Robin's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 04 Apr 2025 12:34:23 -0700 60 Robin's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Nobody's Empire 199531954 One of the great lyricists of our time, the lead singer and songwriter for the iconic Glasgow-based band Belle and Sebastian, pens a sensitive and intimate account—his debut novel based on his own youthful experiences—of dark days leading to light and a coming of age through music.

It’s the early 1990s in Glasgow, Scotland, and Stephen has emerged from a lengthy hospital stay. Diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, a little-understood disease that has robbed him of any prospects of work, friends, or independent living, he moves slowly toward new goals and meets others like him, including Richard, a friend from school, and Carrie, a young woman bedridden for five years. Feeling isolated and alone, they form their own support group, and try to get by with as little money and pain as possible. Since he’s been ill, Stephen never feels warm, inspiring Carrie to affectionately call him “The World’s Coldest Boy.� As the world seems to care less for them, the trio start to care less about fitting in with the world.

Stephen soon discovers he has a talent for writing songs. He awakens to the possibility of a spiritual life that transcends the everyday, and feels a calling for a place that might as well be on the other end of the universe let alone the world. Buoyed by tentative hope, he and Richard leave Glasgow in search of a cure in the mythic warmth and sun of California. As they float between hostels, sofas, and park benches, they discover the trip is life-changing in ways neither expected, and Stephen embraces a new-world reinvention that will change his life forever.
Melodic and captivating, filled with graceful notes, melancholic chords, and witty, thoughtful riffs on life's infinite possibilities and curiosities, Nobody’s Empire is a warm and wonderful coming-of-age novel, imbued with Stuart Murdoch's magical lyricism.]]> 384 Stuart Murdoch 0063383454 Robin 0 to-read 3.83 2025 Nobody's Empire
author: Stuart Murdoch
name: Robin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> The Pre-Raphaelites 94862 160 Christopher Wood 1841881163 Robin 0 4.09 1981 The Pre-Raphaelites
author: Christopher Wood
name: Robin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: currently-reading, nonfiction, art
review:

]]> Vanishing World 219300660 From the author of the bestselling literary sensations Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples has vanished and all children are born by artificial insemination.

Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of a happily unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman convinced she is an alien in Earthlings have endeared her to millions of readers worldwide. Vanishing World takes Murata’s universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different to our own.

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated� in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system� by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.� Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?]]> 240 Sayaka Murata 0802164668 Robin 0 to-read 3.50 2015 Vanishing World
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Robin
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> Heart, Be at Peace 202359988 ‘I said it before. Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise…� Some things can send a heart spinning; others will crack it in two. In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding. But a fresh menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way. Young people are being drawn towards the promise of fast money whilst the generation above them tries to push back the tide of an enemy no one can touch� A stunning, lyrical novel told in twenty-one voices, Heart, be at Peace can be read independently, or as a companion to Donal Ryan’s multi-award-winning novel, The Spinning Heart, voted ‘The Irish Book of the Decade�.]]> 208 Donal Ryan 1473544629 Robin 0 to-read 4.05 2024 Heart, Be at Peace
author: Donal Ryan
name: Robin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 Robin 0 to-read 4.25 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Robin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> Broken Country 214151202 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.�

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 320 Clare Leslie Hall 166807818X Robin 0 to-read 4.42 2025 Broken Country
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Robin
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> Confess 22609310
For once, Auburn takes a chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is hiding a huge secret. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything Auburn loves most, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it—but can she do it?]]> 306 Colleen Hoover 1476791457 Robin 0 to-read 4.14 2015 Confess
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Robin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Kid from Marlboro Road 203607541 An Irish-American family comes to life through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy in this debut novel by actor-filmmaker Ed Burns.

Immigrants and storytellers, lilting voices and Long Island moxie are all part of this colorful Irish-Catholic community in 1970s New York.

A Kid from Marlboro Road opens at a wake, as our twelve-year-old narrator, an aspiring writer, takes in the death of his beloved grandfather, Pop, a larger-than-life figure to him. The overflowing crowd includes sandhogs in their muddy work boots, old Irish biddies in black dresses and cops in uniform, along with the family in mourning. There’s an open casket, the first time he’s seen a dead person. Later, at the bar across the street, he tells a story to the assembled crowd about the day his dad proposed to his mom, and how he almost got beat up by her brothers for it, and then how Pop made him propose twice.

Stories cascade between the prior generation’s colorful origins in the Bronx and the softer world of Gibson, the town on Long Islandwhere the family lives now. There are scenes in the Rockaways, at Belmont Race Track, and in Montauk. Out of individual struggles a collective warmth emerges, a certain kind of American story, raucous and joyous.

Includes black and white photographs from the author's Irish-American New York family history.]]> 208 Ed Burns 1644214083 Robin 0 4.16 A Kid from Marlboro Road
author: Ed Burns
name: Robin
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
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]]> The Hunting Party 40976643 Everyone's invited...everyone's a suspect...

For fans of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a shivery, atmospheric, page-turning novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge . . . and murder and mayhem ensue.

All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.

During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.

They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.

The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.

Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.

Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?

]]> 349 Lucy Foley Robin 3 3.73 2018 The Hunting Party
author: Lucy Foley
name: Robin
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
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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.A 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 Robin 0 to-read 4.12 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: Robin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End]]> 20696006 In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.]]> 282 Atul Gawande 0805095152 Robin 0 to-read 4.47 2014 Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
author: Atul Gawande
name: Robin
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> Trouble Island 203578712 A gripping new novel inspired by a real place and events from the author’s family, Trouble Island is the standalone suspense debut from historical mystery writer Sharon Short.

Many miles from anywhere in the middle of Lake Erie, Trouble Island serves as a stop-off for gangsters as they run between America and Canada. The remote isle is also the permanent home to two women: Aurelia Escalante, who serves as a maid to Rosita, lady of the mansion and wife to the notorious prohibition gangster, Eddie McGee. In the freezing winter of 1932, the women anticipate the arrival of Eddie and his strange coterie: his right-hand man, a doctor, a cousin, a famous actor, and a rival gangster who Rosita believes murdered their only son.

Aurelia wants nothing more than to escape Trouble Island, but she is hiding a secret of her own. She is in fact not a maid, but a gangster’s wife in hiding, as she runs from the murder she committed five years ago. Her friend Rosita took her in under this guise, but it has become clear that Rosita wants to keep Aurelia right where she is.

Shortly after the group of criminals, celebrities, and scoundrels arrive, Rosita suddenly disappears. Aurelia plans her getaway, going to the shore to retrieve her box of hidden treasures, but instead finds Rosita’s body in the water. Someone has made sure Aurelia was the one to find her. An ice storm makes unexpected landfall, cutting Trouble Island off from both mainlands, and with more than one murderer among them.

Both a gripping locked room mystery, and a transporting, evocative portrait of a woman in crisis, Trouble Island marks the enthralling standalone suspense debut from Sharon Short, promising to be her breakout novel, inspired by a real island in Lake Erie, and true events from her own rich family history.]]> 336 Sharon Short 1250292840 Robin 0 to-read 3.44 2024 Trouble Island
author: Sharon Short
name: Robin
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/25
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]]> What the Wife Knew 210690230 Darby Kane, author of the #1 international bestsellerPretty Little Wife,returns with another twisty domestic thriller about a wife wondering who tried to kill her husband twice before finally succeeding� because that was supposed to be her Dz.

Dr. Richmond Dougherty is a renowned pediatric surgeon, an infamous tragedy survivor, and a national hero. He’s also very dead—thanks to a fall down the stairs. His neighbors angrily point a finger at the newest Ms. Dougherty, Addison. The sudden marriage to the mysterious young woman only lasted ninety-seven days, and he’d had two suspicious “accidents� during that time. Now Addison is a very rich widow.

As law enforcement starts to circle in on Addison and people in town become increasingly hostile, sides are chosen with Kathryn, Richmond’s high school sweetheart, wife number one, and the mother of his children, leading the fray. Despite rising tensions, Addison is even more driven to forge ahead on the path she charted years ago�

Determined at all costs to unravel Richmond’s legacy, she soon becomes a target—with a shocking note left on her bedroom You will pay.But it will take a lot more than faceless threats to stop Addison. Her plan to marry Richmond then ruin him may have been derailed by his unexpected death, but she’s not done with him yet.]]> 368 Darby Kane 006335196X Robin 0 to-read 3.51 2024 What the Wife Knew
author: Darby Kane
name: Robin
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/25
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]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Robin 0 to-read 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Robin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness]]> 22609485
Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures� (Library Journal Editors� Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.]]> 261 Sy Montgomery 1451697716 Robin 0 to-read 3.90 2015 The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Robin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 59710157 For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 362 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204177 Robin 5 4.51 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Robin
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men]]> 224552
He says he loves you. So...why does he do that?

You’ve asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men—and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn

•The early warning signs of abuse
� The nature of abusive thinking
•Myths about abusers
•Ten abusive personality types
•The role of drugs and alcohol
•What you can fix, and what you can’t
•And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely

“This is without a doubt the most informative and useful book yet written on the subject of abusive men. Women who are armed with the insights found in these pages will be on the road to recovering control of their lives.”—Jay G. Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health]]> 408 Lundy Bancroft 0425191656 Robin 0 to-read 4.47 2002 Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
author: Lundy Bancroft
name: Robin
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss in Later Life]]> 49008 - resources for families and adult children who care for people with dementia
- updated legal and financial information
- the latest information on nursing homes and other communal living arrangements
- new information on research, medications, and the biological causes and effects of dementia]]> 324 Nancy L. Mace 0801885094 Robin 0 currently-reading 4.22 1981 The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss in Later Life
author: Nancy L. Mace
name: Robin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Vaster Wilds 75252590
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.]]> 272 Lauren Groff Robin 0 3.91 2016 The Vaster Wilds
author: Lauren Groff
name: Robin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story]]> 57717410 The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a revealing vision of the American past and present.

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story builds on The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning �1619 Project,� which reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on the original "1619 Project, "weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This legacy can be seen in the way we tell stories, the way we teach our children, and the way we remember. Together, the elements of the book reveal a new origin story for the United States, one that helps explain not only the persistence of anti-Black racism and inequality in American life today, but also the roots of what makes the country unique.

