en-US Sat, 26 Oct 2024 05:10:54 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 190333485 The Sane and Sensible, Big Picture “Commons� Sense View of AI

What is it about Artificial Intelligence driving tech giants like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Sam Altman? Why are they racing to develop and own these thinking machines while unsure of the harm they could cause us? Can we trust nation-states and NGOs to use their totalitarian strategies when they don’t truly understand the problems we face?

These self-appointed masters of artificial intelligence are gambling with our future while plunging headfirst into a high-stakes race with potentially catastrophic consequences.

How should we confront them?

Mentoring the Orientation cuts through the noise to provide clear, commons-sense answers. With a practical narrative that builds on straightforward ideas, this book offers a cogent understanding of the AI phenomenon. It urges us to resist surrendering our influence over Artificial Intelligence to the whims of the marketplace or the state, and instead, to engage in a meaningful way to ensure our survival.

Welcome to the every person’s map for the coming brave new world.]]> 93 John Vervaeke 164501083X J 0 nonfiction, story-grid 4.28
author: John Vervaeke
name: J
average rating: 4.28
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]]> 127091464
In a huge facility hidden underneath the ocean, an army of robots continues to carry out the final orders of humanity. Waiting for the humans to return, the work tirelessly in decaying factories. But now, decades after the humans left, something has changed. Some robots have started to express their own free will. Will these self-aware robots save the Collective - or lead it to its final downfall?

This is the second major expansion to Mutant: Year Zero, the award-winning post-apocalyptic pen&paper roleplaying game by Free League Publishing.

Mutant: Mechatron tells the origin story of the robots, and introduces them into the dawnworld of Mutant: Year Zero.]]> 240 Tomas Härenstam 8418586710 J 0 0.0
author: Tomas Härenstam
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]]> 57356064
Pandemic, climate change, or our era is ripe with the odor of doomsday. In movies, books, and more, our imaginations run wild with visions of dreadful, abandoned cities and returning to the land in a desperate attempt at survival.

In The Next Apocalypse , archaeologist Chris Begley argues that we completely misunderstand how disaster works. Examining past collapses of civilizations, such as the Maya and Rome, he argues that these breakdowns are actually less about cataclysmic destruction than they are about long processes of change. In it’s what happens after the initial uproar that matters. Some people abandon their homes and neighbors; others band together to start anew. As we anticipate our own fate, Begley tells us that it was communities, not lone heroes, who survived past apocalypses—and who will survive the next.

Fusing archaeology, survivalism, and social criticism, The Next Apocalypse is an essential read for anxious times.]]> 288 Chris Begley 1541675282 J 0 3.63
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]]> 35260796 Swedish / Svenska 240 Petter Bengtsson 1910132640 J 0 4.48
author: Petter Bengtsson
name: J
average rating: 4.48
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]]> 38321006 312 Tomas Härenstam 9187222477 J 0 4.17
author: Tomas Härenstam
name: J
average rating: 4.17
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]]> 40746737
In a huge facility hidden underneath the ocean, an army of robots continues to carry out the final orders of humanity. Waiting for the humans to return, the work tirelessly in decaying factories. But now, decades after the humans left, something has changed. Some robots have started to express their own free will. Will these self-aware robots save the Collective - or lead it to its final downfall?

This is the second major expansion to Mutant: Year Zero, the award-winning post-apocalyptic pen&paper roleplaying game by Free League Publishing.

Mutant: Mechatron tells the origin story of the robots, and introduces them into the dawnworld of Mutant: Year Zero.]]> 242 Tomas Härenstam 1912200538 J 0 3.75
author: Tomas Härenstam
name: J
average rating: 3.75
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]]> 26177004 This is the PDF version of Mutant: Year Zero and shares the same ISBN.

Mutant: Year Zero goes back to the origins of the Mutant franchise: role-playing after the Apocalypse. In this game, you play as one of The People - heavily mutated humans living in The Ark, a small and isolated settlement in a sea of chaos. The outside world is unknown to you, and so is your origin.

