en-US Sun, 11 May 2025 14:34:27 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 9778945 Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?

Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.

Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.

Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.]]> 280 Nicholas Carr 0393339750 Alex 3 3.90 2010
author: Nicholas Carr
name: Alex
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/11
date added: 2025/05/11
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I listened to this book since audio was all the library has available. Interesting material but the narrator was so dull. Excellent insomnia cure!
]]> 29429938
Beautiful, brilliant—and reckless—Jocelyn has gone off the grid before, but never like this. In a desperate effort to find her, Charlotte joins forces with Max Cutler, a struggling PI who recently moved to Seattle after his previous career as a criminal profiler went down in flames—literally. Burned out, divorced and almost broke, Max needs the job.

After surviving a near-fatal attack, Charlotte and Max turn to Jocelyn’s closest friends, women in a Seattle-based online investment club, for answers. But what they find is chilling�

When her uneasy alliance with Max turns into a full-blown affair, Charlotte has no choice but to trust him with her life. For the shadows of Jocelyn’s past are threatening to consume her—and anyone else who gets in their way...]]> 331 Jayne Ann Krentz 0399174494 Alex 3 3.74 2016
author: Jayne Ann Krentz
name: Alex
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/10
date added: 2025/05/10
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]]> 61187307
Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.

The book is an assemblage of co-authored reflections, interviews and questions that are intended to aid and empower activists and organizers as they attempt to map their own journeys through the work of justice-making. It includes insights from a spectrum of experienced organizers, including Sharon Lungo, Carlos Saavedra, Ejeris Dixon, Barbara Ransby, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore about some of the difficult and joyous lessons they have learned in their work.]]> 296 Kelly Hayes Alex 4 4.57 2023
author: Kelly Hayes
name: Alex
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
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]]> 53721534 For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries�

Set amidst the opulent mansions and cobblestone streets of Old New York, this fifth installment in Rosemary Simpson's acclaimed series brings the Gilded Age to life, as heiress Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter dash down a twisted maze from Fifth Avenue to Five Points in pursuit of stolen diamonds once belonging to Marie Antionette ...

Fall 1889: Lady Rotherton has arrived from London intent on chaperoning her niece Prudence through a New York social season to find a suitable husband. It's certainly not her niece's devilishly handsome partner in Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law. Aunt Gillian's eye for eligible suitors is surpassed only by her ability to discern genuine gems from nearly flawless fakes. At the Assembly Ball at Delmonico's, she effortlessly determines that the stones in the spectacular diamond waterfall necklace adorning the neck of the wife of banker William De Vries are fake.

Insisting on absolute discretion to avoid scandal, the banker employs Prudence and Geoffrey to recover the stolen diamonds pried out of their settings--priceless stones acquired by Tiffany, originally purchased for Marie Antoinette. Their search for a possible fence rapidly leads to a dead end: a jeweler brutally killed in his shop during an apparent theft.

The jeweler's murder is only the first in a string of mysterious deaths, as Prudence and Geoffrey pursue their elusive quarry. But the clues keep leading back to duplicity on the part of the De Vries family, who, it turns out, have a great deal to hide...]]> 304 Rosemary Simpson 1496722140 Alex 3 4.14 2020
author: Rosemary Simpson
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
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]]> 7926242 Port Mortuary, the title of Patricia Cornwell's eighteenth Scarpetta novel, is literally a port for the dead. In this fast-paced story, a treacherous path from Scarpetta's past merges with the high- tech highway she now finds herself on. We travel back to the beginning of her professional career, when she accepted a scholarship from the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt. Now, more than twenty years and many career successes later, her secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base, where she has been immersed in a training fellowship.

As the chief of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts, a joint venture of the state and federal governments, MIT and Harvard, Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could shut down her new facility and ruin her personally and professionally.]]> 496 Patricia Cornwell 0399157212 Alex 3
The mystery itself was not so interesting. The tech was super interesting. Think this is probably my last Scarpetta unless I'm stuck somewhere with another of her books and nothing else to read. ]]> 3.61 2010
author: Patricia Cornwell
name: Alex
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
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REALLY had to push myself to finish this book. I've read Scarpetta novels years ago but this one was just interminable. The plot unfolds over about 2 days and the writing is mostly Kay trash talking herself, people not listening to her or talking over her, including people she loves....

The mystery itself was not so interesting. The tech was super interesting. Think this is probably my last Scarpetta unless I'm stuck somewhere with another of her books and nothing else to read.
]]> 222683910 With a foreword by Chelsea Clinton

From a rising star in economics, the first comprehensive look at the costs women face and why the bill runs especially high for women of color.

The “pink taxâ€� has gained widespread recognition in recent years, but what happens when you look at the costs that define a woman’s entire life, especially across racial lines?Ěý

In The Double Tax, Harvard researcher Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman summarizes the disparities that women face as they navigate life’s biggest moments. Not only do the numbers reveal that women incur higher costs than men, but also that Black and white women lead vastly different lives, marked by dramatic gaps in job opportunities, salaries, housing costs, childcare access, and generational wealth. She coins this gap as the “double tax,� the compounded cost of racism and sexism.

Through rigorous research and interviews with women across the country, Opoku-Agyeman calculates the extra money, time, and effort that women are expected and forced to pay at every stage of their life.

While the evidence may be discouraging, The Double Tax offers actionable solutions for how everyday people, local communities, and global leaders alike can help relieve women of these costs for good. Only by understanding where the gaps are and where the double tax arises can we begin to even the playing field for all.]]> 256 Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman 0593714253 Alex 0 to-read 0.0
author: Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman
name: Alex
average rating: 0.0
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]]> 45043979 For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries�

Investigators Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter discover all that glitters is not gold in the Gilded Age, whether on the island of Manhattan or an island off the coast of Georgia ...

DEATH BRINGS A SHADOW

In spring 1889, Prudence and Geoffrey set sail from New York Harbor on a private yacht bound for Bradford Island, where her friend Eleanor Dickson is to be wed. The Sea Islands along the Georgia coast serve as a winter playground for the likes of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Dicksons. Despite her Yankee pedigree, Eleanor is marrying a Southern gentleman, Teddy Bennett, and Prudence is thrilled to be the maid of honor.

But days before the wedding, the bride is nowhere to be found. A frantic search of the island turns up her drowned corpse in an alligator-infested swamp. Prudence is devastated, but as they prepare the body for burial, she and Geoffrey discover evidence of bruising that indicates Eleanor was held under--most dishonorably murdered.

Determined to seek justice for her beloved friend, Prudence begins to investigate with Geoffrey's help and is quickly led into a morass of voodoo spells and dark deeds from the days of slavery. As Prudence and Geoffrey pursue a killer, they soon discover that Eleanor will not be the last to die on Bradford Island ...]]> 311 Rosemary Simpson 1496722094 Alex 4 3.96 2019
author: Rosemary Simpson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> 3407877 The Forgotten Garden is a captivating, atmospheric and compulsively readable story of the past, secrets, family and memory from the international best-selling author Kate Morton.

Cassandra is lost, alone and grieving. Her much loved grandmother, Nell, has just died and Cassandra, her life already shaken by a tragic accident ten years ago, feels like she has lost everything dear to her. But an unexpected and mysterious bequest from Nell turns Cassandra’s life upside down and ends up challenging everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.

Inheriting a book of dark and intriguing fairytales written by Eliza Makepeace—the Victorian authoress who disappeared mysteriously in the early twentieth century—Cassandra takes her courage in both hands to follow in the footsteps of Nell on a quest to find out the truth about their history, their family and their past; little knowing that in the process, she will also discover a new life for herself.
]]> 648 Kate Morton 0330449605 Alex 3 Meant to be a lifetime movie. 4.14 2008
author: Kate Morton
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
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Meant to be a lifetime movie.
]]> 57818387
Peter and his partner, Detective Tyler McAdams, are thrown into an unsolved case and propelled into action when a body is found in the very woods where a man previously went missing in upstate New York.

But that’s not the only crisis that Peter has to deal with.

Teresa McLaughlin, the biological mother of Peter and his wife Rina’s foster son, Gabe, has fled to Los Angeles with her two children in tow, hoping to avoid a court injunction amid a messy divorce. But LA is no escape from her problems—she is found by ruthless men and beaten mercilessly. When she wakes, barely conscious, Teresa discovers that both of her children are gone and frantically calls Gabe for help.