The book also features an elaboration of the original project’s Pulitzer Prize–winning lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones on how the struggles of Black Americans have expanded democracy for all Americans, as well as two original pieces from Hannah-Jones, one of which makes a case for reparative solutions to this legacy of injustice.]]> 590 Nikole Hannah-Jones 0593230574 Robin 0 to-read 4.61 2019 The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
author: Nikole Hannah-Jones
name: Robin
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Robin 0 to-read 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Robin
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> Here One Moment 208516656 If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.�

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.]]> 512 Liane Moriarty 0593798600 Robin 0 to-read 3.99 2024 Here One Moment
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Robin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Robin 0 to-read 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Robin
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> You Are Fatally Invited 213243937 An exclusive thriller writer’s retreat hosted on a private island turns lethal when one of the authors is found murdered in this twisty locked room mystery.

When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance—particularly since she has an ax to grind with one of the invitees. The guest list? Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection, and mayhem.

Confess the crimes, survive the tropes.

Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two—the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead—and it’s not the murder she planned—Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether.

One by one, you’ll lose your turn.

With a storm cutting off the island, and the body count rising, Mila must outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book.

Until only one of us remains�]]> 371 Ande Pliego 059387157X Robin 0 to-read 3.58 2025 You Are Fatally Invited
author: Ande Pliego
name: Robin
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Atmosphere 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Robin 0 to-read 4.45 2025 Atmosphere
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Robin
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Robin 0 to-read 4.28 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Robin
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Stolen Queen 211025454 From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same.

New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.� Though Annie soon realizes she’ll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana’s capricious demands and exacting standards.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, wants little to do with the upcoming gala. She’s consumed with her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.

That is, until the night of the gala. When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing . . . and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening.

As Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they’re to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.]]> 352 Fiona Davis 0593474279 Robin 0 to-read 3.92 2025 The Stolen Queen
author: Fiona Davis
name: Robin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Black Cake 57926137 We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right�? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.]]> 385 Charmaine Wilkerson Robin 0 to-read 4.06 2022 Black Cake
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Robin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Friends 217163697 #1New York Timesbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Robin 0 to-read 4.58 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Robin
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Interaction of Color 111113 Interaction of Color is a masterwork in twentieth-century art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’s unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience.

Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers.

This new paperback edition presents a significantly expanded selection of more than thirty color studies alongside Albers’s original unabridged text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds. Now available in a larger format and with enhanced production values, this expanded edition celebrates the unique authority of Albers’s contribution to color theory and brings the artist’s iconic study to an eager new generation of readers.]]> 160 Josef Albers 0300115954 Robin 0 currently-reading 4.02 1971 Interaction of Color
author: Josef Albers
name: Robin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 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 Robin 0 currently-reading 3.87 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Robin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Luminaries 54977800
Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.]]> 853 Eleanor Catton Robin 0 to-read 3.90 2013 The Luminaries
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Robin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America]]> 57402859 The incredible true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion .

In 1954, Annie Wilkins, a sixty-three-year-old farmer from Maine, embarked on an impossible journey. She had no relatives left, she'd lost her family farm to back taxes, and her doctor had just given her two years to live--but only if she "lived restfully." He offered her a spot in the county's charity home. Instead, she decided she wanted to see the Pacific Ocean just once before she died. She bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men's dungarees, loaded up her horse, and headed out from Maine in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. She had no map, no GPS, no phone. But she had her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness.

Between 1954 and 1956, Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, journeyed more than 4,000 miles, through America's big cities and small towns, meeting ordinary people and celebrities--from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers--a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher who loved animals as much as she did. As Annie trudged through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by her at terrifying speeds, she captured the imagination of an apprehensive Cold War America. At a time when small towns were being bypassed by Eisenhower's brand-new interstate highway system, and the reach and impact of television was just beginning to be understood, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.]]> 336 Elizabeth Letts 052561933X Robin 0 to-read 4.46 2021 The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America
author: Elizabeth Letts
name: Robin
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century]]> 56822253 "This book has a miraculous quality.... As a memoir this is hard to put down; if you are seeking a better American future you should pick it up."--Timothy Snyder, New York Times best-selling author of On Tyranny

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia--and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as an historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.

Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of northern "There is nothing for you here, pet," he said.

The coal-miner's daughter managed to go further than he ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served three U.S. Presidents. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. By the time she offered her brave testimony in the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink--and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from Russia's fate. In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.

"Of every book written by anybody associated with the Trump administration, in any way, [this] is absolutely the one to read."--Rachel Maddow

A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Book of the Year]]> 437 Fiona Hill 0358574242 Robin 0 4.22 2021 There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
author: Fiona Hill
name: Robin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: biography-autobiography-or-memoire, history, economics-finance, to-read
review:

]]> The Midnight Feast 199791337 Secrets. Lies. Murder. Let the festivities begin...

It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests� healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule� cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

THE FOUNDER * THE HUSBAND * THE MYSTERY GUEST * THE KITCHEN HELP

It all began with a secret, fifteen years ago. Now the past has crashed the party. And it’ll end in murder at� The Midnight Feast.]]> 320 Lucy Foley 0063003120 Robin 3 3.79 2024 The Midnight Feast
author: Lucy Foley
name: Robin
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812]]> 15594
Between 1785 and 1812 a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich gives us an intimate and densely imagined portrait, not only of the industrious and reticent Martha Ballard but of her society. At once lively and impeccably scholarly, A Midwife's Tale is a triumph of history on a human scale.]]> 444 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich 0679733760 Robin 0 to-read 3.96 1990 A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
author: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
name: Robin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> St. Francis of Assisi 174873
For Chesterton, Francis is a great paradoxical figure, a man who loved women but vowed himself to chastity; an artist who loved the pleasures of the natural world as few have loved them, but vowed himself to the most austere poverty, stripping himself naked in the public square so all could see that he had renounced his worldly goods; a clown who stood on his head in order to see the world aright. Chesterton gives us Francis in his world-the riotously colorful world of the High Middle Ages, a world with more pageantry and romance than we have seen before or since. Here is the Francis who tried to end the Crusades by talking to the Saracens, and who interceded with the emperor on behalf of the birds. Here is the Francis who inspired a revolution in art that began with Giotto and a revolution in poetry that began with Dante. Here is the Francis who prayed and danced with pagan abandon, who talked to animals, who invented the creche.]]> 176 G.K. Chesterton 0385029004 Robin 3 3.99 1923 St. Francis of Assisi
author: G.K. Chesterton
name: Robin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1923
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]]> 29890212 277 J.D. Vance Robin 1
As I am a childless cat lady, F him and his memoir!

ORIGINAL REVIEW: enjoyed this memoir, especially considering the recent election cycle, about rust belt/Appalachian white working class cultural identity.

I related to some of it, having been exposed to similar cultural inheritance, though I am a generation and an economic class away from it. He offers a lot of cultural insight, and is willing to be honest about his shortcomings, which is always welcome in a memoirist. His best writing is about the colorful family members who helped raise him, and surprises he experienced about the functioning of upper class life as he transitioned during graduate school.

On the downside, he glosses over some major problems with the white working class such as racism, and often returns to the frustrating "if I can do it, why can't everyone else?" attitude. I thought he conflated the issues with his family with the working class as a whole, though he does point out that he was more likely to suffer from them by virtue of his social class. At times he includes some social analysis, and at one point he talked about the rise and fall of working class jobs in rust belt communities, and how the loss of this type of work affected families. He's from the generation that lost the lion's share of those jobs and grew up with many of the symptoms -- a broken family, a parent with addiction issues, chaos and uncertainty in his home life.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty good memoir from a demographic we don't always hear about.]]> 4.10 2016 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
author: J.D. Vance
name: Robin
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at: 2017/01/30
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: biography-autobiography-or-memoire, nonfiction
review:
UPDATE: JD Vance has completely gone off the rails in his politics and has sold out his Appalachian values to be associated with Peter Thiel and Trump.

As I am a childless cat lady, F him and his memoir!

ORIGINAL REVIEW: enjoyed this memoir, especially considering the recent election cycle, about rust belt/Appalachian white working class cultural identity.

I related to some of it, having been exposed to similar cultural inheritance, though I am a generation and an economic class away from it. He offers a lot of cultural insight, and is willing to be honest about his shortcomings, which is always welcome in a memoirist. His best writing is about the colorful family members who helped raise him, and surprises he experienced about the functioning of upper class life as he transitioned during graduate school.

On the downside, he glosses over some major problems with the white working class such as racism, and often returns to the frustrating "if I can do it, why can't everyone else?" attitude. I thought he conflated the issues with his family with the working class as a whole, though he does point out that he was more likely to suffer from them by virtue of his social class. At times he includes some social analysis, and at one point he talked about the rise and fall of working class jobs in rust belt communities, and how the loss of this type of work affected families. He's from the generation that lost the lion's share of those jobs and grew up with many of the symptoms -- a broken family, a parent with addiction issues, chaos and uncertainty in his home life.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty good memoir from a demographic we don't always hear about.
]]> <![CDATA[Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking]]> 201874194 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
The gripping, true story of one woman’s battle to expose and shut down a criminal online porn empire.

Pornhub was the 10th most visited site on the Internet, often praised as a progressive champion of women. Then one day, an activist discovered a secret they had been keeping from the world for over a decade: it was infested with child sexual abuse and rape videos.

Now for the first time, anti-trafficking expert and mother of two Laila Mickelwait tells the story of her battle against Pornhub’s billionaire executives and the credit card companies who helped them monetize the abuse of countless victims—some as young as three years old. Readers will follow her from her first horrifying discovery of criminal content on Pornhub to closed-door meetings with credit card executives, White House and Justice Department senior officials, a powerful hedge-fund manager and more. Through insider accounts from Pornhub moderators and executives, you’ll meet the world’s first online porn tycoon, AKA “the Zuckerberg of porn,� along with Pornhub’s top brass (known internally as “The Bro Club�) who operate in secrecy.

The culmination of years of activism, Takedown is the true, never before told story of how Mickelwait mobilized a movement of two million people that resulted in "the biggest takedown of content in Internet history." (Financial Times)]]> 320 Laila Mickelwait 0593542010 Robin 0 to-read 4.51 2024 Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking
author: Laila Mickelwait
name: Robin
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Hike 62312363 From internationally bestselling author Lucy Clarke comes a propulsive new thriller about four women who lace up their hiking boots and venture into the Norwegian wilderness - but not all of them will return.

There's a killer on their trail.

