably tolerant religion to lean on. She responds to the changes, exhaustion, and love Sam brings with aplomb or outright insanity. The book rocks from hilarious to unbearably poignant when Sam's burgeoning life is played out against a very close friend's illness. No saccharine paean to becoming a parent, this touches on the rage and befuddlement that dog sweeter emotions during this sea change in one's life.]]> 251 Anne Lamott 1400079098 jen 4 4.18 1993 Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
author: Anne Lamott
name: jen
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/01
date added: 2023/07/05
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]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 jen 4 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: jen
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/12
date added: 2023/06/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy]]> 35068708
Like most first-time mothers, Angela Garbes was filled with questions when she became pregnant. What exactly is a placenta? How does a body go into labor? Why is breast best? What are the signs and effects of post-partum depression?

But as she discovered, it’s not easy to find satisfying answers. Your OB will cautiously quote statistics; online sources will scare you with conflicting and often inaccurate information; and even the most trusted books will offer information with a heavy dose of judgment. To educate herself, the food and culture writer embarked on an intensive journey of exploration, diving into the scientific mysteries and cultural myths that surround motherhood to find answers to her questions that had only previously been given through a lens of what women ought to do—instead of allowing them the freedom to choose the right path themselves.

In Like a Mother, Angela offers a rigorously researched and compelling look at the physiology, biology, chemistry, and psychology of pregnancy and motherhood, informed by research, reportage, and her own experience. With a journalist’s curiosity and discipline, a mother’s urgency, and a food writer’s insatiability, she explores the science behind the pressing questions women have about a number of subjects, including postpartum hormones, breast milk, and miscarriage.

Infused with candor and humor, born out of awe, appreciation, and understanding of the human body and its workings, Like a Mother is a full-frontal look at what’s really happening underneath your skin (and to it), and why women need to know.]]> 256 Angela Garbes 0062662961 jen 4 4.20 2018 Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy
author: Angela Garbes
name: jen
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/01
date added: 2023/06/12
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]]> Birnam Wood 60784757 Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker--or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.]]> 432 Eleanor Catton 0374110336 jen 5 3.79 2023 Birnam Wood
author: Eleanor Catton
name: jen
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/28
date added: 2023/05/29
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]]> Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano jen 5 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: jen
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/01
date added: 2023/05/11
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]]> Happy Hour 54173267 With the verve and bite of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and the whip-smart, wisecracking sensibility of a golden-age Hollywood heroine, Marlowe Granados’s stunning début brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City.

Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. After a sojourn across the pond, she arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them from having a good time.

In her diary, Isa describes a sweltering summer in the glittering city. By day, the girls sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Money runs ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert their social capital into something more lasting than their precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill.

Happy Hour announces a dazzling new talent in Marlowe Granados, whose exquisite wit recalls Anita Loos’s 1925 classic, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, updated to evoke a recent, golden period of hope and transformation—the summer of 2013. A cri de cœur for party girls and anyone who has ever felt entitled to an adventure of their own, Happy Hour is an effervescent tonic for the ails of contemporary life.]]> 280 Marlowe Granados 1989919006 jen 3 3.46 2020 Happy Hour
author: Marlowe Granados
name: jen
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/01
date added: 2023/05/11
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]]> Beach Read 52867387 A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

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

They’re polar opposites.

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

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.]]> 371 Emily Henry 1984806734 jen 4 3.99 2020 Beach Read
author: Emily Henry
name: jen
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/01
date added: 2023/04/20
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]]> Pineapple Street 61246258
Shot through with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is an addictive, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, lovable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class.]]> 304 Jenny Jackson 059349069X jen 4 3.49 2023 Pineapple Street
author: Jenny Jackson
name: jen
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/01
date added: 2023/04/20
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]]> <![CDATA[A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother]]> 522426
Selected by The New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years

“Funny and smart and refreshingly akin to a war diary―sort of Apocalypse Baby Now . . . A Life’s Work is wholly original and unabashedly true.� � The New York Times Book Review

A Life’s On Becoming a Mother is Rachel Cusk’s funny, moving, brutally honest account of her early experiences of motherhood. When it was published it 2001, it divided critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk’s children be taken into care, saying she was unfit to look after them, and Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself.