With his mother on the verge of death, Gabe contacts Peter and Rina, as well as his biological father, the notorious Christopher Donatti, a former hit man from a known criminal family who’s now a millionaire in Nevada. By bringing Donatti into the fray, Gabe, Peter, and Rina know they have made a deal with the devil—but they may not be able to recover the kids without him.

As these unlikely allies rally to find the kidnappers before things end tragically, they race headlong toward an explosive confrontation from which no one will emerge unscathed...]]> 384 Faye Kellerman 0062910493 Alex 3 3.30 2022
author: Faye Kellerman
name: Alex
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> 62929342 Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family, and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? ]]> 399 Rachel Khong 0593537254 Alex 5 3.93 2024
author: Rachel Khong
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
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]]> 39277936 For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries�

In Gilded Age New York, heiress Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter investigate crimes that take them from the slums of Five Points in lower Manhattan to the Fifth Avenue mansions of society's elite. In the late nineteenth century, women are particularly vulnerable . . .

LET THE DEAD KEEP THEIR SECRETS

Childbirth can be dangerous even for the wealthy. So when opera singer Claire Buchanan shows Prudence and Geoffrey a postmortem cabinet photograph of her deceased twin sister and newborn niece, they express sadness but not surprise. The popular black-bordered portraits are the era's way of coping with the devastating losses that plague every family. What makes this death different is that Claire is convinced Catherine and her child were murdered.

Prudence's friend is haunted by a sense of her sister's lingering presence, and by the conviction that her dead twin is demanding justice. Catherine's widower, Aaron Sorensen, is a cold, controlling man who swiftly remarried. Now his second wife is already pregnant and may be in terrible danger. In order to discover the truth and find evidence of Sorensen's guilt, Geoffrey will delve deep into his past while Prudence casts herself as his next victim--putting her own life at grave risk . . .]]> 320 Rosemary Simpson 149671573X Alex 3 3.91 2018
author: Rosemary Simpson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
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]]> 35238713 For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries�

Heiress Prudence MacKenzie is a valuable partner to attorney Geoffrey Hunter, despite the fact that women are not admitted to the bar in New York’s Gilded Age. And though their office is a comfortable distance from the violence that haunts the city’s slums, the firm of Hunter and MacKenzie is about to come dangerously close to an unstoppable killer . . . Ěý

LIES THAT COMFORT AND BETRAY
Ěý
The murders in Whitechapel are shocking enough to make news worldwide, and in the autumn of 1888, Geoffrey and Prudence find the stories in the New York Herald quite unsettling. But London is not the only city to be terrorized by a mad butcher.
Ěý
Nora Kenny makes the occasional journey on the Staten Island ferry to work in Prudence’s Fifth Avenue house, just as her mother once served Prudence’s mother. As little girls, they played freely together, before retreating into their respective social classes. Still, they remain fond of each other. But when Nora slips away to Saint Anselm’s one chilly Saturday to confess her sins and never returns, Prudence is alarmed. And when Nora’s body is discovered in a local park, Prudence is devastated.
Ěý
Nora will not be the only young woman to fall victim, but the police are uncertain what they are dealing with. Has the Ripper sailed across the Atlantic to find a new hunting ground? Is some disturbed soul copying his crimes? A former Pinkerton agent, Geoffrey intends to step in where the New York Metropolitan Police seem to be failing, and Prudence is just as determined to protect the poor, vulnerable females being targeted. But a killer with a disordered mind and an incomprehensible motive may prove too elusive for even this experienced pair to outwit.
Ěý
From the author of What the Dead Leave Behind, this is a suspenseful and richly atmospheric mystery that captures both the elegance and sophistication of nineteenth-century New York, and the secrets and bloody terrors that lurked behind its gilded facades.
]]> 413 Rosemary Simpson 1496709136 Alex 3 3.98 2018
author: Rosemary Simpson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
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]]> 112975658 A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546874 Alex 0 to-read 4.37 2023
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Alex
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/01
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]]> 54814676
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band � and meeting the man who would become her husband � her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 243 Michelle Zauner 0525657746 Alex 4 4.25 2021
author: Michelle Zauner
name: Alex
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
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]]> 31409248 For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries�

Set amidst the opulent mansions and cobblestone streets of Old New York, this enthralling historical mystery by Rosemary Simpson brings the Gilded Age to life in a tantalizing tale of old money, new love, and grave suspicion . . .

As the Great Blizzard of 1888 cripples the vast machinery that is New York City, heiress Prudence MacKenzie sits anxiously within her palatial Fifth Avenue home waiting for her fiance s safe return. But the fearsome storm rages through the night. With daylight, more than two hundred people are found to have perished in the icy winds and treacherous snowdrifts. Among them is Prudence s fiance his body frozen, his head crushed by a heavy branch, his fingers clutching a single playing card, the ace of spades . . .

Close on the heels of her father s untimely demise, Prudence is convinced Charles s death was no accident. The ace of spades was a code he shared with his school friend, Geoffrey Hunter, a former Pinkerton agent and attorney from the South. Wary of sinister forces closing in on her, Prudence turns to Geoffrey as her only hope in solving a murder not all believe in and to help protect her inheritance from a stepmother who seems more interested in the family fortune than Prudence s wellbeing . . .

Filled with richly colorful characters, fascinating historical details, and thrilling moments of suspense, What the Dead Leave Behind is an exquisitely crafted mystery for the ages.]]> 304 Rosemary Simpson 149670908X Alex 3 3.75 2017
author: Rosemary Simpson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
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]]> 46194236 Ěý
Filthy, dangerous, and deadly—Hell’s Kitchen is no place for a lady, but Louise Faulk is no ordinary woman. The amateur investigator turned rookie policewoman is investigating the death of young prostitute, Ruthie, who leaves behind a baby boy. Although detectives are quick to declare it a suicide, Louise is less certain after she discovers clues implying murder while attempting to find a caretaker for Ruthie’s orphaned son.
Ěý
Uncovering the truth won’t be easy, especially since Louise is struggling to make a name for herself amid the boys� club of the New York City Police Department. But Ruthie’s case keeps tugging at Louise, luring her beyond the slums� drawn curtains and tenement doors, into an undercover investigation that often seems to conceal more than it reveals. Louise is convinced Ruthie’s secrets got her killed, but can she prove it before they catch up to her too?]]> 288 Liz Freeland 1496726170 Alex 4 3.88 2020
author: Liz Freeland
name: Alex
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
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]]> 22208239
In Happiness , Matthieu Ricard demonstrated that true happiness is not tied to fleeting moments or sensations, but is an enduring state of soul rooted in mindfulness and compassion for others. Now he turns his lens from the personal to the global, with a rousing argument that altruism -- genuine concern for the well-being of others -- could be the saving grace of the 21st century. It is, he believes, the vital thread that can answer the main challenges of our the economy in the short term, life satisfaction in the mid-term, and environment in the long term.

Ricard's message has been taken up by major economists and thinkers, including Dennis Snower, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and George Soros. Matthieu Ricard makes a robust and passionate case for cultivating altruistic love and compassion as the best means for simultaneously benefitting ourselves and our society. It's a fresh outlook on an ardent struggle -- and one that just might make the world a better place.]]> 864 Matthieu Ricard 0316208248 Alex 0 currently-reading 4.21 2013
author: Matthieu Ricard
name: Alex
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 41065622
In 1913, while the women’s suffrage movement gains momentum in the nation’s capital, the thought of a woman joining the New York City police force is downright radical, even if recent transplant Louise Faulk has already solved a murder . . .
Ěý
Louise has finally gathered the courage to take the police civil service exam, but when she returns to her secretary job at the midtown publishing house of Van Hooten and McChesney, she’s shocked to find the offices smoldering from a deadly, early morning fire. Huddled on the sidewalk, her coworkers inform her that Guy Van Hooten’s body has been found in the charred ruins. Rumors of foul play are already circulating, and the firm’s surviving partner asks Louise to investigate the matter.
Ěý
Despite a number of possible suspects, the last person Louise expects to be arrested is Ogden McChesney, an old friend and mentor to her aunt Irene. Louise will have to search high and low, from the tenements in the Lower East Side to the very clouds above the tallest skyscrapers, to get to the bottom of an increasingly complex case . . .]]> 288 Liz Freeland 1496714261 Alex 4 3.96 2019
author: Liz Freeland
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
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]]> 201608154 The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America's most tenacious-and destructive-false ideas: the myth of the "free market."