Burned out by both her marriage and work, Liz desperately needs an escape. More than that, she needs an adventure, a total reset. So when it is her turn to plan the annual vacation with her three best friends, she persuades them to spend four nights wild camping in the stunning mountains of Norway. Following a trail that climbs through lush valleys, towering peaks, and passed jewel-blue lakes, Liz is sure that the hike is just what she needs to get her life back together. But as they stride further from civilisation, it becomes clear that they are not the only ones looking to lose themselves in the wilderness.

No cell coverage.
No help.
No one to hear them scream.

Told in alternating perspectives, this gripping thriller explores the wild side of female friendship and the transportive power of the wilderness.]]> 384 Lucy Clarke 0593422686 Robin 3 3.86 2023 The Hike
author: Lucy Clarke
name: Robin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Book of Love 157994093 The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.]]> 630 Kelly Link 0812996593 Robin 0 i-gave-up-on-this-book 3.63 2024 The Book of Love
author: Kelly Link
name: Robin
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: i-gave-up-on-this-book
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success]]> 208930976 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of then-President Trump’s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump’s wealth, revealing how one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House

Soon after announcing his first campaign for the U.S. presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life “has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.� Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country—except none of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise.

For decades he squandered his fortunes on money-losing businesses only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacked his name on every building while taking out huge loans he’d never repay. He obsessed over appearances while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnished the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and he cheated the television producer who not only rescued him from bankruptcy but also cast him as a business savant—the public image that carried Trump to the White House.

Drawing on more than twenty years� worth of Trump’s confidential tax information—including the tax returns Trump tried to conceal—alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump's financial rise and fall—and rise and fall again.]]> 528 Russ Buettner 0593298640 Robin 0 to-read 4.39 2024 Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success
author: Russ Buettner
name: Robin
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Message 210943364
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk� city of “old traditions and new machinery,� but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning� of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Robin 0 to-read 4.51 2024 The Message
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Robin
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future]]> 201757917 A radical set of new ideas for how entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate leaders can use the pattern-breaking mindset to dominate the future

The breakthrough concepts of Pattern Breakers come from the observations of Mike Maples Jr., a seasoned venture capitalist, who noticed something strange. Start-ups like Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft had achieved extraordinary success despite their disregard for “best practices.� In contrast, other startups deemed highly promising often failed, even when they seemed to do everything right.

Seeking answers, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success. Pattern-breaking success, they reveal, demands a different mindset and actions to harness developments others miss or that may, at first, seem crazy.

Pattern Breakers is filled with firsthand storytelling about initial interactions with some of the most transformative start-ups of recent times. Maples and Ziebelman vividly illustrate an unexpected world where chaos is welcome, naysayers are a positive signal, movements galvanize believers—but one that ultimately change the future. They challenge us to rethink how to transcend the ordinary and achieve the extraordinary.
]]> 256 Mike Maples Jr. Robin 0 to-read 3.92 Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future
author: Mike Maples Jr.
name: Robin
average rating: 3.92
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/03
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]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Robin 0 to-read 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: Robin
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/28
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]]> <![CDATA[South of the Border, West of the Sun]]> 17799 Alternate cover edition here.

Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.]]> 190 Haruki Murakami 0099448572 Robin 0 to-read 3.89 1992 South of the Border, West of the Sun
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Robin
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World]]> 40776644 A debut from Forbes' third most powerful woman in the world, Melinda Gates, a timely and necessary call to action for women's empowerment.

For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission. Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women.

In this candid and inspiring book, Gates traces her awakening to the link between women's empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to “turbo-charge" change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference.

Convinced that all women should be free to decide whether and when to have children, Gates took her first step onto the global stage to make a stand for family planning. That step launched her into further efforts: to ensure women everywhere have access to every kind of job; to encourage men around the globe to share equally in the burdens of household work; to advocate for paid family leave for everyone; to eliminate gender bias in all its forms.

Throughout, Gates introduces us to her heroes in the movement towards equality, offers startling data, shares moving conversations she's had with women from all over the world—and shows how we can all get involved.

A personal statement of passionate conviction, this book tells of Gates' journey from a partner working behind the scenes to one of the world's foremost advocates for women, driven by the belief that no one should be excluded, all lives have equal value, and gender equity is the lever that lifts everything.]]> 273 Melinda French Gates 1250313570 Robin 0 to-read 4.26 2019 The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
author: Melinda French Gates
name: Robin
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Robin 4 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Robin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
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]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

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

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

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Robin 0 i-gave-up-on-this-book 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Robin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: i-gave-up-on-this-book
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]]> <![CDATA[Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs]]> 15865547 268 Steven Hassan 0967068819 Robin 0 to-read 4.22 Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs
author: Steven Hassan
name: Robin
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Robin 3 classic-literature 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Robin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 3
read at: 2011/08/21
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: classic-literature
review:

]]> The Trackers 62075486 From the New York Times bestselling author of Cold Mountain and Varina, a stunning new novel that paints a vivid portrait of life in the Great Depression

Hurtling past the downtrodden communities of Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming. Through a stroke of luck, he's landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office.

A wealthy art lover named John Long and his wife Eve have agreed to host Val at their sprawling ranch. Rumors and intrigue surround the couple: Eve left behind an itinerant life riding the rails and singing in a western swing band. Long holds shady political aspirations, but was once a WWI sniper--and his right hand is a mysterious elder cowboy, a vestige of the violent old west. Val quickly finds himself entranced by their lives.

One day, Eve flees home with a valuable painting in tow, and Long recruits Val to hit the road with a mission of tracking her down. Journeying from ramshackle Hoovervilles to San Francisco nightclubs to the swamps of Florida, Val's search for Eve narrows, and he soon turns up secrets that could spark formidable changes for all of them.

In The Trackers, singular American writer Charles Frazier conjures up the lives of everyday people during an extraordinary period of history that bears uncanny resemblance to our own. With the keen perceptions of humanity and transcendent storytelling that have made him beloved for decades, Frazier has created a powerful and timeless new classic.]]> 384 Charles Frazier 0062948105 Robin 3 4.00 2023 The Trackers
author: Charles Frazier
name: Robin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
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]]> The Castaways 52779734 WISH YOU WERE HERE?
THINK AGAIN�

It should be like any other holiday.

Beautiful beaches.
Golden sunsets.
Nothing for miles.

You’ll never want to leave.
Until you can’t…]]> 416 Lucy Clarke 0008334129 Robin 0 to-read 3.88 2021 The Castaways
author: Lucy Clarke
name: Robin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/19
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]]> The Castaways (Nantucket, #2) 6080822
Once again, Hilderbrand masterfully weaves an intense tale of love and loyalty set against the backdrop of endless summer island life.]]> 359 Elin Hilderbrand 0316043893 Robin 0 to-read 3.63 2009 The Castaways (Nantucket, #2)
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Robin
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Die Hexe von Dunwood 214331884
Nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter möchte die 17-jährige Anna Cairns eigentlich nur Ihrem verschlafenen Dorf in den Highlands entfliehen, um an der London Academy for Advanced Sciences zu studieren. Doch als Dunwood erstmals seit einem brutalen Übergriff wieder das Beltane-Fest feiert, kommt es zu einem mysteriösen Todesfall. Eine junge Frau, die im Dorf als Hexe galt, wird erhängt aufgefunden.

Die Polizei legt den Fall als Suizid zu den Akten, doch Anna lässt er keine Ruhe. Gemeinsam mit ihren Freundinnen begibt sie sich auf die Suche nach der Wahrheit. Dabei stößt sie nicht nur auf Dunwoods verborgene Schattenseiten, sondern auch an die Grenzen der Realität, die zunehmend zu verschwimmen beginnen.]]> 378 Nina Wylie Robin 0 to-read 4.56 Die Hexe von Dunwood
author: Nina Wylie
name: Robin
average rating: 4.56
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism]]> 168677579
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens� confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.

That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.

At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.

None of it went as planned.

While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality, it involved alarge number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.

That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.]]> 416 Rachel Maddow 0593444515 Robin 0 to-read 4.36 2023 Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism
author: Rachel Maddow
name: Robin
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Brief History of Seven Killings]]> 20893314
Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters—assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts�A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 70s, to the crack wars in 80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 90s. Brilliantly inventive and stunningly ambitious, this novel is a revealing modern epic that will secure Marlon James� place among the great literary talents of his generation.]]> 688 Marlon James 159448600X Robin 0 to-read 3.91 2014 A Brief History of Seven Killings
author: Marlon James
name: Robin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories]]> 22929586 A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians. Readers will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they'd ever overlooked her in the first place.]]> 406 Lucia Berlin 0374202397 Robin 0 to-read 4.22 2015 A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
author: Lucia Berlin
name: Robin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity]]> 13547504 Far from the Tree is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down's syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, and Solomon documents triumphs of love over prejudice in every chapter.

All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent should parents accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on ten years of research and interviews with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges.

Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original and compassionate thinker, Far from the Tree explores how people who love each other must struggle to accept each other—a theme in every family’s life.]]> 962 Andrew Solomon Robin 0 to-read 4.25 2012 Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
author: Andrew Solomon
name: Robin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
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]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Robin 0 to-read 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: Robin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Line of Beauty 139087
As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty, a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends.

Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, this U.K. bestseller is a major work by one of our finest writers.]]> 438 Alan Hollinghurst 0739464469 Robin 0 to-read 3.76 2004 The Line of Beauty
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Robin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Known World 67 The Known World is a daring and ambitious work by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones.

The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.]]> 388 Edward P. Jones 0061159174 Robin 0 to-read 3.83 2003 The Known World
author: Edward P. Jones
name: Robin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Sellout 22237161
Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens―on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles―the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident―the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins―he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.]]> 289 Paul Beatty 0374260508 Robin 0 to-read 3.75 2015 The Sellout
author: Paul Beatty
name: Robin
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Savage Detectives 63033
The explosive first long work by “the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time� (Ilan Stavans, Los Angeles Times), The Savage Detectives follows Belano and Lima through the eyes of the people whose paths they cross in Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. This chorus includes the muses of visceral realism, the beautiful Font sisters; their father, an architect interned in a Mexico City asylum; a sensitive young follower of Octavio Paz; a foul-mouthed American graduate student; a French girl with a taste for the Marquis de Sade; the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky; a Chilean stowaway with a mystical gift for numbers; the anorexic heiress to a Mexican underwear empire; an Argentinian photojournalist in Angola; and assorted hangers-on, detractors, critics, lovers, employers, vagabonds, real-life literary figures, and random acquaintances.