An education in babies, books, breast-feeding, toddler groups, broken nights, bad advice and never being alone, it is a landmark work, which has provoked acclaim and outrage in equal measure.]]> 224 Rachel Cusk 0312311303 jen 4 3.95 2001 A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother
author: Rachel Cusk
name: jen
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/01
date added: 2023/04/20
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]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 jen 5 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: jen
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/01
date added: 2023/04/20
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]]> The Guest List 52656911
The bride � The plus one � The best man � The wedding planner � The bridesmaid � The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 319 Lucy Foley jen 4 3.82 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: jen
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/03/15
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]]> <![CDATA[In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss]]> 58065372 This powerful memoir by New York Times bestselling author Amy Bloom is an illuminating story of two people whose love leads them to find a courageous way to part--and of a woman's struggle to go forward in the face of loss.

Amy Bloom began to notice changes in her husband, Brian: He retired early from a new job he loved; he withdrew from close friendships; he talked mostly about the past. Suddenly, it seemed there was a glass wall between them, and their long walks and talks stopped. Their world was altered forever when an MRI confirmed what they could no longer ignore: Brian had Alzheimer's disease.

Forced to confront the truth of the diagnosis and its impact on the future he had envisioned, Brian was determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees. Supporting each other in their last journey together, Brian and Amy made the unimaginably difficult and painful decision to go to Dignitas, an organization based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace.

In this heartbreaking and surprising memoir, Bloom sheds light on a part of life we so often shy away from discussing--its ending. Written in Bloom's captivating, insightful voice and with her trademark wit and candor, In Love is an unforgettable portrait of a beautiful marriage, and a boundary-defying love.]]> 240 Amy Bloom 0593243943 jen 4 4.22 2022 In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss
author: Amy Bloom
name: jen
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/26
date added: 2023/02/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know]]> 16158576 What to Expect When You're Expecting meets Freakonomics: an award-winning economist disproves standard recommendationsĚýabout pregnancy to empower women while they're expecting.

Pregnancy—unquestionably one of the most pro­found, meaningful experiences of adulthood—can reduce otherwise intelligent women to, well, babies. Pregnant women are told to avoid cold cuts, sushi, alcohol, and coffee without ever being told why these are forbidden. Rules for prenatal testing are similarly unexplained. Moms-to-be desperately want a resource that empowers them to make their own right choices.

When award-winning economist Emily Oster was a mom-to-be herself, she evaluated the data behind the accepted rules of pregnancy and discovered that most are often misguided and some are just flat-out wrong. Debunking myths and explaining everything from the real effects of caffeine to the surprising dangers of gardening, Expecting Better is the book for every pregnant woman who wants to enjoy a healthy and relaxed pregnancy.]]> 336 Emily Oster 1594204756 jen 5 4.28 2013 Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know
author: Emily Oster
name: jen
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/10
date added: 2023/02/14
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]]> Really Good, Actually 60877616 A hilarious and painfully relatable debut novel about one woman’s messy search for joy and meaning in the wake of an unexpected breakup, from comedian, essayist, and award-winning screenwriter Monica Heisey

Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée�.

Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there� sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.

Laugh-out-loud funny and filled with sharp observations, Really Good, Actually is a tender and bittersweet comedy that lays bare the uncertainties of modern love, friendship, and our search for that thing we like to call “happiness�. This is a remarkable debut from an unforgettable new voice in fiction.]]> 370 Monica Heisey 0063235412 jen 3 3.14 2023 Really Good, Actually
author: Monica Heisey
name: jen
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/13
date added: 2023/02/14
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]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 jen 4 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: jen
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/05
date added: 2023/02/07
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]]> The Latecomer 57693566 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Latecomer is a layered and immersive literary novel about three siblings, desperate to escape one another, and the upending of their family by the late arrival of a fourth.