Merchants of Doubt exposed the origins of climate change denial. Now, its authors unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma. Why do Americans believe in the “magic of the marketplace�?

The answer, as The Big Myth reveals: a propaganda blitz. Until the early 1900s, the U.S. government's guiding role in economic life was largely accepted. But then business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies combatted regulation by building a new orthodoxy: down with “big government,� up with unfettered markets. Unearthing eye-opening archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Hayek and Friedman into household names, recount the libertarian roots of the Little House on the Prairie books, and tune into the General Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine (and the young Ronald Reagan) to millions.

By the 1970s, this crusade had succeeded. Its ideology would define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic administrations, giving us the opioid scourge, climate destruction, giant tech monopolies, and a baleful response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy.]]> 592 Naomi Oreskes 1639734643 Alex 0 to-read 5.00 2023
author: Naomi Oreskes
name: Alex
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 38824450 For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries�

A year before World War I breaks out, the sidewalks of Manhattan are crowded with restless newcomers chasing the fabled American Dream, including a sharp-witted young woman who discovers a talent for investigating murder . . .

New York City, 1913. Twenty-year-old Louise Faulk has fled Altoona, Pennsylvania, to start a life under dizzying lights. In a city of endless possibilities, it's not long before the young ingenue befriends a witty aspiring model and makes a splash at the liveliest parties on the Upper East Side. But glitter fades to grit when Louise's Greenwich Village apartment becomes the scene of a violent murder and a former suitor hustling for Tin Pan Alley fame hits front-page headlines as the prime suspect . . .

Driven to investigate the crime, Louise finds herself stepping into the seediest corners of the burgeoning metropolis--where she soon discovers that failed dreams can turn dark and deadly . . .]]> 288 Liz Freeland 1496714245 Alex 5 3.73 2018
author: Liz Freeland
name: Alex
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:
What a great read! Very fun relatable characters and a fun romp through Manhattan in the 1910s.
]]> 39507318
Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.

In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.

Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “The Human Encyclopedia� who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves.

Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist’s reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever.]]> 317 Susan Orlean 1476740186 Alex 5 3.88 2018
author: Susan Orlean
name: Alex
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:
Such a fantastic book. Orlean is such a great storyteller. I could not put this down.
]]> 199203541
A rainy July weekend in Westham means the beaches are empty and business is dead at Mac’s Bikes but couldn’t be livelier inside the Rusty Anchor Pub. But come Monday morning one patron is not so lively when the chef opens up and finds a body behind the bar. It’s last call for Bruce Byrne, an elderly high school teacher who’s been around so long it seems like he taught everybody.

When Mac’s friend Flo, the librarian, makes the list of suspects, Mac gathers the Cozy Capers Book Group to clear her name. With no end in sight to the rain, the group has plenty of time to study the clues and sort through a roll call of suspects to determine who decided to teach Mr. Bryne a lesson. But with a killer desperate to cover their tracks, Mac and the group will be tested as never before . . .]]> 336 Maddie Day 1496740572 Alex 3 3.93 2024
author: Maddie Day
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 63882018 It's mud season in Cape Cod, and when an ill wind blows in a murder with a twist in the tale, bicycle shop owner Mackenzie "Mac" Almeida and her crime-solving book group are ready to leaf through the clues . . .

Everyone loves a festival, though Mac has a few concerns about the Spring equinox event organized by the new Chamber of Commerce director, Wagner Lavoie. After all, March weather is unpredictable. Still, there's plenty to enjoy, between flower-shaped candies at Salty Taffy's, spring rolls at the Rusty Anchor, and a parade of decorated bicycles. But the festivities soon take a stormy turn . . .

Mac glimpses conflict between Wagner and other locals during the festival, but it's a shock when he's found dead in the Book Nook, pinned beneath a toppled bookshelf. It's an irresistible case for Mac's book group. She and the rest of the Cozy Capers will have to use all their sleuthing skills to bring the killer's story to an end . . .]]> 326 Maddie Day 1496740556 Alex 4 3.87 2023
author: Maddie Day
name: Alex
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 60227885 Ěý
ʼTis the day after Christmas, following a wicked-busy time of year for Mac’s bike shop. It’s just as well her Cozy Capers Book Group’s new pick is a nerve-soothing coloring book mystery, especially when she has last-minute wedding planning to do. But all pre-wedding jitters fade into the background when Mac and her fiancé, Tim, begin a cottage renovation project and open up a wall to find a skeleton—sitting on a stool, dressed in an old-fashioned bridal gown . . .
Ěý
As Mac delves into the decades-old mystery with the help of librarian Flo and her book group, she discovers a story of star-crossed lovers and feuding families worthy of the bard himself. Yet this tale has a modern-day villain still lurking in Mac’s quaint seaside town, ready to make this a murderous New Year’s Eve . . .
Ěý
Includes Recipes!

Ěý]]> 271 Maddie Day 1496735684 Alex 3 4.06 2022
author: Maddie Day
name: Alex
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 57610590
From clam chowdahs to oysters on the half-shell, Tulia Peters� Lobstah Shack offers locals and tourists in Westham, Massachusetts, some of Cape Cod’s most amazing cuisine. But when the body of Annette DiCicero is discovered in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer—with a custom-made claw-handled lobster pick lodged in her neck—spoiled appetites are the least of Tulia’s worries.

After a heated public argument with Annette, Tulia is a person of interest in the police’s homicide investigation. To clear Tulia’s name, Mac and the Cozy Capers Book Group snoop into Annette’s personal life. Between her temperamental husband, his shady business partner, and two women tied to Annette’s past life as “Miss New Bedford�, there are now several suspects and multiple motives. And they’re getting crabby about Mac intruding on their affairs...]]> 322 Maddie Day 149671511X Alex 3 4.02 2021
author: Maddie Day
name: Alex
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 61664231 184 Kelsey Blackwell 1648480616 Alex 0 currently-reading 4.42
author: Kelsey Blackwell
name: Alex
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 16129200 Ěý
While many experts point to the enormous complexity in addressing issues ranging from the destruction of ecosystems to the loss of millions of species, Thich Nhat Hanh identifies one key issue as having the potential to create a tipping point. He believes that we need to move beyond the concept of the “environment,� as it leads people to experience themselves and Earth as two separate entities and to see the planet only in terms of what it can do for them. Thich Nhat Hanh points to the lack of meaning and connection in peoples� lives as being the cause of our addiction to consumerism. He deems it vital that we recognize and respond to the stress we are putting on the Earth if civilization is to survive. Rejecting the conventional economic approach, Nhat Hanh shows that mindfulness and a spiritual revolution are needed to protect nature and limit climate change.

Love Letter to the Earth is a hopeful book that gives us a path to follow by showing that change is possible only with the recognition that people and the planet are ultimately one and the same.]]> 144 Thich Nhat Hanh 1937006387 Alex 4 4.34 2013
author: Thich Nhat Hanh
name: Alex
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 55595122 Cape Cod bicycle shop owner Mackenzie Mac Almeida and her mystery book club find a certain accusation of murder quite the stretch ...

When your mother is an astrologist and your dad is a minister, you learn to keep an open mind. Which is just what Mac loves to do--exercise her mind by puzzling out fictional clues in the mystery novels she reads and discusses with her Cozy Capers Book Group.

But now Mac's friend Gin has found herself in a sticky situation. After wealthy genealogist Beverly Ruchart is found dead outside Gin's taffy shop, the candy maker becomes a person of interest. When it's revealed that Beverly was poisoned the night Gin brought a box of taffy to a dinner party at Beverly's house, she's bumped to the top of the suspects list. It's up to Mac and her Cozy Capers crime solvers to unwrap this real-life mystery. But this time they might have bitten off more than they can chew...]]> 296 Maddie Day 1496731697 Alex 4 3.79 2020
author: Maddie Day
name: Alex
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
Easy and fun read. Perfect beach book
]]> 45008162 Cape Cod bicycle shop owner Mackenzie "Mac" Almeida and her book club must find a crafty killer in this charming new series from the Agatha-nominated author of the Country Store Mystery series!

A Cape Cod shop owner and her book club must find a crafty killer in this charming new series from the Agatha-nominated author of the Country Store Mystery series.