A polymathic descendant of Borges and Pynchon, Roberto Bolaño traces the hidden connection between literature and violence in a world where national boundaries are fluid and death lurks in the shadow of the avant-garde. The Savage Detectives is a dazzling original, the first great Latin American novel of the twenty-first century.]]> 577 Roberto Bolaño 0374191484 Robin 0 to-read 4.12 1998 The Savage Detectives
author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Robin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Exit West 30688435
Exit West follows these characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.]]> 231 Mohsin Hamid 0735212171 Robin 0 to-read 3.74 2017 Exit West
author: Mohsin Hamid
name: Robin
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Life of Pi 4214 460 Yann Martel 0770430074 Robin 4 3.94 2001 Life of Pi
author: Yann Martel
name: Robin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/17
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: favorites, light-fiction, magical-realism, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall]]> 125106329
As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging feeling: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity—with a dash of FOMO—would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world’s new financial machinery. Faux’s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires.

Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,� an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upona Pokémon knockoff mobile gametouted by boosters as a cure for poverty.In an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring.

When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF’s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade “our great poet of crime� from Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine, Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.]]> 473 Zeke Faux 0593443829 Robin 5
Zeke Faux couldn't figure out crypto, and Zeke writes about finance for Bloomberg. I don't write about finance, but, I also couldn't figure out crypto. I bought some Bitcoin a while back. It took a long time for me to understand the concepts of the blockchain, wallets, and exchanges. Trading took many steps and incurred fees. Eventually I hoped I could use crypto to buy something, but I never did.

I love the idea of a global currency that's non-regulated and distinct from national banks because people living in economies wrecked by inflation could potentially benefit. If your currency loses 50% of its value every year, imagine having a global alternative currency that could be saved and invested, and holds value? How many lives would be changed by that?

That was the noble promise of cryptocurrencies, and I embraced it. But the problem with having a non-regulated currency is that...there's no regulation. The value of a digital coin is at the mercy of the market. The "price" of Bitcoin has fluctuated wildly and is not stable at all. Further, people who want to buy and sell black market goods benefit because crypto "wallets" (banks) and exchanges need not verify identity. That opens up avenues to use by crypto for all types of crimes.

Zeke Faux sat down to understand crypto and bought some for himself. Who creates the crypto and how does it work? How does money flow in and out of the cryptosphere? Where does it go?

The findings he reports in Number Go Up are not for the faint of heart. In Cambodia, cartels traffic compounds full of people and force them to use the promise of crypto returns to "pig fatten", or scam unknowing foreign victims out of their money. Because crypto is not regulated, it's difficult if not impossible for police agencies to track the perpetrators.

People with criminal records create crypto exchange websites, coins and NFTs, offering a very high return on investment. When the returns can't be sustained (because they're running Ponzi schemes, not legitimate investments) their scams collapse and people lose money.

Sam Bankman-Fried, of the FTX crypto exchange, worked in real finance on Wall Street before starting his own crypto empire. He should have known better! Same was living somewhere with an extradition treaty when he (basically) used $8 billion of people's crypto investments on high risk investments. That's like your bank using your deposits to speculate on cattle futures - they don't do it because it's against banking regulations. But crypto is unregulated. Bankman-Fried, an American, didn't violate banking rules but did get convicted for fraud and money laundering.

Zeke Faux reveals that crypto has no real value. Crypto is a line on a spreadsheet, that people trade back and forth. Unlike a dollar, you can't spend it to buy a Coke. You can watch the valuation of Bitcoin, and make a profit by selling it at a higher price that you bought. Then, you can trade that for a dollar. But that doesn't help someone in a weak economy struggling with their native currency. They need to be able to use the currency, not speculate on it. The country of El Salvador adopted bitcoin as legal tender, but, when Zeke traveled there, he struggled to find a store or vendor that would accept it.

Worse, people with poor financial literacy often confuse crypto with stocks (assets secured by companies and corporations which are legally required to adhere to SEC regulation), and have lost untold money to the get-rich promises of finance influencers.

The energy costs of creating crypto are astronomical, if you haven't looking up crypto mines it's worth doing so to understand the massive amount of electricity it takes to run the computers that "mine" or create crypto. All for something that really has no net positive on the world, the economy, or anyone other than speculators and criminals.

I sold my crypto recently (after figuring out how to get it out of my crypto wallet). I am grateful to Faux and this book for giving some perspective to the hype and promises of crypto, and showing the real world problems the "dream" of crypto has created.]]> 4.40 2023 Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
author: Zeke Faux
name: Robin
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/27
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, finance, technology, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:
I'm still thinking about this book a long time after I put it down! This is the type of investigative reporting I crave when I'm learning about something; a reporter who experiences the story they are telling and shares it with you along the way.

Zeke Faux couldn't figure out crypto, and Zeke writes about finance for Bloomberg. I don't write about finance, but, I also couldn't figure out crypto. I bought some Bitcoin a while back. It took a long time for me to understand the concepts of the blockchain, wallets, and exchanges. Trading took many steps and incurred fees. Eventually I hoped I could use crypto to buy something, but I never did.

I love the idea of a global currency that's non-regulated and distinct from national banks because people living in economies wrecked by inflation could potentially benefit. If your currency loses 50% of its value every year, imagine having a global alternative currency that could be saved and invested, and holds value? How many lives would be changed by that?

That was the noble promise of cryptocurrencies, and I embraced it. But the problem with having a non-regulated currency is that...there's no regulation. The value of a digital coin is at the mercy of the market. The "price" of Bitcoin has fluctuated wildly and is not stable at all. Further, people who want to buy and sell black market goods benefit because crypto "wallets" (banks) and exchanges need not verify identity. That opens up avenues to use by crypto for all types of crimes.

Zeke Faux sat down to understand crypto and bought some for himself. Who creates the crypto and how does it work? How does money flow in and out of the cryptosphere? Where does it go?

The findings he reports in Number Go Up are not for the faint of heart. In Cambodia, cartels traffic compounds full of people and force them to use the promise of crypto returns to "pig fatten", or scam unknowing foreign victims out of their money. Because crypto is not regulated, it's difficult if not impossible for police agencies to track the perpetrators.

People with criminal records create crypto exchange websites, coins and NFTs, offering a very high return on investment. When the returns can't be sustained (because they're running Ponzi schemes, not legitimate investments) their scams collapse and people lose money.

Sam Bankman-Fried, of the FTX crypto exchange, worked in real finance on Wall Street before starting his own crypto empire. He should have known better! Same was living somewhere with an extradition treaty when he (basically) used $8 billion of people's crypto investments on high risk investments. That's like your bank using your deposits to speculate on cattle futures - they don't do it because it's against banking regulations. But crypto is unregulated. Bankman-Fried, an American, didn't violate banking rules but did get convicted for fraud and money laundering.

Zeke Faux reveals that crypto has no real value. Crypto is a line on a spreadsheet, that people trade back and forth. Unlike a dollar, you can't spend it to buy a Coke. You can watch the valuation of Bitcoin, and make a profit by selling it at a higher price that you bought. Then, you can trade that for a dollar. But that doesn't help someone in a weak economy struggling with their native currency. They need to be able to use the currency, not speculate on it. The country of El Salvador adopted bitcoin as legal tender, but, when Zeke traveled there, he struggled to find a store or vendor that would accept it.

Worse, people with poor financial literacy often confuse crypto with stocks (assets secured by companies and corporations which are legally required to adhere to SEC regulation), and have lost untold money to the get-rich promises of finance influencers.

The energy costs of creating crypto are astronomical, if you haven't looking up crypto mines it's worth doing so to understand the massive amount of electricity it takes to run the computers that "mine" or create crypto. All for something that really has no net positive on the world, the economy, or anyone other than speculators and criminals.

I sold my crypto recently (after figuring out how to get it out of my crypto wallet). I am grateful to Faux and this book for giving some perspective to the hype and promises of crypto, and showing the real world problems the "dream" of crypto has created.
]]> <![CDATA[Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman]]> 60626758
Alan Rickman remains the one of the most beloved actors of all time across almost every genre in the American and British markets, from his breakout role as Die Hard’s Hans Gruber to his heart-wrenching run as Professor Severus Snape, and beyond. His air of dignity, his sonorous voice, and the knowing wit he brought to each role have captivated viewers across nearly every generation alive today.

But Rickman’s artistry wasn’t confined to just his performances. Fans of movies, theater, and memoirs at large will delight in the intimate experience of Rickman detailing the extraordinary and the ordinary in a way that is “anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid.� He grants us access to his thoughts and insights on theater performances, the craft of acting, politics, friendships, work projects, and his general musings on life. Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman was written with the intention to be shared, and reading it feels as if Rickman is chatting to a close friend.]]> 472 Alan Rickman 1250847966 Robin 5 3.72 2022 Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman
author: Alan Rickman
name: Robin
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: biography-autobiography-or-memoire, favorites, nonfiction, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> The Psychology of Money 51181015 224 Morgan Housel 085719769X Robin 5 4.50 2020 The Psychology of Money
author: Morgan Housel
name: Robin
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: finance, nonfiction, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> Art and Fear 187633 122 David Bayles 0961454733 Robin 5 3.77 1994 Art and Fear
author: David Bayles
name: Robin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2021/04/10
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, therapeutic-self-help, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish]]> 23014804 *Now a New York Times Best Seller*

Over the course of two decades, John Hargrove worked with 20 different whales on two continents and at two of SeaWorld's U.S. facilities. For Hargrove, becoming an orca trainer fulfilled a childhood dream. However, as his experience with the whales deepened, Hargrove came to doubt that their needs could ever be met in captivity. When two fellow trainers were killed by orcas in marine parks, Hargrove decided that SeaWorld's wildly popular programs were both detrimental to the whales and ultimately unsafe for trainers.

After leaving SeaWorld, Hargrove became one of the stars of the controversial documentary Blackfish. The outcry over the treatment of SeaWorld's orca has now expanded beyond the outlines sketched by the award-winning documentary, with Hargrove contributing his expertise to an advocacy movement that is convincing both federal and state governments to act.

In Beneath the Surface, Hargrove paints a compelling portrait of these highly intelligent and social creatures, including his favorite whales Takara and her mother Kasatka, two of the most dominant orcas in SeaWorld. And he includes vibrant descriptions of the lives of orcas in the wild, contrasting their freedom in the ocean with their lives in SeaWorld.