The Latecomer follows the story of the wealthy, New York City-based Oppenheimer family, from the first meeting of parents Salo and Johanna, under tragic circumstances, to their triplets born during the early days of IVF. As children, the three siblings--Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally--feel no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, even as their father becomes more distanced and their mother more desperate. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna, faced with being truly alone, makes the decision to have a fourth child. What role will the “latecomer� play in this fractured family?

A complex novel that builds slowly and deliberately, The Latecomer touches on the topics of grief and guilt, generational trauma, privilege and race, traditions and religion, and family dynamics. It is a profound and witty family story from an accomplished author, known for the depth of her character studies, expertly woven storylines, and plot twists.]]> 439 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250790794 jen 4 3.93 2022 The Latecomer
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: jen
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/29
date added: 2023/01/29
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]]> This Time Tomorrow 59089704 What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?]]> 310 Emma Straub 052553900X jen 4 3.78 2022 This Time Tomorrow
author: Emma Straub
name: jen
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/31
date added: 2022/12/31
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]]> We All Want Impossible Things 60410002 Who knows you better than your best friend? Who knows your secrets, your fears, your desires, your strange imperfect self? Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years. Since childhood they have seen each other through life's milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriages, infertility, children. As Ash notes, 'Edi's memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.'

So when Edi is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ash's world reshapes around the rhythms of Edi's care, from chipped ice and watermelon cubes to music therapy; from snack smuggling to impromptu excursions into the frozen winter night. Because life is about squeezing the joy out of every moment, about building a powerhouse of memories, about learning when to hold on, and when to let go.
]]> 224 Catherine Newman 0063230895 jen 5 3.95 2022 We All Want Impossible Things
author: Catherine Newman
name: jen
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/24
date added: 2022/12/24
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]]> The Push 52476830 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family–and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for–and everything she feared.

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.

But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter–she doesn’t behave like most children do.

Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.

Then their son Sam is born–and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.

The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.]]> 307 Ashley Audrain 1984881663 jen 4 4.03 2021 The Push
author: Ashley Audrain
name: jen
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2022/12/23
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]]> All This Could Be Different 59576064
But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It's then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.]]> 320 Sarah Thankam Mathews 0593489128 jen 4 3.82 2022 All This Could Be Different
author: Sarah Thankam Mathews
name: jen
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/10
date added: 2022/12/11
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]]> Fairy Tale 60177373 Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes deep into the well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for their world or ours.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is impossible to believe, and a responsibility far too massive for a boy to shoulder.

Because within the shed is a portal to another world—one whose denizens are in peril and whose monstrous leaders may destroy their own world, and ours. In this parallel universe, where two moons race across the sky, and the grand towers of a sprawling palace pierce the clouds, there are exiled princesses and princes who suffer horrific punishments; there are dungeons; there are games in which men and women must fight each other to the death for the amusement of the “Fair One.� And there is a magic sundial that can turn back time.

A story as old as myth, and as startling and iconic as the rest of King’s work, Fairy Tale is about an ordinary guy forced into the hero’s role by circumstance, and it is both spectacularly suspenseful and satisfying.]]> 607 Stephen King 1668002175 jen 4 4.05 2022 Fairy Tale
author: Stephen King
name: jen
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/01
date added: 2022/12/02
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]]> Book Lovers 58690308 One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

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

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

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.]]> 377 Emily Henry 0593334833 jen 4 4.09 2022 Book Lovers
author: Emily Henry
name: jen
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/20
date added: 2022/11/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us]]> 59808605 Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel―until it no longer does.

Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.]]> 288 Rachel Aviv 0374600848 jen 5 4.10 2022 Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
author: Rachel Aviv
name: jen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/16
date added: 2022/11/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of the Most Precious Substance]]> 58945991 Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series.