Summer is busy season for Mackenzie "Mac" Almeida's bicycle shop, nestled in the quaint, seaside hamlet of Westham, Massachusetts. She's expecting an influx of tourists at Mac's Bikes; instead she discovers the body of Jake Lacey. Mac can't imagine anyone stabbing the down-on-his-luck handyman. However, the authorities seem to think Mac is a strong suspect after she was spotted arguing with Jake just hours before his death. Mac knows she didn't do it, but she does recognize the weapon--her brother Derrick's fishing knife.

Mac's only experience with murder investigations is limited to the cozy mysteries she reads with her local book group, the Cozy Capers. So to clear her name--and maybe her brother's too--Mac will have to summon help from her Cozy Capers co-investigators and a library's worth of detectives' tips and tricks. For a small town, Westham is teeming with possible killers, and this is one mystery where Mac is hoping for anything but a surprise ending...]]> 310 Maddie Day 1496722884 Alex 3 3.53 2019
author: Maddie Day
name: Alex
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
Entertaining while stuck at the airport. Light but fun
]]> 19412729 For a New Jersey cartoonist, the death of her parents reveals a bevy of secrets in this novel by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Fancy Dancer. Ěý With a popular comic strip, card line, and children’s cartoon to her name, Lucy Brighton should be in a happy place. But the ache of a cold, lonely childhood lingers on. Even though she still lives in the New Jersey house where she grew up, Lucy has had little contact with her parents since they moved to Florida five years ago. Ěý Then Lucy receives a call that her parents have been killed in a car crash. While settling their affairs in Florida, Lucy begins to realize how little she really knew about their lives. She has no way to explain the mysterious safe in their bedroom, with its cache of fake passports, cash, and weapons. What secrets were the Brightons keeping? Were they even who they claimed to be? The answers will shatter everything she once believed about her parents—and about herself. ĚýPraise for Fern Michaels and her novels Ěý“Tirelessly inventive and entertaining.â€� —Booklist on Up Close and Personal Ěý“Fast-movingĚý.Ěý.Ěý. entertainingĚý.Ěý.Ěý. a roller-coaster ride of serendipitous fun.â€� —Publishers WeeklyĚýonĚýMr. and Miss Anonymous Ěý“Michaels knows what readers expect from her and she delivers each and every time.â€� —RT Book Reviews on Perfect Match]]> 351 Fern Michaels 1420133152 Alex 1 4.14 2013
author: Fern Michaels
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2013
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
The writing is so bad particularly the dialogue. The whole book felt like it was written by a middle schooler - really weird.
]]> 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

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

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

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 Alex 3 3.95 2023
author: Emily Henry
name: Alex
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 57693264 The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America's most tenacious-and destructive-false ideas: the myth of the "free market."

Merchants of Doubt exposed the origins of climate change denial. Now, its authors unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma. Why do Americans believe in the “magic of the marketplace�?

The answer, as The Big Myth reveals: a propaganda blitz. Until the early 1900s, the U.S. government's guiding role in economic life was largely accepted. But then business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies combatted regulation by building a new orthodoxy: down with “big government,� up with unfettered markets. Unearthing eye-opening archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Hayek and Friedman into household names, recount the libertarian roots of the Little House on the Prairie books, and tune into the General Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine (and the young Ronald Reagan) to millions.

By the 1970s, this crusade had succeeded. Its ideology would define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic administrations, giving us the opioid scourge, climate destruction, giant tech monopolies, and a baleful response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy.]]> 576 Naomi Oreskes 1635573572 Alex 0 to-read 4.33 2023
author: Naomi Oreskes
name: Alex
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 638312 262 Jeremy W. Hayward 0553371959 Alex 0 currently-reading 4.19 1995
author: Jeremy W. Hayward
name: Alex
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Alex 0 currently-reading 4.17 1962
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Alex
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 221275386 Experience the liberating simplicity of Swedish Death Cleaning and create a legacy of peace for your loved ones!

Ěý

Discover how to reclaim control over your life and space with "Swedish Death Cleaning Made Simple for Americans". Rooted in the Scandinavian art of Dö˛őłŮä»ĺ˛Ôľ±˛Ô˛µ, this guide adapts the Swedish method of decluttering to American homes and lifestyles.

Ěý

In this easy-to-follow book, you’ll learn how to lighten your load, both physically and emotionally, to live more intentionally while making life easier for those you care about.

Ěý

Overcome sentimental attachments and let go of unnecessary clutter with Elin Lindström's compassionate guidance and insightful tips. Through the principles of minimalism, you’ll find freedom from material excess, transforming your home into a peaceful haven.

Ěý

Key features of this transformative guide

âś…ĚýEmbrace Swedish Death Cleaning principles to cultivate a clutter-free, intentional life

âś…ĚýDeclutter each room in your home with ease and confidence, using step-by-step guidance

âś…ĚýBreak free from sentimental clutter while still honoring cherished memories and stories

âś…ĚýBuild a meaningful legacy that brings clarity and peace of mind to your loved ones

âś…ĚýDeclutter sustainably with donation tips, recycling advice, and eco-friendly methods

âś…ĚýExtend minimalism into your digital life, organizing files, photos, and online accounts

âś…ĚýAdopt lasting routines and habits to keep your home beautifully simplified year-round

âś…ĚýAnd much more!

Ěý

Empower yourself to live with less and create space for what truly matters.

Ěý

With "Swedish Death Cleaning Made Simple for Americans", you’ll achieve a clutter-free life, rich with purpose, and pave the way for a legacy of peace and intention.

Ěý

Scroll up and get your copy to begin your journey to a simpler, more intentional life today!]]> 133 Elin Lindström Alex 0 currently-reading 3.50
author: Elin Lindström
name: Alex
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 45032 488 Jane Austen Alex 0 currently-reading 3.86 1814
author: Jane Austen
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 18594557
In the meantime, Sidney wrestles with the problem of evil, attempts to fulfill the demands of his faithful Labrador, Dickens, and contemplates, as always, the nature of love.]]> 287 James Runcie 1608199525 Alex 3 3.71 2014
author: James Runcie
name: Alex
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 78287 356 Rebecca Solnit 1859843816 Alex 4 3.91 2001
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Alex
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:
Great (albeit very slow) read.
]]> 16280 464 Beverly Daniel Tatum 0465083617 Alex 5 4.32 1997
author: Beverly Daniel Tatum
name: Alex
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves:
review:
Very accessible. Author is an educator as well as psychologist and her thoughts were very practical and inspiring.
]]> 199798868 New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work, twenty years later.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.

Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis� life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost.]]> 294 Colm Tóibín 1476785112 Alex 4 3.67 2024
author: Colm TĂłibĂ­n
name: Alex
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/05
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves:
review:
Page turner but deeply unsatisfying ending
]]> 52446265 An ode to paths and the journeys we take through nature, as told by a gifted writer who stopped driving and rediscovered the joys of traveling by foot.

Torbjørn Ekelund started to walk--everywhere--after an epilepsy diagnosis affected his ability to drive. The more he ventured out, the more he came to love the act of walking, and an interest in paths emerged. In this poignant, meandering book, Ekelund interweaves the literature and history of paths with his own stories from the trail. As he walks with shoes on and barefoot, through forest creeks and across urban streets, he contemplates the early tracks made by ancient snails and traces the wanderings of Romantic poets, amongst other musings. If we still "understand ourselves in relation to the landscape," Ekelund asks, then what do we lose in an era of car travel and navigation apps? And what will we gain from taking to paths once again?]]> 240 Torbjørn Ekelund Alex 4 3.80 2018
author: Torbjørn Ekelund
name: Alex
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 2735646 352 Celia Brayfield 0330411829 Alex 3 3.38 2004
author: Celia Brayfield
name: Alex
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 19365705 272 Donna Leon 1555849032 Alex 2 fiction 4.18 2008
author: Donna Leon
name: Alex
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2011/07/20
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: fiction
review:
Generally speaking I love this series - crime drama that is set in Venice - but perhaps I am over it. Or this was just a less gripping book. Not sure but I was disappointed.
]]> 16034225
Here are six interlocking adventures that combine mystery with morality, and criminality with charm.]]> 368 James Runcie 1608199517 Alex 4 3.68 2013
author: James Runcie
name: Alex
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 61411599
In The Open-Air Life, Swedish-American writer Linda McGurk introduces readers to a wide array of Nordic customs and practices that focus on slowing down and spending more and more of ones� time outdoors. An outdoorsy cousin of hygge, friluftsliv is what Nordic people do outside all day before they cozy up in front of the fireplace with their wool socks on and a cup of hot cocoa.