Hargrove's journey is one that humanity has just begun to take-toward the realization that the relationship between the human and animal worlds must be radically rethought.]]> 264 John Hargrove 1137280107 Robin 5
Since the first orcas were first captured from the wild in the 1970s and kept in giant aquarium parks, we know so such more about them. Their brains are built for intelligence and socialization, even having a section that doesn't exist in human brains. Their pods are matriarchal and close-knit, and most whales spend the entirety of their long lives with their families. They hunt in groups, like wolves, and they "feel" the water using sonar like dolphins. Wild orcas swim for as many as 100 miles of ocean a day, they are constantly hunting, they groom and play.They live in a vibrant, dynamic environment.

At SeaWorld and other parks, they live in sterile tanks, with no substrate, and only interact with people and a few other non-familial orcas. Their stimulation is from training, shows, and some play time with giant rubber balls or other floating toys. At other times they can be observed floating listlessly, performing stereotypies out of boredom such as eating paint or acts of self-mutilation.

They are kept in small pods, though individuals may be sent from park to park as management sees fit. The calves in captivity (that survive) are sometimes removed from their mothers' sides and sent to other parks at young ages.

In one heartbreaking story, a daughter was loaded on a truck for transfer to another park. The mother orca vocalized intensely for hours. Researchers explained that she was using long range sounds, hoping to call her daughter back from far away.

According to the author, orca on orca aggression happens frequently at SeaWorld, and it's not unusual for the whales to break training and become aggressive with their trainers. The most famous example of this is when the massive bull orca Tilikum killed trainer Dawn Brancheau by holding her underwater. But the author himself had been injured by the orcas and gave many other examples in the book. In the wild, orca attacks on humans are unheard of. The author believes this is due to the psychological stress of captivity.

I learned so much from this book!]]> 4.17 2015 Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish
author: John Hargrove
name: Robin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2020/10/30
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:
Orcas are cute. They bob their faces up out of the water to peer around. When they open their mouths for a fish treat it looks like they are smiling. And the orca shows at SeaWorld, they swim around the pool waving their giant flippers at you.

Since the first orcas were first captured from the wild in the 1970s and kept in giant aquarium parks, we know so such more about them. Their brains are built for intelligence and socialization, even having a section that doesn't exist in human brains. Their pods are matriarchal and close-knit, and most whales spend the entirety of their long lives with their families. They hunt in groups, like wolves, and they "feel" the water using sonar like dolphins. Wild orcas swim for as many as 100 miles of ocean a day, they are constantly hunting, they groom and play.They live in a vibrant, dynamic environment.

At SeaWorld and other parks, they live in sterile tanks, with no substrate, and only interact with people and a few other non-familial orcas. Their stimulation is from training, shows, and some play time with giant rubber balls or other floating toys. At other times they can be observed floating listlessly, performing stereotypies out of boredom such as eating paint or acts of self-mutilation.

They are kept in small pods, though individuals may be sent from park to park as management sees fit. The calves in captivity (that survive) are sometimes removed from their mothers' sides and sent to other parks at young ages.

In one heartbreaking story, a daughter was loaded on a truck for transfer to another park. The mother orca vocalized intensely for hours. Researchers explained that she was using long range sounds, hoping to call her daughter back from far away.

According to the author, orca on orca aggression happens frequently at SeaWorld, and it's not unusual for the whales to break training and become aggressive with their trainers. The most famous example of this is when the massive bull orca Tilikum killed trainer Dawn Brancheau by holding her underwater. But the author himself had been injured by the orcas and gave many other examples in the book. In the wild, orca attacks on humans are unheard of. The author believes this is due to the psychological stress of captivity.

I learned so much from this book!
]]> Thinking, Fast and Slow 11468377 Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.]]> 499 Daniel Kahneman 0374275637 Robin 5 4.17 2011 Thinking, Fast and Slow
author: Daniel Kahneman
name: Robin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2020/09/05
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:
A neat, scholastic look about the neuroscience of how we make decisions.
]]> <![CDATA[Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving]]> 20556323
I felt encouraged to write this book because of thousands of e-mail responses to the articles on my website that repeatedly expressed gratitude for the helpfulness of my work. An often echoed comment sounded like this: At last someone gets it. I can see now that I am not bad, defective or crazy…or alone!

The causes of CPTSD range from severe neglect to monstrous abuse. Many survivors grow up in houses that are not homes � in families that are as loveless as orphanages and sometimes as dangerous.

If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body.

This book is a practical, user-friendly self-help guide to recovering from the lingering effects of childhood trauma, and to achieving a rich and fulfilling life. It is copiously illustrated with examples of my own and my clients� journeys of recovering. This book is also for those who do not have CPTSD but want to understand and help a loved one who does.

This book also contains an overview of the tasks of recovering and a great many practical tools and techniques for recovering from childhood trauma. It extensively elaborates on all the recovery concepts explained on my website, and many more. However, unlike the articles on my website, it is oriented toward the layperson. As such, much of the psychological jargon and dense concentration of concepts in the website articles has been replaced with expanded and easier to follow explanations. Moreover, many principles that were only sketched out in the articles are explained in much greater detail. A great deal of new material is also explored.

Key concepts of the book include managing emotional flashbacks, understanding the four different types of trauma survivors, differentiating the outer critic from the inner critic, healing the abandonment depression that come from emotional abandonment and self-abandonment, self-reparenting and reparenting by committee, and deconstructing the hierarchy of self-injuring responses that childhood trauma forces survivors to adopt.

The book also functions as a map to help you understand the somewhat linear progression of recovery, to help you identify what you have already accomplished, and to help you figure out what is best to work on and prioritize now. This in turn also serves to help you identify the signs of your recovery and to develop reasonable expectations about the rate of your recovery.

I hope this map will guide you to heal in a way that helps you to become an unflinching source of kindness and self-compassion for yourself, and that out of that journey you will find at least one other human being who will reciprocally love you well enough in that way.]]> 376 Pete Walker Robin 5
I read the book even though my trauma is based more on events in my adulthood and also in relation to my health and many years of chronic illness. So I had to kind of reverse engineer some of the concepts. But they resonated a lot with me and were incredibly helpful.

The emotional mechanisms we develop to cope with trauma may be helpful in the blunt face of it, but over time can become habitual and lead to more distress and more pain. Some of us can become really hard on ourselves due to things we can not control, or that we internalize (such as ableism). "Like a soldier long in battle" our minds can get beaten down.

I listened to this book slowly and plan on listening to it again. I took a lot of notes and have been reading them every day. I feel like I just started a journey of mental self help (that I've needed due to disability) but I've already noticed how much better I've been feeling about myself in my life.

Albeit dated, by far the best psychological self-help book I've read along with Radical Acceptance.]]> 4.55 2013 Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
author: Pete Walker
name: Robin
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2020/05/24
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, therapeutic-self-help, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:
This book was so helpful to me. It's based on the psychological concept that a lot of trauma in childhood, be it repeated instances of verbal abuse or major trauma such as physical abuse or sexual assault can manifest into a type of PTSD that presents with what the author calls emotional flashbacks.

I read the book even though my trauma is based more on events in my adulthood and also in relation to my health and many years of chronic illness. So I had to kind of reverse engineer some of the concepts. But they resonated a lot with me and were incredibly helpful.

The emotional mechanisms we develop to cope with trauma may be helpful in the blunt face of it, but over time can become habitual and lead to more distress and more pain. Some of us can become really hard on ourselves due to things we can not control, or that we internalize (such as ableism). "Like a soldier long in battle" our minds can get beaten down.

I listened to this book slowly and plan on listening to it again. I took a lot of notes and have been reading them every day. I feel like I just started a journey of mental self help (that I've needed due to disability) but I've already noticed how much better I've been feeling about myself in my life.

Albeit dated, by far the best psychological self-help book I've read along with Radical Acceptance.
]]> Pachinko 29983711 Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan.

So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity.]]> 490 Min Jin Lee 1455563935 Robin 5
It works because too much literary baggage can get in the way of the historical context which should be forefront in a historical novel. Pachinko reminded me of the epic family generational type of novel of the 80s, like The Shell Seekers, where you follow simple lives through significant historical events.

The main character, Sunja, was born just before antibiotics and electricity and grew old in the microchip era. Even though she is not in every page, all of the characters in the novel connect to her life, whether they are spouses of children or great aunts. I always find social changes fascinating. The author did a good job in helping the reader understand how gender roles, work, leisure, and poverty have shifted over the decades via the characters' lives. The novel speaks heavily about the immigrant experience, as well, one thing that unfortunately has not progressed so much.

Like others, I thought the novel faltered a bit toward the end. Some of the character development went awry, here. Still it's one of the better novels I've read in a quite a while.]]> 4.25 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Robin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2018/03/15
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: historical-fiction, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:
This was so good! I liked that it was written very simply. The author didn't concern herself much with trendy literary styles or conventions. There is no "show don't tell" going on here, you know exactly what the characters are thinking or feeling because the she tells you. Nor heavy handed themes at play except for the obvious Pachinko-machine-is-life metaphor.

It works because too much literary baggage can get in the way of the historical context which should be forefront in a historical novel. Pachinko reminded me of the epic family generational type of novel of the 80s, like The Shell Seekers, where you follow simple lives through significant historical events.

The main character, Sunja, was born just before antibiotics and electricity and grew old in the microchip era. Even though she is not in every page, all of the characters in the novel connect to her life, whether they are spouses of children or great aunts. I always find social changes fascinating. The author did a good job in helping the reader understand how gender roles, work, leisure, and poverty have shifted over the decades via the characters' lives. The novel speaks heavily about the immigrant experience, as well, one thing that unfortunately has not progressed so much.

Like others, I thought the novel faltered a bit toward the end. Some of the character development went awry, here. Still it's one of the better novels I've read in a quite a while.
]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Robin 5 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Robin
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: humor, light-fiction, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Robin 5
All of the boxes are ticked - pacing, prose, character development. Some readers didn't like way the author switched back and forth between timelines, and usually that is a pet peeve of mine, but he did it just right. You get information about the characters just when you need it to keep the story tight and on pace.

And the writing is beautiful. I loved his thick, literary sentences and the gymnastics of prose that he used for descriptive writing. Open the book to any page and find paragraphs as rich and delicious as chocolate.

His characters answer questions about wartime. What happens to the fragile and the disabled during the choas of war? How are people who are otherwise good young people formed into Nazis, how do they justify what they do in their minds? Every character gets attention and development - the housekeeper, the crazy uncle, the sister left behind.