A mysterious book that promises unlimited power and unrivaled sexual pleasure. A down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime. And a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed.

After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written—if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it—if she can. Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world’s wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost? The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an addictive erotic thriller about the lengths we’ll go to get what we need—and what we want.]]> 319 Sara Gran 0578947099 jen 3 3.53 2022 The Book of the Most Precious Substance
author: Sara Gran
name: jen
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/09
date added: 2022/11/12
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]]> Journal of a Solitude 845386
In this book, we are closer to the marrow than ever before in May Sarton's writing.]]> 208 May Sarton 0393309282 jen 5 4.15 1973 Journal of a Solitude
author: May Sarton
name: jen
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1973
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/12
date added: 2022/11/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Less Is Lost (Arthur Less, #2)]]> 60021216 In theĚýfollow-up to the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning Less, the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip across America.

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

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

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

We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts,Ěýbayous,Ěýand coastlines.ĚýFrom his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book,ĚýLess IsĚýLostĚýis a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way.]]> 272 Andrew Sean Greer 0316498904 jen 4 3.64 2022 Less Is Lost (Arthur Less, #2)
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: jen
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/06
date added: 2022/11/06
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]]> Lucy by the Sea (Amgash #4) 60657583
Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we're apart--the pain of a beloved daughter's suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.]]> 291 Elizabeth Strout 0593446062 jen 4 3.80 2022 Lucy by the Sea (Amgash #4)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: jen
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/15
date added: 2022/10/15
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]]> The Guest List 51933429
On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 330 Lucy Foley jen 4 3.64 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: jen
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/14
date added: 2022/10/15
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]]> How to Fall Out of Love Madly 58885789 Three women confront the compromises they've made to appease the men they love.

Joy and Annie are friends and roommates whose thirty-something lives aren't exactly what they'd imagined. To make ends meet, they decide to rent their extra bedroom to Theo, who charms Joy with his salt-and-pepper hair and adoration of their one-eyed cat. When Annie goes to live with her boyfriend, Theo and Joy settle into a comfortable domesticity. Then Theo brings home Celine, the girlfriend he's never mentioned, who is possibly the most stunning woman Joy has ever seen. Joy resolves to do whatever it takes to hold on to him, falling ever deeper into an emotional hellscape of her own making. She is too obsessed to realize that Celine's beauty doesn't protect her from pain. Haunted by an event from her past, Celine can't escape her shame and finds herself in an endless cycle of self-sabotage.

Annie is baffled by Joy's senseless devotion to Theo, but she's consumed by her own obsessions: she can't stop parsing her commitment-phobic boyfriend's texts in an exhausting mission to maintain his approval. At work, where she fully embraces her natural assertiveness, Annie is a star. But when an anonymous letter lands on her desk accusing her esteemed and supportive boss of sexual misconduct, she is forced to decide who and what she's willing to stand up for.

Perceptive, mordantly funny, and full of heart, How to Fall Out of Love Madly examines women's many relationships--with one another, their mothers, their work, men, and themselves--to reveal their underlying power and complexity. It asks, why do so many smart, compassionate, otherwise empowered women tolerate egregious behavior from the men they love? And what will it take for them to reclaim control?]]> 352 Jana Casale 0593447727 jen 4 3.45 2022 How to Fall Out of Love Madly
author: Jana Casale
name: jen
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/08
date added: 2022/10/09
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]]> I'm Glad My Mom Died 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

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

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy jen 3 4.45 2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: jen
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/02
date added: 2022/10/05
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]]> Either/Or 58890783 From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood

Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin's elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan's weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel--a life worthy of becoming a novel--without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?

Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice--no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.

Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.]]> 368 Elif Batuman 0525557598 jen 5 4.00 2022 Either/Or
author: Elif Batuman
name: jen
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/25
date added: 2022/09/25
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]]> The Idiot 30962053 A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.]]> 423 Elif Batuman 1594205612 jen 5 3.67 2017 The Idiot
author: Elif Batuman
name: jen
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/09
date added: 2022/09/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 jen 4 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: jen
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/14
date added: 2022/08/21
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]]> <![CDATA[A House Between Earth and the Moon]]> 58661987 The gripping story of one scientist in outer space, another who watches over him, the family left behind, and the lengths people will go to protect the people and planet they love.

Scientist Alex Welch-Peters has believed for twenty years that his super-algae can reverse the effects of climate change. His obsession with his research has jeopardized his marriage, his relationships with his kids, and his own professional future. When Sensus, the colossal tech company, offers him a chance to complete his research, he seizes the opportunity. The catch? His lab will be in outer space on Parallaxis, the first-ever luxury residential space station built for billionaires. Alex and six other scientists leave their loved ones to become Pioneers, the beta tenants of Parallaxis.

But Parallaxis is not the space palace they were sold. Day and night, the embittered crew builds the facility under pressure from Sensus, motivated by the promise that their families will join them. Meanwhile, back on Earth, with much of the country ablaze in wildfires, Alex’s family tries to remain safe in Michigan. His teenage daughter, Mary Agnes, struggles through high school with the help of the ubiquitous Sensus phones implanted in everyone’s ears, archiving each humiliation, and wishing she could go to Parallaxis with her father—but her mother will never allow it.

The Pioneers are the beta testers of another program, too. As they toil away two hundred miles in the sky, Sensus is designing an algorithm that will predict human behavior. Tess, a young social psychologist Sensus has hired to watch the Pioneers through their phones, begins to develop an intimate, obsessive relationship with her subjects. When she takes it a step further—traveling to Parallaxis to observe them up close—the controlled experiment begins to unravel.

Prescient and insightful, A House Between Earth and the Moon is at once a captivating epic about the machinations of big tech and a profoundly intimate meditation on the unmistakably human bonds that hold us together.]]> 386 Rebecca Scherm 1101980109 jen 5 3.43 2022 A House Between Earth and the Moon
author: Rebecca Scherm
name: jen
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/02
date added: 2022/08/02
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]]> The Year of the Horses 59551334 266 Courtney Maum 1953534155 jen 4 4.02 The Year of the Horses
author: Courtney Maum
name: jen
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/01
date added: 2022/08/02
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]]> The Candy House 58437521 From one of the most dazzling and iconic writers of our time and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity, privacy, and meaning in a world where our memories are no longer our own—featuring characters from A Visit from the Goon Squad.

It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing� memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters� who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,� those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.

Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.� Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.]]> 352 Jennifer Egan 1476716765 jen 5 3.61 2022 The Candy House
author: Jennifer Egan
name: jen
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/01
date added: 2022/08/02
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Believer: Encounters with the Beginning, the End, and our Place in the Middle]]> 58470894

By turns devastating and delighting, and captured in snapshot-vivid detail, these six profiles with a death doula, a geologist who believes the world is six thousand years old, a lecturer in neurobiology who spends his weekends ghost hunting, the fiancĂ© of a disappeared pilot and UFO enthusiasts, a woman incarcerated for killing her husband after suffering years of domestic violence, and Mennonite families in New York will leave you convinced that the most ordinary-seeming people are often the most remarkable and that deep and abiding commonalities can be found within the greatest differences.Ěý


Vivid, unconventional, entertaining, and full of wonder, Krasnostein interweaves the stories of these believers with compassion and empathy, culminating in an unforgettable tour of the human condition that cuts to the core of who we are as people, and what we’re doing on this earth.]]> 360 Sarah Krasnostein 1953534007 jen 5 3.61 2021 The Believer: Encounters with the Beginning, the End, and our Place in the Middle
author: Sarah Krasnostein
name: jen
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/12
date added: 2022/07/12
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