From the pleasures of foraging for wild berries and birding to how to stay warm and cozy outside in the middle of winter, this charmingly illustrated, inspirational guide shows readers how to harness the power-of-nature to improve their physical and mental health, as well as their relationships with both other people and Mother Nature. Readers will learn:

Why and how they should spend more time outside
How to use friluftsliv to combat stress, anxiety disorders, depression, and burnout
Practical skills like making fire, cooking outdoors and cleaning water on the go.

For country and city lovers alike, this book will serve as an essential guide to slowing down in this modern, fast paced society and connecting with the natural world.]]> 271 Linda Ă…keson McGurk 0593420950 Alex 3 3.89
author: Linda Ă…keson McGurk
name: Alex
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 43804073 272 Joe Harkness 1783527722 Alex 0 to-read 3.94
author: Joe Harkness
name: Alex
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10441863 228 Roger Isberg 1412064155 Alex 0 to-read 4.00 2007
author: Roger Isberg
name: Alex
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 42397849
Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body� when every magazine cover has ten diet tips for becoming “your best self�? How do you “lean in� at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?

Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back. In these pages you’ll learn

� what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation
� how to manage the “monitor� in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
� how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
� why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout

With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in these pages—and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all.� Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are—and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach.]]> 277 Emily Nagoski 198481706X Alex 3 3.93 2019
author: Emily Nagoski
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 57731687
Like many people today, Torbjørn Ekelund dreams of spending more time in nature. But he’s so busy with city life that he has no desire to travel far or scale the highest mountain.

So, he hatches a plan.

Ekelund decides to leave the city after work and camp near a tiny pond in the forest. The next morning, he returns to work as usual. He does this once a month for a full year. What happens over the course of that year is nothing short of transformative.

Evoking Henry David Thoreau and the four-season structure of Walden, A Year in the Woods asks if the secret to communing with nature lies in small rituals and reflection.

As Ekelund greets the same trees, rocks, streams, and soil each month, he describes his changing relationship to the landscape. He observes minute signs of growth and decay around him. And he shifts his perspective on his role within the forest, and nature itself.

Theperfect book for readers who want a deeper connection with nature, but are realistic about time and money.]]> 256 Torbjørn Ekelund 1771645121 Alex 4 3.80
author: Torbjørn Ekelund
name: Alex
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves:
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]]> 23451464
Together with his roguish friend, inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewelry theft at a New Year's Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a jazz promoter's daughter, and a shocking art forgery that puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty, but he nonetheless manages to find time for a keen interest in cricket, warm beer, and hot jazz - as well as a curious fondness for a German widow three years his junior.

With a whiff of Agatha Christie and a touch of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, The Grantchester Mysteries introduces a wonderful new hero into the world of detective fiction.]]> 400 James Runcie 1632862891 Alex 4 3.63 2012
author: James Runcie
name: Alex
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 210451059 How do we stand firm amid the ups and downs of existence?

In today’s culture of polarization and constant change, how do we find the confidence to navigate challenges? Is now really the time for meditation, for looking inward? What do we do with mindfulness? Meditation teacher Ethan Nichtern tackles these questions, taking contemporary considerations of power, identity, ethics, and confidence to new heights in this essential guide to self-discovery.

Ethan examines the Buddhist concept of the Eight Worldly Winds, the four paired opposites of praise and blame, pleasure and pain, fame and insignificance, and success and failure. Delving into these dichotomies reveals invaluable insights into our relationships with others (including teachers, friends, leaders, the disgraced, and the adored) and ourselves. With transformative meditation exercises, Confidence empowers us to cultivate and access our innate wisdom.

]]> 240 Ethan Nichtern 1608688550 Alex 5 Really great dharma book 4.29
author: Ethan Nichtern
name: Alex
average rating: 4.29
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/08/21
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Really great dharma book
]]> 331695 304 Sarah Turnbull 1592400825 Alex 5 3.70 2003
author: Sarah Turnbull
name: Alex
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/08/21
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]]> 207874 253 E.L. Doctorow 0812978196 Alex 3 3.45 1994
author: E.L. Doctorow
name: Alex
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/04
date added: 2024/08/04
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]]> 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Alex 4 3.94 2013
author: Donna Tartt
name: Alex
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> 193759650
By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As a performance artist, Giselle must navigate an elite social world she never conceived of. As a coder thrilled by the internet’s early egalitarian promise, Jackie must contend with its more sinister shift toward monetization and surveillance. And as a community activist, Ellen confronts the increasing gentrification and policing overwhelming her New York City neighborhood. Over time their friendship matures and changes, their definitions of success become complicated, and their sense of what matters evolves.

Moving from the predigital 1980s to the art and tech subcultures of the 1990s to a strikingly imagined portrait of the 2040s, Memory Piece is an innovative and audacious story of three lifelong friends as they strive to build satisfying lives in a world that turns out to be radically different from the one they were promised.]]> 304 Lisa Ko 059354210X Alex 5 3.18 2024
author: Lisa Ko
name: Alex
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/25
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> 58503121 Reclaim your focus in 48 hours or less.

Do you keep procrastinating? Do you feel restless and unable to focus on your work? Do you have trouble getting excited about major goals?

If so, you might need a dopamine detox.

In today’s world where distractions are everywhere, the ability to focus has become more and more difficult to achieve. We are constantly being stimulated, feeling restless, often without knowing why.

When the time comes to work, we suddenly find an excess of other things to do. Instead of working toward our goals, we go for a walk, grab a coffee, or check our emails. Everything seems like a great idea—everything except the very things we should be doing.

Do you recognize yourself in the above situation?

If so, don’t worry. You’re simply overstimulated.

Dopamine Detox will help you lower your level of stimulation and regain focus in 48 hours or less, so that you can tackle your key tasks.

More specifically, in Dopamine Detox you’ll discover:

� what dopamine is and how it works
� the main benefits of completing a dopamine detox
� 3 simple steps to implement a successful detox in the next 48 hours
� practical exercises to eliminate distractions and boost your focus
� simple tools and techniques to avoid overstimulation and help you stay focused, and much more.

Dopamine Detox is your must-read, must-follow guide to help you remove distractions so you can finally work on your goals with ease. If you like easy-to-understand strategies, practical exercises, and no-nonsense teaching, you will love this book.]]> 62 Thibaut Meurisse Alex 0 to-read 3.94 2021
author: Thibaut Meurisse
name: Alex
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 55723020
In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain...and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.

"Brilliant... riveting, scary, cogent, and cleverly argued."--Beth Macy, author of Dopesick


INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES and LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER
“Brilliant� riveting, scary, cogent, and cleverly argued.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick
As heard on Fresh Air]]> 304 Anna Lembke 1524746738 Alex 2 3.88 2021
author: Anna Lembke
name: Alex
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/21
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]]> 6919721 A mind-expanding and myth-destroying exploration of “whiteness”—an illuminating work on the history of race and power.

Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter tells perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history. Beginning at the roots of Western civilization, she traces the invention of the idea of a white race—often for economic, scientific, and political ends. She shows how the origins of American identity in the eighteenth century were intrinsically tied to the elevation of white skin into the embodiment of beauty, power, and intelligence; how the great American intellectuals� including Ralph Waldo Emerson—insisted that only Anglo Saxons were truly American; and how the definitions of who is “white� and who is “American� have evolved over time.

A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People closes an enormous gap in a literature that has long focused on the nonwhite, and it forcefully reminds us that the concept of “race� is an all-too-human invention whose meaning, importance, and reality have changed according to a long and rich history. 70 illustrations.]]> 512 Nell Irvin Painter 0393049345 Alex 4 4.05 2010
author: Nell Irvin Painter
name: Alex
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
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]]> 1831667 The Horse, the Wheel, and Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization.

Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of language, David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and shows how their innovative use of the ox wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication, commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining, warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth reveals the origins of horseback riding.