The attention to detail is phenomenal, especially for the character of Marie-Laure, a young french girl who is blind. She lives in a six story house and we learn every floor. It is only later in the book when a sighted person enters the house and notices the decorating that I realized it has been, until that point, described as a blind person would experience it - the placement of objects, the sounds of the floorboards, the smells of the kitchen, etc.

I had to force myself to put this one down and go to sleep. And, as I love my sleep that is the best compliment I can give to a book!]]> 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Robin
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2014/09/07
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: historical-fiction, contemporary-literature, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:
I think this is, by far, my favorite novel of the year. I love historical fiction and somehow the author, a bald middle aged dude from Idaho, brought me right into Nazi Germany, occupied France, and all over the Eastern Front. I peeped in a school that trained young men to become Nazi soldiers, fled Paris during the invasion, and sat in a seaside town as it was shelled for days by Allied forces.

All of the boxes are ticked - pacing, prose, character development. Some readers didn't like way the author switched back and forth between timelines, and usually that is a pet peeve of mine, but he did it just right. You get information about the characters just when you need it to keep the story tight and on pace.

And the writing is beautiful. I loved his thick, literary sentences and the gymnastics of prose that he used for descriptive writing. Open the book to any page and find paragraphs as rich and delicious as chocolate.

His characters answer questions about wartime. What happens to the fragile and the disabled during the choas of war? How are people who are otherwise good young people formed into Nazis, how do they justify what they do in their minds? Every character gets attention and development - the housekeeper, the crazy uncle, the sister left behind.

The attention to detail is phenomenal, especially for the character of Marie-Laure, a young french girl who is blind. She lives in a six story house and we learn every floor. It is only later in the book when a sighted person enters the house and notices the decorating that I realized it has been, until that point, described as a blind person would experience it - the placement of objects, the sounds of the floorboards, the smells of the kitchen, etc.

I had to force myself to put this one down and go to sleep. And, as I love my sleep that is the best compliment I can give to a book!
]]> <![CDATA[Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves]]> 72659 246 Farley Mowat 0316881791 Robin 5 4.20 1963 Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves
author: Farley Mowat
name: Robin
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/24
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> The Goldfinch 18692995 867 Donna Tartt Robin 5 4.02 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Robin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/11/26
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: contemporary-literature, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain]]> 627206 Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was first published in 1979, it hit the New York Times bestseller list within two weeks and stayed there for more than a year. In 1989, when Dr. Betty Edwards revised the book, it went straight to the Times list again. Now Dr. Edwards celebrates the twentieth anniversary of her classic book with a second revised edition.Over the last decade, Dr. Edwards has refined her material through teaching hundreds of workshops and seminars. Truly The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, this edition includes:


the very latest developments in brain research
new material on using drawing techniques in the corporate world and in education
instruction on self-expression through drawing
an updated section on using color
detailed information on using the five basic skills of drawing for problem solving]]> 291 Betty Edwards 0874774241 Robin 5
Recently I unearthed my box of accumulated art supplies and drawing books, and noticed the orange spine of Betty Edwards Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. This is the most often recommended title for beginners. I recalled reading a bit of it years ago, and setting it aside because the exercises seemed rather complicated and required the use of tools.

So, I decided to give it another try. I read it carefully from cover to cover before doing any drawing. Then, I ordered the recommended tools (these can be made inexpensively but I opted to just buy them from the author's website) and have been practicing these exercises ever since. Though much of information Edwards presents in her book isn't unique, the way she teaches it helped facilitate understanding for me in ways I never had before. My entire approach to drawing has changed dramatically and I finally feel like it is something I can eventually master.

Edwards believes that drawing accurately is something can be taught, much like driving or learning a new language. Though some people will learn more quickly than others, most people can obtain a basic level of profiency through learning and practice. I don't know why I never thought about it like that before! Artistic talent is often though of as innate, but in reality it is a set of skills. Edwards contends that the only "talent" necessary for drawing is the ability to write legibly; if you can do that, you can learn to draw.

Much of the beginning of the book sets forth Edwards' theory on neurology and how it affects the way we conceptualize drawing. Though most of this was written decades ago (the book has gone through several editions) and Edwards' theories about brain sided-ness have been disproven, a lot of her framework rings true. By necessity of language, people think symbolically - words represent objects. But, artists think visually and this is what she teaches - how to think and see like an artist.

For example, if I were attempting to draw a lamp, Edward would suggest that I stop thinking of it as a lamp. It is a series of basic shapes that are connected to each other in various proportions. So, I would try to see the lamp as a partly a square connected to a cylinder, an oval, etc.

By seeing objects as a sum of shapes, a beginning artist can resist the temptation to draw her own concept of what that object should look like. Edwards believes that this tendency to revert to symbolic thinking is what hampers beginning artist. She illustrates this concept brilliantly in a fascinating early chapter about children's drawings, showing how almost universally, children adopt symbols representative of what they wish to draw. Heads are circles, smiles are elongated "U"s. Once this pattern gets set cognitively, it's difficult to draw a head that isn't a circle. And heads are not circles!

Edwards takes the reader through a series of exercises to show how much we tend to draw symbolically. In one exercise, a line drawing of a seated man is flipped upside down and we are instructed to draw it. It forces us to draw visually, as our brain doesn't process upside-down drawings as symbols. I remember drawing the circles of the man's glasses, not even realizing what they were! Most people will draw the upside-down image better than the right-side up image.

Each subsequent chapter introduces various accuracy skills: sighting, scaling, etc. She employs time honored tools such as picture planes to assist the beginner in seeing their subjects visually. Later chapters address drawing faces and using color.

But I am really happy that I re-read this book and dived into its challenges. Thanks to Betty Edwards for teaching so many people that they can learn to draw.

Postscript: As a person with a debilitating disabling illness, drawing is a bit of a challenge. I've found ways to work around some of the things that prevented me from trying (again). First, I made a place for my drawing materials where they could be easily accessible, and easily stored away: a nightstand drawer. I draw in a reclined position, with my sketchbook propped up on my knees, so I am comfortable. Some of the exercises require an hour or more of work; these I break up into smaller sessions, and I amend some of the suggested subjects if they are not suitable to my arrangement.]]> 3.86 1979 The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
author: Betty Edwards
name: Robin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at: 2012/07/28
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:
I've had several abortive attempts to learn to draw and paint over the last ten years. Part of the problem is that I become frustrated at how difficult it is to draw accurately and in proportion, and invariably put away my pencils and sketchbooks after a series of failures. And then, a year or two later, I try again, with a new how-to-draw book and vigor, only to repeat the process.

Recently I unearthed my box of accumulated art supplies and drawing books, and noticed the orange spine of Betty Edwards Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. This is the most often recommended title for beginners. I recalled reading a bit of it years ago, and setting it aside because the exercises seemed rather complicated and required the use of tools.

So, I decided to give it another try. I read it carefully from cover to cover before doing any drawing. Then, I ordered the recommended tools (these can be made inexpensively but I opted to just buy them from the author's website) and have been practicing these exercises ever since. Though much of information Edwards presents in her book isn't unique, the way she teaches it helped facilitate understanding for me in ways I never had before. My entire approach to drawing has changed dramatically and I finally feel like it is something I can eventually master.

Edwards believes that drawing accurately is something can be taught, much like driving or learning a new language. Though some people will learn more quickly than others, most people can obtain a basic level of profiency through learning and practice. I don't know why I never thought about it like that before! Artistic talent is often though of as innate, but in reality it is a set of skills. Edwards contends that the only "talent" necessary for drawing is the ability to write legibly; if you can do that, you can learn to draw.

Much of the beginning of the book sets forth Edwards' theory on neurology and how it affects the way we conceptualize drawing. Though most of this was written decades ago (the book has gone through several editions) and Edwards' theories about brain sided-ness have been disproven, a lot of her framework rings true. By necessity of language, people think symbolically - words represent objects. But, artists think visually and this is what she teaches - how to think and see like an artist.

For example, if I were attempting to draw a lamp, Edward would suggest that I stop thinking of it as a lamp. It is a series of basic shapes that are connected to each other in various proportions. So, I would try to see the lamp as a partly a square connected to a cylinder, an oval, etc.

By seeing objects as a sum of shapes, a beginning artist can resist the temptation to draw her own concept of what that object should look like. Edwards believes that this tendency to revert to symbolic thinking is what hampers beginning artist. She illustrates this concept brilliantly in a fascinating early chapter about children's drawings, showing how almost universally, children adopt symbols representative of what they wish to draw. Heads are circles, smiles are elongated "U"s. Once this pattern gets set cognitively, it's difficult to draw a head that isn't a circle. And heads are not circles!

Edwards takes the reader through a series of exercises to show how much we tend to draw symbolically. In one exercise, a line drawing of a seated man is flipped upside down and we are instructed to draw it. It forces us to draw visually, as our brain doesn't process upside-down drawings as symbols. I remember drawing the circles of the man's glasses, not even realizing what they were! Most people will draw the upside-down image better than the right-side up image.

Each subsequent chapter introduces various accuracy skills: sighting, scaling, etc. She employs time honored tools such as picture planes to assist the beginner in seeing their subjects visually. Later chapters address drawing faces and using color.

But I am really happy that I re-read this book and dived into its challenges. Thanks to Betty Edwards for teaching so many people that they can learn to draw.

Postscript: As a person with a debilitating disabling illness, drawing is a bit of a challenge. I've found ways to work around some of the things that prevented me from trying (again). First, I made a place for my drawing materials where they could be easily accessible, and easily stored away: a nightstand drawer. I draw in a reclined position, with my sketchbook propped up on my knees, so I am comfortable. Some of the exercises require an hour or more of work; these I break up into smaller sessions, and I amend some of the suggested subjects if they are not suitable to my arrangement.
]]> <![CDATA[Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea]]> 6178648 Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.

Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.]]> 316 Barbara Demick 0385523904 Robin 5 4.43 2009 Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
author: Barbara Demick
name: Robin
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2012/07/28
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, favorites, biography-autobiography-or-memoire, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating]]> 8303977 Neohelix albolabris —a common woodland snail.

While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world.

Intrigued by the snail’s molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer, providing a candid and engaging look into the curious life of this underappreciated small animal.

