en-US Sun, 29 Aug 2021 18:33:06 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 13330761
But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.]]> 336 Peter Heller 0307959945 Andrew 4 3.92 2012
author: Peter Heller
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/08/29
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]]> 54599078
“Beautiful, funny, and harrowing.� � Sarah Smarsh, The Atlantic

� Remarkable . . . this is the book that Hillbilly Elegy should have been. � � Kirkus Reviews

A vivid window into the world of working class men set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota

Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows and searched for jobs they couldn't get back home. Smith's goal was to find the hardest work he could do--to find out if he could do it. He hired on in the oil patch where he toiled fourteen hour shifts from summer's 100 degree dog days to deep into winter's bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence.

The Good Hand is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America's marginalized boomtown workers—the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up, and helps Smith "make a hand."

The Good Hand is ultimately a book about transformation--a classic American story of one man's attempt to burn himself clean through hard work, to reconcile himself to himself, to find community, and to become whole.]]> 464 Michael Patrick F. Smith 1984881515 Andrew 4 4.08
author: Michael Patrick F. Smith
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/05/01
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]]> 80213 Anthills of the Savannah (1987), Achebe's candid vision of contemporary African politics, is a powerful fusion of angry voices. It continues the journey that Achebe began with his earlier novels, tracing the history of modern Africa through colonialism and beyond, and is a work ultimately filled with hope.]]> 240 Chinua Achebe Andrew 0 to-read 3.87 1987
author: Chinua Achebe
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 29890212 277 J.D. Vance Andrew 3 4.10 2016
author: J.D. Vance
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 3
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date added: 2020/04/21
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]]> 16158596
Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff is making a living running a three-card Monte game on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization's recruiters. She is flown across the country for the school's strange and rigorous entrance exams, where, once admitted, she will be taught the fundamentals of persuasion by Bronte, Eliot, and Lowell--who have adopted the names of famous poets to conceal their true identities. For in the organization, nothing is more dangerous than revealing who you are: Poets must never expose their feelings lest they be manipulated. Emily becomes the school's most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. Although he has no recollection of anything they claim he's done, it turns out Wil is the key to a secret war between rival factions of poets and is quickly caught in their increasingly deadly crossfire. Pursued relentlessly by people with powers he can barely comprehend and protected by the very man who first attacked him, Wil discovers that everything he thought he knew about his past was fiction. In order to survive, must journey to the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, to discover who he is and why an entire town was blown off the map.

As the two narratives converge, the shocking work of the poets is fully revealed, the body count rises, and the world crashes toward a Tower of Babel event which would leave all language meaningless. A brilliant thriller that connects very modern questions of privacy, identity, and the rising obsession of data collection to centuries-old ideas about the power of language and coercion, Lexicon is Max Barry's most ambitious and spellbinding novel yet.]]> 390 Max Barry 1594205388 Andrew 2 3.90 2013
author: Max Barry
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 2
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date added: 2018/01/11
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]]> 9069612
A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.]]> 288 Dean Bakopoulos 0151013446 Andrew 2 3.32 2011
author: Dean Bakopoulos
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2011
rating: 2
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date added: 2016/04/25
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]]> 89322 Remembering Laughter (1937) marked Wallace Stegner's brilliant literary debut.]]> 160 Wallace Stegner 0140252401 Andrew 5 3.84 1937
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1937
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/02/29
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]]> 17934485 Mink River

Declan O Donnell has left Oregon aboard his boat, the Plover, to escape the life that’s so troubled him on land. He sets course west into the Pacific in search of solitude. Instead, he finds a crew, each in search of something themselves, and what at first seems a lonely sea voyage becomes a rapturous, heartfelt celebration of life’s surprising paths, planned and unplanned.]]> 311 Brian Doyle 1250034779 Andrew 5
I changed my mind. Other than a couple too many "fecking"s, and one or two overuses of descriptive lists, this book just blew me away. Is it weird? Yes. Is it trying to do many, many things in a single book? Yes. Does it make you scratch your head from time to time? Yes. Does it wander from here to there in a way that may seem annoying or pointless to literalists? Yes.

But god, the writing is beautiful and I ended up falling in love with the characters. All of them. And that's not even the point of the book. I'm not sure the book has a point, and I'm not sure that it matters. For those who have minds that wander from topic to topic, idea to idea, fiction to non-fiction, work to play, it is a brilliant reflection, condensation and sharing of thoughts that are normally kept to oneself for fear of being seen as crazy. This kind of crazy I'll take.]]> 4.18 2014
author: Brian Doyle
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/07/17
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When the book started to actually move into a plot, I was disappointed. The descriptive writing in the first chapter or two were just so compelling to me, I didn't care one little bit about hearing a story.

I changed my mind. Other than a couple too many "fecking"s, and one or two overuses of descriptive lists, this book just blew me away. Is it weird? Yes. Is it trying to do many, many things in a single book? Yes. Does it make you scratch your head from time to time? Yes. Does it wander from here to there in a way that may seem annoying or pointless to literalists? Yes.

But god, the writing is beautiful and I ended up falling in love with the characters. All of them. And that's not even the point of the book. I'm not sure the book has a point, and I'm not sure that it matters. For those who have minds that wander from topic to topic, idea to idea, fiction to non-fiction, work to play, it is a brilliant reflection, condensation and sharing of thoughts that are normally kept to oneself for fear of being seen as crazy. This kind of crazy I'll take.
]]> 82115 304 Howard Frank Mosher 0618240098 Andrew 5
Having experienced Vermont in a very rustic way, having experience with a one-room school, living next door to characters not too unlike those described, this book really resonates with a truth that perhaps those who don't have a similar background can appreciate. Sure, things are made up and stretched, but there is more reality here than perhaps some realize. This book makes me want do more with my life and less at the same time. It makes me want to appreciate the good in all people. It makes me want to get back to the past, but only to live for the future. It made me cry.]]> 4.30 1994
author: Howard Frank Mosher
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/01/21
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This is one of my favorite books. If you start this book and think that it's just a collection of short stories woven together, well, it is, but keep reading. It's more. The writing is beautiful without falling into the sometime tediousness of constant poetry, which lets the tales that make up the book shine. It doesn't tell me things I already know and lets me figure out how I feel about the people for myself. I love the way that things get brought to completion and I don't feel hung out to dry by the ending -- not everything is sweetness and light, but it is warm and good.

Having experienced Vermont in a very rustic way, having experience with a one-room school, living next door to characters not too unlike those described, this book really resonates with a truth that perhaps those who don't have a similar background can appreciate. Sure, things are made up and stretched, but there is more reality here than perhaps some realize. This book makes me want do more with my life and less at the same time. It makes me want to appreciate the good in all people. It makes me want to get back to the past, but only to live for the future. It made me cry.
]]> 13707645 The Illicit Happiness of Other People—a smart, wry, and poignant novel—teases you with its mystery, philosophy, and unlikely love story.]]> 352 Manu Joseph 0393338622 Andrew 0 currently-reading 4.10 2012
author: Manu Joseph
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/07/23
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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