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries--the source of the Indo-European languages and English--and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.]]> 568 David W. Anthony 0691058873 Alex 0 to-read 3.97 2007
author: David W. Anthony
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/04
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]]> 37774050
Old in Art School represents an ongoing exploration of such questions, one that ultimately honors curiosity, openness, and joy—the joy of embracing creativity, dreams, the importance of hard work, and the stubborn determination of your own value. Nell Irvin Painter's journey is filled with surprises, even as she brings to bear the incisiveness of her insights from two careers, which combine in new ways even as they take very different approaches—one searching for facts and cohesion, the other seeking the opposite. She travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, such as Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold, or Maira Kalman, even as she comes to understand how they are undervalued; and struggles with the ever-changing balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived.]]> 331 Nell Irvin Painter 1640090614 Alex 5 3.46 2018
author: Nell Irvin Painter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/01
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]]> 134704507 I'm starting a service... available for any situation in which all you want is a person to be there. Maybe there's a restaurant you want to go to, but you feel awkward going on your own.

Maybe a game you want to play, but you're one person short.

Or perhaps you'd like someone to keep a space in the park for your cherry blossom viewing party�

Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told by his boss, "It makes no difference whether you’re here or not," and that his presence contributed nothing to the company. Morimoto began to wonder whether a person who "does nothing" could still have actual value and a place in the world. Perhaps he could turn "doing nothing" into a service? With one tweet, Rental Person was born.

Rental Person provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. This book details thousands of his true-life adventures:
� Accompanying a divorcee to her favorite restaurant
� Waving goodbye to a client from the train platform
� Sitting in the courtroom during a client’s trial
� Supporting a client during a difficult surgery

Rental Person is dependable, nonjudgmental and committed to remaining a stranger, and the curious encounters he shares are revelatory about both Japanese society and human psychology.

In Rental Person Who Does Nothing, Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life.]]> 192 Shoji Morimoto 1335017534 Alex 4 3.39 2023
author: Shoji Morimoto
name: Alex
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/06/24
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]]> 46114266 --Daniel H. Pink, author of When and Drive

SUCCESSFUL AGING delivers powerful insights:
- Debunking the myth that memory always declines with age
- Confirming that health span--not life span--is what matters
- Proving that sixty-plus years is a unique and newly recognized developmental stage
- Recommending that people look forward to joy, as reminiscing doesn't promote health

Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people's wisdom and experience. Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age.

Successful Aging inspires a powerful new approach to how readers think about our final decades, and it will revolutionize the way we plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise.
]]> 528 Daniel J. Levitin 1524744182 Alex 4 3.89 2020
author: Daniel J. Levitin
name: Alex
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2024/06/10
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]]> 207742 The Story of English is the first book to tell the whole story of the English language. Originally paired with a major PBS miniseries, this book presents a stimulating and comprehensive record of spoken and written English—from its Anglo-Saxon origins some two thousand years ago to the present day, when English is the dominant language of commerce and culture with more than one billion English speakers around the world. From Cockney, Scouse, and Scots to Gulla, Singlish, Franglais, and the latest African American slang, this sweeping history of the English language is the essential introduction for anyone who wants to know more about our common tongue.]]> 468 Robert McCrum 0142002313 Alex 4 4.10 1986
author: Robert McCrum
name: Alex
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
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]]> 61142207
Poignant for readers of all ages, her teachings on the bardos—a Tibetan term referring to a state of transition, including what happens between this life and the next—reveal their power and relevance at each moment of our lives. She also offers practical methods for transforming life’s most challenging emotions about change and uncertainty into a path of awakening and love. As she teaches, the more freedom we can find in our hearts and minds as we live this life, the more fearlessly we’ll be able to confront death and what lies beyond. In all, Pema provides readers with a master course in living life fully and compassionately in the shadow of death and change.]]> 240 Pema Chödrön 161180924X Alex 5 4.26
author: Pema Chödrön
name: Alex
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/05/25
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A book about how your attitude toward comfort and change impacts your final moments on Earth. Excellent dharma book about the bardos both while alive and after death. Might also be enjoyed by non Buddhists who are aging. Is Buddhist focused but not so esoteric it would not be interesting or able to be applied to non Buddhist belief systems.
]]> 4954833 Hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking, Colm TĂłibĂ­n's sixth novel, Brooklyn, is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself.

Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America--to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood "just like Ireland"--she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, a blond Italian from a big family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. He takes Eilis to Coney Island and Ebbets Field, and home to dinner in the two-room apartment he shares with his brothers and parents. He talks of having children who are Dodgers fans. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.]]> 262 Colm TĂłibĂ­n 1439138311 Alex 4 3.71 2009
author: Colm TĂłibĂ­n
name: Alex
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> 60899502 Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns in the eighteenth book in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny's beloved series.

It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge.

But something has.

As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators� lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines.

But to what end?

Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother’s murder hurt these children beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered, and are they now about to erupt?

As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long-dead stonemason is discovered. In it, the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Every word of the 160-year-old letter is filled with dread. When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up.

As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir, and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realizes there’s more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.

In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home.]]> 390 Louise Penny 1250145295 Alex 0 4.33 2022
author: Louise Penny
name: Alex
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/18
date added: 2024/04/18
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]]> 338691
But Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets...]]> 293 Louise Penny 0312948557 Alex 4 3.86 2005
author: Louise Penny
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/11
date added: 2024/04/11
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]]> 127306192 New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.

But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.

Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.]]> 342 Xóchitl González 1250786215 Alex 5 3.76 2024
author: Xóchitl González
name: Alex
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/07
date added: 2024/04/06
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]]> 61885029
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389223 Alex 4 4.09 2023
author: John Scalzi
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/25
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]]> 16158591 The Trauma of Everyday Life renowned psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker Mark Epstein uncovers the transformational potential of trauma, revealing how it can be used for the mind’s own development.

Western psychology teaches that if we understand the cause of trauma, we might move past it while many drawn to Eastern practices see meditation as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. Both, Epstein argues, fail to recognize that trauma is an indivisible part of life and can be used as a lever for growth and an ever deeper understanding of change. When we regard trauma with this perspective, understanding that suffering is universal and without logic, our pain connects us to the world on a more fundamental level. The way out of pain is through it.
Ěý
Epstein’s discovery begins in his analysis of the life of Buddha, looking to how the death of his mother informed his path and teachings. The Buddha’s spiritual journey can be read as an expression of primitive agony grounded in childhood trauma. Yet the Buddha’s story is only one of many in The Trauma of Everyday Life. Here, Epstein looks to his own experience, that of his patients, and of the many fellow sojourners and teachers he encounters as a psychiatrist and Buddhist. They are alike only in that they share in trauma, large and small, as all of us do. Epstein finds throughout that trauma, if it doesn’t destroy us, wakes us up to both our minds� own capacity and to the suffering of others. It makes us more human, caring, and wise. It can be our greatest teacher, our freedom itself, and it is available to all of us.]]> 240 Mark Epstein 1594205132 Alex 4 3.72 2013
author: Mark Epstein
name: Alex
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/18
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]]> 34964998
Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patrisse Khan-Cullors experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For Patrisse, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin’s killer went free, Patrisse’s outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.

Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin.

Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering in equality and a movement fueled by her strength and love to tell the country—and the world—that Black Lives Matter.

When They Call You a Terrorist is Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele’s reflection on humanity. It is an empowering account of survival, strength and resilience and a call to action to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.]]> 257 Patrisse Khan-Cullors 1250171083 Alex 5 4.49 2018
author: Patrisse Khan-Cullors
name: Alex
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/28
date added: 2024/02/28
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]]> 10996342
Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment - to oneself and to others.]]> 512 Chad Harbach 0316126691 Alex 4 3.98 2011
author: Chad Harbach
name: Alex
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/18
date added: 2024/02/18
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]]> 32191672 264 David A. Treleaven 0393709787 Alex 4 4.38 2018
author: David A. Treleaven
name: Alex
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves:
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]]> 54303602 Make time for the things that really matter in life. Find balance and happiness in your daily life, the Scandinavian way, with The Scandinavian Guide to Happiness!