Told with wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence and provides an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.]]> 208 Elisabeth Tova Bailey 1565126068 Robin 5 4.15 2010 The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
author: Elisabeth Tova Bailey
name: Robin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, favorites, absolute-favorite
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control]]> 43261495
Over the past two years, Trump’s behavior has become both more disturbing and yet increasingly familiar. He relies on phrases like, “fake news,� “build the wall,� and continues to spread the divisive mentality of us-vs.-them. He lies constantly, has no conscience, never admits when he is wrong, and projects all of his shortcomings on to others. He has become more authoritarian, more outrageous, and yet many of his followers remain blindly devoted. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and a major Trump supporter, calls him one of the most persuasive people living. His need to squash alternate information and his insistence of constant ego stroking are all characteristics of other famous leaders� cult leaders.

In The Cult of Trump, mind-control and licensed mental health expert Steven Hassan draws parallels between our current president and people like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Ron Hubbard and Sun Myung Moon, arguing that this presidency is in many ways like a destructive cult. He specifically details the ways in which people are influenced through an array of social psychology methods and how they become fiercely loyal and obedient. Hassan was a former “Moonie� himself, and he draws on his forty years of personal and professional experience studying hypnosis and destructive cults, working as a deprogrammer, and a strategic communications interventionist. He emphasizes why it’s crucial that we recognize ways to identify and protect ourselves and our loved ones.

The Cult of Trump is an accessible and in-depth analysis of the president, showing that under the right circumstances, even sane, rational, well-adjusted people can be persuaded to believe the most outrageous ideas. Hassan’s book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the Trump phenomenon and looking for a way forward.]]> 320 Steven Hassan 1982127333 Robin 5 nonfiction, finance
This book helped me understand how otherwise rational people "fall down the rabbit hole", emerging as believers in conspiracy.

He also discusses the techniques Trump uses to influence how people think. Interestingly, Trump attended Normal Vincente Peale's church as a child. He metabolized Peale's approach and espouses positive thinking to the point of magical thinking: nothing about his thoughts, personality, or administration are negative. (It's everyone else who is negative!)

For people who are dealing with life stress and emotional vulnerabilities, it is seductive to surrender critical thinking and succumb to an authority figure who seems to care about their fears and troubles.

Between this book and Mary Trump's analysis of Trump, I feel like I have more insight into these last 4 crazy years.]]> 4.07 2019 The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control
author: Steven Hassan
name: Robin
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: nonfiction, finance
review:
Steven Hassan is amazing! As a former member of the Moonies cult, he approaches the topic of manipulation with empathy and thoughtfulness. As a psychologist, he made a career out of helping people leave cults and recover what he refers to as "freedom of mind".

This book helped me understand how otherwise rational people "fall down the rabbit hole", emerging as believers in conspiracy.

He also discusses the techniques Trump uses to influence how people think. Interestingly, Trump attended Normal Vincente Peale's church as a child. He metabolized Peale's approach and espouses positive thinking to the point of magical thinking: nothing about his thoughts, personality, or administration are negative. (It's everyone else who is negative!)

For people who are dealing with life stress and emotional vulnerabilities, it is seductive to surrender critical thinking and succumb to an authority figure who seems to care about their fears and troubles.

Between this book and Mary Trump's analysis of Trump, I feel like I have more insight into these last 4 crazy years.
]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Robin 0 to-read 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Robin
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Vet at Noah's Ark: Stories of Survival from an Inner-City Animal Hospital]]> 60471998
The life of a veterinarian is challenging: keeping up with advances in medical care, making difficult decisions about people’s beloved companions, and, in Dr. Doug Mader’s case, navigating the social unrest in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. As one of the few exotic animal experts in California, he was just as likely to be treating a lion as a house cat.

The Vet at Noah's Ark: Stories of Survival from an Inner-City Animal Hospital follows Dr. Mader and his staff over the course of a year at Noah's Ark Veterinary Hospital, an inner-city LA area veterinary hospital where Dr. Mader treats not only dogs and cats, but also emus, skunks, snakes, foxes, monkeys, and a host of other exotic animals. This real life drama is set against the backdrop of the trial of four police officers in the Rodney King case, as well as the violent aftermath following their acquittal.

This is a book about survival, both of the pets that Dr. Mader and his staff try to save on a daily basis, as well as the staff themselves. Living in the harsh reality of the city, surrounded by gangs, drugs, violence, traffic, smog, and deadly riots, they must overcome and rise above, for their own survival and that of the animals who need them. This awe-inspiring account is told through Dr. Mader's riveting storytelling―as Carl Hiaasen writes, "Doug is fearless and dedicated," and "a damn good storyteller."]]> 392 Doug Mader 1954641044 Robin 0 to-read 4.44 The Vet at Noah's Ark: Stories of Survival from an Inner-City Animal Hospital
author: Doug Mader
name: Robin
average rating: 4.44
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Ferryman 61282437 New York Times bestselling author of The Passage comes a riveting standalone novel about a group of survivors on a hidden island utopia--where the truth isn't what it seems.

Founded by a mysterious genius, the archipelago of Prospera lies hidden from the horrors of a deteriorating outside world. In this island paradise, Prospera's lucky citizens enjoy long, fulfilling lives until the monitors embedded in their forearms, meant to measure their physical health and psychological well-being, fall below 10 percent. Then they retire themselves, embarking on a ferry ride to the island known as the Nursery, where their failing bodies are renewed, their memories are wiped clean, and they are readied to restart life afresh.

Proctor Bennett, of the Department of Social Contracts, has a satisfying career as a ferryman, gently shepherding people through the retirement process--and, when necessary, enforcing it. But all is not well with Proctor. For one thing, he's been dreaming--which is supposed to be impossible in Prospera. For another, his monitor percentage has begun to drop alarmingly fast. And then comes the day he is summoned to retire his own father, who gives him a disturbing and cryptic message before being wrestled onto the ferry.

Meanwhile, something is stirring. The Support Staff, ordinary men and women who provide the labor to keep Prospera running, have begun to question their place in the social order. Unrest is building, and there are rumors spreading of a resistance group--known as "Arrivalists"--who may be fomenting revolution.

Soon Proctor finds himself questioning everything he once believed, entangled with a much bigger cause than he realized--and on a desperate mission to uncover the truth.]]> 538 Justin Cronin 052561947X Robin 0 3.86 2023 The Ferryman
author: Justin Cronin
name: Robin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/06
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]]> <![CDATA[True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart]]> 40651734
There is another way. Beneath the turbulence of our thoughts and emotions exists a profound stillness, a silent awareness capable of limitless love. Tara Brach, author of the award-winning Radical Acceptance, calls this awareness our true refuge, because it is available to every one of us, at any moment, no exceptions. In this book, Brach offers a practical guide to finding our inner sanctuary of peace and wisdom in the midst of difficulty.

Based on a fresh interpretation of the three classic Buddhist gateways to freedom—truth, love, and awareness�True Refuge shows us the way not just to heal our suffering, but also to cultivate our capacity for genuine happiness. Through spiritual teachings, guided meditations, and inspirational stories of people who discovered loving presence during times of great struggle, Brach invites us to connect more deeply with our own inner life, one another, and the world around us.

True Refuge is essential reading for anyone encountering hardship or crisis, anyone dedicated to a path of spiritual awakening. The book reminds us of our own innate intelligence and goodness, making possible an enduring trust in ourselves and our lives. We realize that what we seek is within us, and regardless of circumstances, “there is always a way to take refuge in a healing and liberating presence.�

Advance praise for True Refuge

“Tara Brach writes from the heart to the heart. With candor and calmness, she shares her own and others� struggles to overcome our deep and constant human dilemmas. Whenever I read Brach, I feel more peaceful and hopeful. I trust myself and the universe more. I feel more connected and grounded in what the Lakota Sioux call Wakan Tanka, The Great Mystery. True Refuge is itself a refuge and I thank the author for it.”—Mary Pipher, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author of The Green Boat and Reviving Ophelia

“There is something very special about this exquisitely written book—its clarity, beauty, simplicity, and humanity practically sing to you. Inspiring and uplifting to read, it also has eminently practical, implementable, step-by-step guidance to practice and live by. And the fifteen brief, powerful guided meditations offer an easy, gentle entry toward inner peace and wisdom. While turning the pages, I thought of a half dozen people who could really use this book as a friendly, loving reference point—myself included!”—Belleruth Naparstek, author of Invisible Heroes and creator of the Health Journeys guided imagery audio series]]> 322 Tara Brach 0345538625 Robin 0 4.05 2012 True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart
author: Tara Brach
name: Robin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[When Love is Not Enough: Chronicles of LauraJo]]> 16195337 324 Pat Engebrecht 1461185785 Robin 0 to-read 4.08 2012 When Love is Not Enough: Chronicles of LauraJo
author: Pat Engebrecht
name: Robin
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World]]> 61281742 One of the most acclaimed journalists on contemporary China lays bare the country's two decade quest for global dominance and how the Chinese Communist Party coopted what Western leaders have long considered their most powerful tool in the fight for liberal democracy--capitalism--to expand their influence worldwide.

Beijing Rules is a superb expose which reveals how China learned to master capitalism which it now wields in its own authoritarian form to achieve global dominance. As Bethany Allen, the China reporter for Axios, reveals, the long-standing belief that free-trade capitalism is a democratizing force--the assumption underlying much of American and Western policy since World War II--is demonstrably false. Capitalism is actually a two-way street: if democratic values can travel in one direction, authoritarianism can travel in the other. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has successfully engineered what Cold War champions believed to be impossible: an unabashedly Communist Party leading a prosperous capitalist state.

Written by the first American journalist to expose covert Chinese influence operations in the United States, Beijing Rules includes headline-making stories of western institutions bowing to Beijing's coercion--a glimpse of what American's future might look like should liberal democracy come firmly under the thumb of authoritarian capitalism. Grounded in deep investigative reporting, it sounds the alarm about what we must do to prevent the loss of freedoms we now take for granted.

]]> 336 Bethany Allen 0063057417 Robin 0 to-read 3.71 2023 Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World
author: Bethany Allen
name: Robin
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen]]> 112974860 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain

As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.�

And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?

Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.

The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.]]> 304 David Brooks 059323006X Robin 0 to-read 4.09 2023 How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
author: David Brooks
name: Robin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Great Alone 34912895 Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents� passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights� lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.]]> 435 Kristin Hannah Robin 0 to-read 4.44 2018 The Great Alone
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Robin
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Women 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Robin 0 to-read 4.59 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Robin
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> You Like It Darker 201242757 From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new collection of twelve short stories, many never-before-published, and some of his best EVER.

“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,� writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,� and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.