There’s a reasonĚýFinland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden consistently rank as the top 5 happiest countries on earth! Find out the secrets to their happiness and fulfillment inĚýThe Scandinavian Guide to Happiness,ĚýwhichĚýshares centuries of Nordic wisdom, including:Ěý

- Lykke:ĚýHappiness is all around youĚý(Denmark)
- Lagom:ĚýJust the right amount—not too much, not too littleĚý(Sweden)
- Fika:ĚýTaking daily coffee breaks and other comforting ritualsĚý(Sweden)
- Hygge:ĚýCoziness brings comfort, courage, and happinessĚý(Denmark)
- Sisu:ĚýEveryday courage, grit, and determination & acting rationally in the face of adversity

These basic principles will help you see how to have a happy life without buying anything, changing yourself, or making any other crazy drastic changes! Topics includeĚýSimplicity, Happiness, Health & Wellness, Relationships, Nature-Inspired Living, and more.ĚýFull of inspiring, encouraging ideas—and charming illustrations!—this thoughtful Scandinavian guide is sure to put a happy glow on your life.Ěý]]> 208 Editors of Whalen Book Works 1951511212 Alex 3 3.83
author: Editors of Whalen Book Works
name: Alex
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
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I find books like this relaxing and this isn’t a bad book but it’s a very brief overview and if you’ve read about these concepts before you will likely be bored. No real insights here but pleasant enough especially if this is your first exposure. Hygge is better developed in Miek Wiking’s book. Start there.
]]> 15803233
The world's leaders have gathered to rebuild from the ashes of the Great War. But for one woman, the City of Light harbors dark secrets and dangerous liaisons, for which many could pay dearly.

Brought to the peace conference by her father, a German diplomat, Margot Rosenthal initially resents being trapped in the congested French capital, where she is still looked upon as the enemy. But as she contemplates returning to Berlin and a life with Stefan, the wounded fiancé she hardly knows anymore, she decides that being in Paris is not so bad after all.

Bored and torn between duty and the desire to be free, Margot strikes up unlikely alliances: with Krysia, an accomplished musician with radical acquaintances and a secret to protect; and with Georg, the handsome, damaged naval officer who gives Margot a job—and also a reason to question everything she thought she knew about where her true loyalties should lie.

Against the backdrop of one of the most significant events of the century, a delicate web of lies obscures the line between the casualties of war and of the heart, making trust a luxury that no one can afford.]]> 331 Pam Jenoff 0778315096 Alex 3 3.56 2012
author: Pam Jenoff
name: Alex
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/03
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]]> 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus Alex 5 4.23 2022
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Alex
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/02
date added: 2024/02/02
shelves:
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]]> 127489378 The definitive takedown of fatphobia, drawing on personal experience as well as rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it—from the acclaimed author of Down Girl and Entitled

“An elegant, fierce, and profound argument for fighting fat oppression in ourselves, our communities, and our culture.”—Roxane Gay, author of Hunger

For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She’s been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not.

Blending intimate stories with the trenchant analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue. Over the last several decades, implicit bias has waned in every category, from race to sexual orientation, except body size. Manne examines how anti-fatness operates—how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person’s attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes; it is a straitjacket, restricting our freedom, our movement, our potential.

In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of “body reflexivity”—a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world ourselves and no one else. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.]]> 297 Kate Manne 0593593847 Alex 4 4.17 2024
author: Kate Manne
name: Alex
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/02/01
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]]> 123033397
April 5, 2019 : In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, troubled husband and wife, are both a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, has created a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. Meanwhile Nathan, age ten, is taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.

April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the brownstone is feeling more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe, while Nathan attempts to skirt her rules. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled jabs and frustrated sighs. And beloved Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts—and his secret Instagram life—for company.

April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality—with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.

From the brilliant mind of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, Day is a searing, exquisitely crafted meditation on love and loss and the struggles and limitations of family life—how to live together and apart.]]> 273 Michael Cunningham 0399591346 Alex 5 Wow so good 3.50 2023
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Alex
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/31
date added: 2024/01/31
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Wow so good
]]> 18467802 Inspired by the true story of a woman who changed the way we understand our world.

In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months the trio are producing their best ever work, but soon a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy begins to burn out of control, threatening their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives...]]> 256 Lily King 0802122558 Alex 4 3.84 2014
author: Lily King
name: Alex
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/28
date added: 2024/01/28
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]]> 18710190
But Tris's new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend to complexities of human nature - and of herself - while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.

Told from a riveting dual perspective, ALLEGIANT, by #1 New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth, brings the DIVERGENT series to a powerful conclusion while revealing the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in DIVERGENT and INSURGENT.]]> 531 Veronica Roth 0007524277 Alex 4 3.59 2013
author: Veronica Roth
name: Alex
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/24
date added: 2024/01/24
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]]> 11735983
Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable—and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth's much-anticipated second book of the dystopian DIVERGENT series is another intoxicating thrill ride of a story, rich with hallmark twists, heartbreaks, romance, and powerful insights about human nature.]]> 525 Veronica Roth 0007442912 Alex 3 3.97 2012
author: Veronica Roth
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2024/01/18
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]]> 28818921 An Untamed State and the New York Times bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial). Gay returns with Difficult Women, a collection of stories of rare force and beauty, of hardscrabble lives, passionate loves, and quirky and vexed human connection.

The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls� fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America reminiscent of Merritt Tierce, Jamie Quatro, and Miranda July.

I will follow you --
Water, all its weight --
The mark of Cain --
Difficult women --
FLORIDA --
La negra blanca --
Baby arm --
North country --
How --
Requiem for a glass heart --
In the event of my father's death --
Break all the way down --
Bad priest --
Open marriage --
A pat --
Best features --
Bone density --
I am a knife --
The sacrifice of darkness --
Noble things --
Strange gods]]> 260 Roxane Gay 0802125395 Alex 5 3.96 2017
author: Roxane Gay
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2024/01/13
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]]> 13667 259 Ursula K. Le Guin 141650964X Alex 5 4.13 1972
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1972
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/11
shelves:
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I do not normally read fantasy and I really loved this series. Great writing and storytelling and really imaginative.
]]> 40597810 Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n� roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.]]> 368 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798622 Alex 3 4.20 2019
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Alex
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2023/12/30
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Love that this was read by multiple actors but, as a professional musician, the level of tropes was pretty ugh.
]]> 25982869
When Scarlett’s beloved TV show is canceled and her longtime crush, Gideon, is sucked out of her orbit and into the dark and distant world of Populars, Scarlett turns to the fanfic message boards for comfort. This time, though, her subjects aren’t the swoon-worthy stars of her fave series—they’re the real-life kids from her high school.ĚýAnd if they ever find out what Scarlett truly thinks about them, she’ll be thrust into a situation far more dramatic than anything she’s ever seen on TV…]]> 288 Anna Breslaw 1595148353 Alex 4 3.44 2016
author: Anna Breslaw
name: Alex
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/30
date added: 2023/12/30
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Quirky light and fun if you have ever been involved in TV fandom
]]> 60784373
For decades afterward, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods―no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.]]> 336 Kate Alice Marshall 1250859883 Alex 3 3.93 2023
author: Kate Alice Marshall
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 81067992 The long-awaited sequel to A Column of Fire, The Armor of Light, heralds a new dawn for Kingsbridge, England, where progress clashes with tradition, class struggles push into every part of society, and war in Europe engulfs the entire continent and beyond.

The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1770, and with that, a new era of manufacturing and industry changed lives everywhere within a generation. A world filled with unrest wrestles for control over this new world order: A mother’s husband is killed in a work accident due to negligence; a young woman fights to fund her school for impoverished children; a well-intentioned young man unexpectedly inherits a failing business; one man ruthlessly protects his wealth no matter the cost, all the while war cries are heard from France, as Napoleon sets forth a violent master plan to become emperor of the world. As institutions are challenged and toppled in unprecedented fashion, ripples of change ricochet through our characters� lives as they are left to reckon with the future and a world they must rebuild from the ashes of war.

Over thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, with this electrifying addition to the Kingsbridge series we are plunged into the battlefield between compassion and greed, love and hate, progress and tradition. It is through each character that we are given a new perspective to the seismic shifts that shook the world in nineteenth-century Europe.]]> 737 Ken Follett 0525954996 Alex 4 4.10 2023
author: Ken Follett
name: Alex
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/24
date added: 2023/12/25
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]]> 35187181 An intrepid investigation into nature’s restorative benefits by a prize-winning author.

For centuries, poets and philosophers extolled the benefits of a walk in the woods: Beethoven drew inspiration from rocks and trees; Wordsworth composed while tromping over the heath; Nikola Tesla conceived the electric motor while visiting a park. Intrigued by our storied renewal in the natural world, Florence Williams sets out to uncover the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain.

From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to groves of eucalyptus in California, Williams investigates the science at the confluence of environment, mood, health, and creativity. Delving into completely new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and ultimately strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.]]> 304 Florence Williams 0393355578 Alex 3 3.95 2017
author: Florence Williams
name: Alex
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/17
date added: 2023/12/17
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]]> 38739559
Starting when she was young, Gillies has gradually learned the art and subtle beauty of creating a life where you feel safe, steadied, and at home in the world. From old family recipes and subway rides to jury duty and hospital stays, in Cozy Gillies shows readers that true ease stems not with throw pillows and a candle, but from opportunities to feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, and learn to make ourselves at home no matter where we are.

Simple choices can make a hectic life or an uncomfortable situation just a little more comfortable—you just have to know what to do. Just as Marie Kondo offered a philosophy for how to tidy, Gillies offers a new way of occupying the spaces we live in. Starting with yourself, then broadening to your home, your community, and the world at large, Cozy will show you how to bring the truth of who you are into any situation, easy or challenging. As Gillies says, “Cozy isn’t something that just exists. You have to make cozy happen.�

Written with profound warmth and featuring hand-drawn illustrations, this wise, necessary book is call to action for each of us to seek out those often-missed opportunities to care for ourselves, and to begin living a more intimate and authentic life.]]> 259 Isabel Gillies 0062654179 Alex 3 3.29 2019
author: Isabel Gillies
name: Alex
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/01
date added: 2023/12/02
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]]> 13335037
During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.]]> 487 Veronica Roth 0062024035 Alex 4 4.13 2011
author: Veronica Roth
name: Alex
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/01
date added: 2023/12/01
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]]> 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

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

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver Alex 0 to-read 4.46 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Alex
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 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 Alex 4 3.73 2017
author: Mohsin Hamid
name: Alex
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/30
date added: 2023/11/30
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]]> 61398910
Many people with chronic illness understandably feel dismissed or abandoned by the healthcare system and find solace in alternative medicine, as Harrison once did. Yet the wellness industry promotes practices that often cause even more damage than the conventional approaches they’re meant to replace. From the lack of pre-market safety testing on herbal and dietary supplements, to the unfounded claims made by many wellness influencers and functional-medicine providers, to the social-media algorithms driving users down rabbit holes of wellness mis- and disinformation, it can often feel like no one is looking out for us in the face of the $4.4 trillion global wellness industry.

The Wellness TrapĚý delves into the persistent, systemic problems with that industry, offering insight into its troubling pattern of cultural appropriation and its destructive views on mental health, and shedding light on how a growing distrust of conventional medicine has led ordinary people to turn their backs on science. WeavingĚýtogether history, memoir, reporting, and practical advice, Harrison illuminates the harms of wellness culture while re-imagining our society’s relationship with well-being.]]> 320 Christy Harrison 0316315605 Alex 4 3.76 2023
author: Christy Harrison
name: Alex
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/27
date added: 2023/11/28
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]]> 13662
Then a wizard, Ged Sparrowhawk, comes to steal the Tombs� greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. Tenar’s duty is to protect the Ring, but Ged possesses the light of magic and tales of a world that Tenar has never known. Will Tenar risk everything to escape from the darkness that has become her domain?]]> 180 Ursula K. Le Guin 0689845367 Alex 5 4.12 1971
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1971
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/25
date added: 2023/11/25
shelves:
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]]> 60013115 The author of the New York Times bestseller The Little Book of Hygge, helps you turn your home into your happy, cozy safe place.

The urge to nest and control our close environments has never been stronger. We spend more time in our homes than anywhere else—but the way in which our homes impact how we feel has remained relatively unexplored until now.

Backed with Danish design principles, years of research, case studies and a sprinkle of hygge, Meik Wiking has created the ultimate guide to turning your home, office, or wherever you may be, into your happy place.

The Hygge Home will teach us all how to create a much-needed cozy safe space in our homes into which we can retreat to escape the tough things going on in the outside world. Meik will explore the size of our spaces, the way we decorate our homes, the amount of natural light coming in, how much access to green space we have and how we can extend these design principles from inside our homes to our neighbourhoods and beyond.

Meik is guaranteed to help you create a home and safe space where you can both live and thrive.]]> 272 Meik Wiking 0735243166 Alex 4 3.99 2022
author: Meik Wiking
name: Alex
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/25
date added: 2023/11/25
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]]> 13642
Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.]]> 183 Ursula K. Le Guin Alex 4 4.02 1968
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/22
date added: 2023/11/25
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]]> 22738563 We Should All Be Feminists, a personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from her much-viewed TEDx talk of the same name—by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun.

With humor and levity, here Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century—one rooted in inclusion and awareness. She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination, but also the more insidious, institutional behaviors that marginalize women around the world, in order to help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of sexual politics. Throughout, she draws extensively on her own experiences—in the U.S., in her native Nigeria, and abroad—offering an artfully nuanced explanation of why the gender divide is harmful for women and men, alike.

Argued in the same observant, witty and clever prose that has made Adichie a bestselling novelist, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman today—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.]]> 52 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Alex 5 4.42 2012
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Alex
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/25
date added: 2023/11/25
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]]> 35297297 A charming, practical, and unsentimental approach to putting a home in order while reflecting on the tiny joys that make up a long life.

In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called »ĺö˛őłŮä»ĺ˛Ôľ±˛Ô˛µ, »ĺö meaning “deathâ€� and ˛őłŮä»ĺ˛Ôľ±˛Ô˛µ meaning “cleaning.â€� This surprising and invigorating process of clearing out unnecessary belongings can be undertaken at any age or life stage but should be done sooner than later, before others have to do it for you. In The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson, with Scandinavian humor and wisdom, instructs readers to embrace minimalism. Her radical and joyous method for putting things in order helps families broach sensitive conversations, and makes the process uplifting rather than overwhelming.

Margareta suggests which possessions you can easily get rid of (unworn clothes, unwanted presents, more plates than you’d ever use) and which you might want to keep (photographs, love letters, a few of your children’s art projects). Digging into her late husband’s tool shed, and her own secret drawer of vices, Margareta introduces an element of fun to a potentially daunting task. Along the way readers get a glimpse into her life in Sweden, and also become more comfortable with the idea of letting go.]]> 117 Margareta Magnusson 1501173243 Alex 3 3.39 2017
author: Margareta Magnusson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/15
date added: 2023/11/15
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]]> 36722041 An engaging and practical guided tour of the simple and nature-inspired ways that Finns stay happy and healthy--including the powerful concept of sisu, or everyday courage

Forget hygge--it's time to blow out the candles and get out into the world! Journalist Katja Pantzar did just that, taking the huge leap to move to the remote Nordic country of Finland. What she discovered there transformed her body, mind and spirit. In this engaging and practical guide, she shows readers how to embrace the "keep it simple and sensible" daily practices that make Finns one of the happiest populations in the world, year after year.

Topics include:

* Movement as medicine How walking, biking and swimming every day are good for what ails us--and best done outside the confines of a gym
* Forest therapy Why there's no substitute for getting out into nature on a regular basis
* Healthy eating What the Nordic diet can teach us all about feeding body, mind and soul
* The gift of sisu Why Finns embrace a special form of courage, grit and determination as a national virtue - and how anyone can dig deeper to survive and thrive through tough times.

If you've ever wondered if there's a better, simpler way to find happiness and good heath, look no further. The Finns have a word for that, and this empowering book shows us how to achieve it.]]> 272 Katja Pantzar 0143132997 Alex 0 3.70 2018
author: Katja Pantzar
name: Alex
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/05
date added: 2023/11/05
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]]> 37946426
We are often made to feel that the physical world has little or no impact on our inner joy. Increasingly, experts urge us to find balance and calm by looking inward--through mindfulness or meditation--and muting the outside world. But what if the natural vibrancy of our surroundings is actually our most renewable and easily accessible source of joy?

In Joyful, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee explores how the seemingly mundane spaces and objects we interact with every day have surprising and powerful effects on our mood. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and psychology, she explains why one setting makes us feel anxious or competitive while another fosters acceptance and delight--and, most importantly, she reveals how we can harness the power of our surroundings to live fuller, healthier, and truly joyful lives.]]> 318 Ingrid Fetell Lee 0316399264 Alex 3 3.84 2018
author: Ingrid Fetell Lee
name: Alex
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/31
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves:
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]]>