“Two Talented Bastids� explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,� a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,� a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,� a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man� asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

King’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.]]> 512 Stephen King 1668037718 Robin 0 to-read 4.16 2024 You Like It Darker
author: Stephen King
name: Robin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Art History, Volume II: 1400—Present]]> 18883774 Northern Europe from 1400-1500 -- The Northern Renaissance, Burgandy and Flanders, Flemish Painting, Germany and Switzerland, France, Art on Paper, Holy Roman EmpireItaly's Renaissance in the 1400's -- Introduction, Humanism, Florence, The Second Half of the 1400sArt in Commercial and Market Contexts -- Artists, Support for Art Making, Consumption of Art, Non-Preservation of ArtItaly in the 1500s -- Sixteenth Century Europe, The High Renaissance, Mannerism, The Counter-Reformation, The Late 1500s in Venice and the VenetoNorthern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula in the 1500's -- The Reformation, The Holy Roman Empire in Germany, France, Spain and Portugal, The Netherlands, EnglandEurope in the 1600's -- The Baroque Period, Italy, Spain, Flanders, The Dutch Republic, France, EnglandSouth and Southeast Asia After 1200 -- India, Southeast Asia, Mughal Period, India and the WestChina and Korea After 1279 -- The Mongols, China, Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty, The Modern Period, KoreaJapan After 1333 -- Muromachi Period, Momoyama Period, Edo Period, Modern PeriodThe Americas After 1300 -- Mesoamerica, The Aztecs, South America, The Incas, North AmericaOceania -- The Rise of Pacific Cultures, Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, Modern Oceanic ArtAfrica in the Modern Period -- Traditional and Contemporary African A Comparison, The 1800s, The 1900s, Contemporary ArtEurope and America in the 1700s and Early 1800s -- Revolution, Rococo, Neoclassicism in Italy, Neoclassicism in Britain, France in the Late 1700s, Spainish Art, Neoclassicism and Romanticism, The EnlightenmentEurope and America in the 1800s -- Napoleon, Europe and America in the Second Half of the 1800s, Academic Art in France, Photography, Realism, Impressionism, Rise of Modernism, The Beginning of Modern Architecture, SculptureEurope and America, 1900-1950 -- Europe, 1900-1920, European Art, Moderism in America, Modern Architecture, America, 1900 to 1930, Europe, 1920-1945, America, 1930-1945, Postwar Art, Abstract ExpressionismGlobal Art Since 1950 -- The World Since 1950, Painting and Sculpture, 1945-1970, The Art World Grows, Painting and Sculpture Since 1970, Dematerialization, Architecture, Postmodernism, The Nineties, New Venues and Forms of Art, Performance Art, Conceptual Art, and New Media]]> 0 Boundless 1940464269 Robin 0 currently-reading 3.65 2013 Art History, Volume II: 1400—Present
author: Boundless
name: Robin
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Candace Pert: Genius, Greed, and Madness in the World of Science]]> 123204335
Candace Pert stood at the dawn of three the women’s movement, integrative health, and psychopharmacology. A scientific prodigy, she was 30 years ahead of her time, preaching a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to healthcare and medicine long before yoga hit the mainstream and “wellness� took root in our vernacular. Her bestselling book Molecules of Emotion made her the mother of the Mind/Body Revolution, launching a paradigm shift in medicine. Deepak Chopra credits her with creating his career, and he said as much in his eulogy at her funeral.

Candace began her career as an unbridled maverick. In 1972, as a 26-year-old graduate student at Johns Hopkins, she discovered the opiate receptor, revolutionizing her field and enabling pharmacologists to design new classifications of drugs from Prozac to Viagra to Percocet and OxyContin. The tragic irony of her breakthrough, touted as the first step to end heroin addiction, is that it helped spawn a virulent epidemic of drug dependence. Facing the largest public health crisis of the 21st century, Candace was incensed that the Hippocratic oath—“first, do no harm”—would succumb to greed, and as witness to this abuse of power, she was one of few scientists courageous enough to protest.

Later, as Chief of Brain Biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health, Candace created Peptide T, the non-toxic treatment for HIV featured in Dallas Buyers Club . As the AIDS pandemic raged, triggering panic across Reagan-era America, the U.S. government poured massive amounts of money into finding a cure, sparking a battle among scientists for funding and power. Bested by rivals with competing drugs yet desperate to help, Candace went rogue, becoming a lynchpin in the black market for Peptide T.

After a scandalous departure from her tenured position at the NIH, Candace launched a series of private companies with Michael Ruff, her second husband and collaborator. Naïve to the world of business, she was manipulated by investors keen to wrest control of her discoveries. But Candace too became tainted, believing that her noble ends would justify devious means. Like a mythic hero, she succumbed to a fatal flaw, and her greatest strengths—singularity of purpose and blind faith in her own virtuosity—would prove to be her undoing.]]> 304 Pamela Ryckman 0306831465 Robin 0 to-read 3.89 Candace Pert: Genius, Greed, and Madness in the World of Science
author: Pamela Ryckman
name: Robin
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back]]> 62057257 A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media

Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)—or both.

In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,� with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon’s use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels� use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere.

By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct “anti-competitive flywheels� designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.

In the book’s second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.

Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that’s being heisted away—before it’s too late.]]> 311 Rebecca Giblin Robin 0 to-read 4.47 2022 Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back
author: Rebecca Giblin
name: Robin
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/26
date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life]]> 16190991
Here, Margalis Fjelstad describes how people get into a Caretaker role with a Borderline or Narcissist, and how they can get out. Caretakers give up their sense of self to become who and what the Borderline or Narcissist needs them to be. This compromises the Caretaker’s self-esteem, distorts their thinking processes, and locks them into a Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer pattern with the Borderline or Narcissist. The book looks at the underlying rules and expectations in these relationships and shows Caretaker’s how to move themselves out of these rigid interactions and into a healthier, more productive, and positive lifestyle—with or without the Borderline/Narcissistic partner or family member. It describes how to get out of destructive interactions with the Borderline or Narcissist and how to take new, more effective actions to focus on personal wants, needs, and life goals while allowing the Borderline or Narcissist to take care of themselves. It presents a realistic, yet compassionate, attitude toward the self-destructive nature of these relationships, and gives real life examples of how individuals have let go of their Caretaker behaviors with creative and effective solutions.]]> 190 Margalis Fjelstad 144222018X Robin 0 to-read 3.96 Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life
author: Margalis Fjelstad
name: Robin
average rating: 3.96
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date added: 2024/05/13
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Listen When Markets Speak: Risks, Myths, and Investment Opportunities in a Radically Reshaped Economy]]> 149110143 A New York Times bestselling author and leading expert on market risk argues that seismic shifts in the global economy will trigger a multi-trillion-dollar migration of wealth, tracing the fateful decisions that created this crisis—and outlines new rules of investing for the forward-thinking.

From Wall Street to the White House, the fantasy of an eventual “return to normal� is still alive and well. But an unprecedented era of easy money—nurtured by disastrous policy decisions and artificial disinflationary forces—is coming to a screeching halt. We’re about to witness a new era defined by sustained inflation, a series of sovereign and corporate debt crises, and a historic multitrillion-dollar migration of wealth.
Few are prepared.

Lawrence G. McDonald, founder of the economic research platform The Bear Traps Report, got a real-world education in market risk when, as a Lehman Brothers VP, he watched the firm ignore flashing warning signs before its collapse. His analysis formed the basis of his explosive exposé A Colossal Failure of Common Sense and ultimately led him to identify twenty-one indicators for gauging the health of an economy and detecting early signals of opportunity and danger.

In How to Listen When Markets Speak, McDonald not only traces the fateful events that led to our current crisis but also unveils his unique predictive models, outlining counterintuitive investing strategies for the years ahead. Readers will learn

� how the growing demand for oil, coal, precious metals, and rare minerals; underinvestment in urgently needed energy infrastructure; and cozy Russia–Saudi Arabia relations will trigger the next bull market for commodities
� why America will likely weaken its position as holder of the world’s premier reserve currency, and how that should affect your portfolio
� why hard assets and value stocks will outperform growth stocks, U.S. Treasuries, and overcrowded passive investment strategies

Rather than merely doomsaying, McDonald equips readers to resist reactionary narratives, stay a beat ahead of the crowds, and preserve their wealth in turbulent times.
When markets speak, it pays to listen.]]> 272 Lawrence McDonald 0593727495 Robin 0 to-read 4.10 How to Listen When Markets Speak: Risks, Myths, and Investment Opportunities in a Radically Reshaped Economy
author: Lawrence McDonald
name: Robin
average rating: 4.10
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date added: 2024/04/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan]]> 6658129
At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime . . . crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of eighty-hour workweeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face to face with Japan’s most infamous yakuza boss—and the threat of death for him and his family—Adelstein decided to step down . . . momentarily. Then, he fought back.

In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein tells the riveting, often humorous tale of his journey from an inexperienced cub reporter—who made rookie mistakes like getting into a martial-arts battle with a senior editor—to a daring, investigative journalist with a price on his head. With its vivid, visceral descriptions of crime in Japan and an exploration of the world of modern-day yakuza that even few Japanese ever see, Tokyo Vice is a fascination, and an education, from first to last.]]> 335 Jake Adelstein 0307378799 Robin 0 to-read 3.88 2009 Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
author: Jake Adelstein
name: Robin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/05
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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 Robin 0 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Robin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/13
date added: 2024/03/14
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]]> Snow Road Station 81217417 From the Giller Prize-winning author comes a novel, witty and wise, about thwarted ambition, unrealized dreams, the enduring bonds of female friendship, and love's capacity to surprise us at any age.

In the winter of 2008, as snow falls without interruption, an actor in a Beckett play blanks on her lines. Fleeing the theatre, she beats a retreat into her past and arrives at Snow Road Station, a barely discernible dot on the map of Ontario.

The actor is Lulu Blake, in her sixties now, a sexy, seemingly unfooled woman well-versed in taking risks. Out of work, humiliated, she enters the last act of her life wondering what she can make of her diminished self. In Snow Road Station she decides she is through with drama, but drama, it turns out, isn't through with her. She thinks she wants peace. It turns out she wants more.

Looming in the background is that autumn's global financial meltdown, while in the foreground family and friends animate a round of weddings, sap harvests, love affairs, and personal turmoil. At the centre of it all is the friendship between Lulu and Nan. As the two women contemplate growing old, they surrender certain long-held dreams and confront the limits of the choices they've made and the messy feelings that kept them apart for decades.]]> 236 Elizabeth Hay 1039003338 Robin 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Snow Road Station
author: Elizabeth Hay
name: Robin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/25
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