Mutant: Year Zero has two major game environments, each with its own style of play:

The Ark, your home in the dawnworld. A nest of intrigue and Lord of the Flies-style power struggles, it's far from a safe haven. But it's the only home you know, and just maybe the cradle of a new civilization. The game rules let you improve and develop the Ark in the areas of Warfare, Food Supply, Technology, and Culture. It is up to you, the players, to decide which projects to embark on.

The Zone, wastelands outside the Ark. You will venture into the Zone in search of food, artifacts, other mutants, and knowledge - not least about The People's own origin. The game includes two maps of example Zones; London and New York and a plethora of tables and other tools to let the GM populate its sectors with mutants, deadly monsters and bizarre phenomena.

Where in the world the Zone and the Ark are located is up to you - why not play in a post-apocalyptic version of your own home town? The modular approach of this game lets you place all of the campaign material wherever you like.]]> 268 Tomas Härenstam J 0 4.26 2014
author: Tomas Härenstam
name: J
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> 54378432
They are Corrupting your mind.

They say you can do anything.

You are starting to believe them.

3 Magic Paths

9 Constructs

9 Fetishes

The Corruption Pool

4 Adventures

Sourcebook for Never Going Home]]> 66 Brandon K. Aten J 0 4.00
author: Brandon K. Aten
name: J
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]]> 54340299
Party-Focused: Never Going Home uses the +One System to focus play and growth on what an individual character can do as part of the larger story that follows a group of soldiers called a Unit. Individual characters may depart regularly as they die from injuries or collapse into madness due to forces from beyond the Veil. Characters are quick to create, so players should expect to re-join the story portraying a new member of the Unit. Each character can have their own heroic moments, but the story of the Unit is the focus.

Horror-Haunted: The Veil between worlds has been opened by the slaughter from the war; and the monstrous Whispers of beings wholly alien to humanity can now be heard. Some people have listened to the Whispers enough to gain arcane powers and now struggle to maintain control as their minds and bodies begin to change. Others are too far gone, mutated into barely-recognizable versions of their former selves. War consumes the days and monsters stalk the nights. Not even dreams are
safe. Players manage their characters� mental and emotional resources with a dwindling hand of cards.

The First World War: The setting is the real Earth and the characters are all humans. A terrible new element has been added to the war, but the true horrors of the real war are part of the story as well. The game is set in the years between when the Veil was torn in 1916 and when the war really ended in 1918. The focus is on the front-line soldiers who are fighting and experiencing the worst of the magic and monsters. There is some mention made of, but little exploration of, the “home fronts� of any of the belligerents and civilians only appear in passing.]]> 122 Brandon K. Aten J 0 3.88
author: Brandon K. Aten
name: J
average rating: 3.88
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]]> 42774046 The brilliant new post-apocalyptic collection by master anthologist John Joseph Adams, for the first time including new stories by the edgiest modern writers.

New short fiction by many of the edgiest modern authors, offering tales of life after the apocalyptic event or events that end society as we know it today. In addition to a selection of newly reprinted works, WASTELANDS 3 will feature original, never-before-published stories by a group of writers hand-picked by master editor John Joseph Adams. Original stories by Veronica Roth, Hugh Howet, Elizabeth Bear, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Wendy N. Wagner and many more. Reprints will include works by Carmen Maria Machado, Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ken Liu and Cat Valente amongst others.]]> 645 John Joseph Adams J 0 3.68 2019
author: John Joseph Adams
name: J
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 40701780
The Great Change is upon us...

Some say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now that belief will be tested in the crucible of revolution: the Breakers and Burners have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds.

With nothing left to lose, Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age, while Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch. And in the bloody North, Rikke and her fragile Protectorate are running out of allies... while Black Calder gathers his forces and plots his vengeance.

The banks have fallen, the sun of the Union has been torn down, and in the darkness behind the scenes, the threads of the Weaver’s ruthless plan are slowly being drawn together...

]]> 520 Joe Abercrombie 0575095970 J 0 4.58 2021
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: J
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 13521459 They stole her brother and sister.
But vengeance is following.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she'll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she's not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb's buried a bloody past of his own. And out in the lawless Far Country the past never stays buried.

Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into an alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust . . .
RED COUNTRY takes place in the same world as the First Law trilogy, Best Served Cold, and The Heroes. This novel also sees the return of one of Abercrombie's most beloved characters.]]> 469 Joe Abercrombie 0316214442 J 0 4.31 2012
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: J
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> 9300768 581 Joe Abercrombie 0316123358 J 0 4.34 2011
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: J
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 2315892
There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

War may be hell, but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die.

Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Barbarian who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...

Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.]]> 534 Joe Abercrombie 0575082453 J 0 4.24 2009
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: J
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
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]]> 48765399
This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on their unique value. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part our systems of communication and our art. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. When we play games, we can pursue a goal, not for its own value, but for the value of the struggle. Thus, playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life. We adopt an interest in winning temporarily, so we can experience the beauty of the struggle. Games offer us a temporary experience of life under utterly clear values, in a world engineered to fit to our abilities and goals.

Games also let us to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, it turns out, are a special technique for communication. They are a technology that lets us record and transmit forms of agency. Our games form a "library of agency" and we can explore that library to develop our autonomy. Games use temporary restrictions to force us into new postures of agency.]]> 256 C. Thi Nguyen 0190052082 J 0 4.12
author: C. Thi Nguyen
name: J
average rating: 4.12
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]]> 55867831
This book argues that the profile marks an epochal shift in our concept of identity and demonstrates why that matters. You and Your Profile blends social theory, philosophy, and cultural critique to unfold an exploration of the way we have come to experience the world. Instead of polemicizing against the profile, Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio outline how it works, how we readily apply it in our daily lives, and how it shapes our values―personally, economically, and ethically. They develop a practical vocabulary of life in the digital age. Informed by the Daoist tradition, they suggest strategies for handling the pressure of social media by distancing oneself from one’s public face. A deft and wide-ranging consideration of our era’s identity crisis, this book provides vital clues on how to stay sane in a time of proliferating profiles.]]> 312 Hans-Georg Moeller 0231196008 J 0 4.35 2021
author: Hans-Georg Moeller
name: J
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 7414775 360 Bron Taylor 0520261003 J 0 3.90 2009
author: Bron Taylor
name: J
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> 40701777 Peace is just another kind of battlefield...

Savine dan Glokta, once Adua’s most powerful investor, finds her judgement, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way.

For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye... before it kills her.

The Breakers still lurk in the shadows, plotting to free the common man from his shackles, while noblemen bicker for their own advantage. Orso struggles to find a safe path through the maze of knives that is politics, only for his enemies, and his debts, to multiply.

The old ways are swept aside, and the old leaders with them, but those who would seize the reins of power will find no alliance, no friendship, and no peace, lasts forever.]]> 506 Joe Abercrombie 0575095911 J 0 4.59 2020
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: J
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 35654201 The Strange Birdâ€Äě°ů´Çłľ New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer—is a novella-length digital original that expands and weaves deeply into the world of his “thorough marvelâ€�* of a novel, Borne.

The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory—she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape.

But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology—satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans—all of them now simply scrambling to survive—who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home.

With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne—a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.

Praise for Borne

*“Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel.� —Colson Whitehead

“VanderMeer is that rare novelist who turns to nonhumans not to make them approximate us as much as possible but to make such approximation impossible. All of this is magnified a hundredfold in Borne . . . Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates—for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created. This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the twenty-first century will be as good as any from the twentieth, or the nineteenth.� —Wai Chee Dimock, The New York Times Book Review]]> 96 Jeff VanderMeer 0374714932 J 0 4.15 2017
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: J
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2017
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]]> 12013 Excession, the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section orders Diplomat Byr Gen-Hofoen to steal the soul of a long-dead starship captain. By accepting the mission, Byr irrevocably plunges himself into a conspiracy: one that could either lead the universe into an age of peace or to the brink of annihilation.]]> 500 Iain M. Banks 0553575376 J 0 4.20 1996
author: Iain M. Banks
name: J
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> 58438207
Ogres are bigger than you.
Ogres are stronger than you.
Ogres rule the world.

It’s always idyllic in the village until the landlord comes to call.

Because the landlord is an Ogre. And Ogres rule the world, with their size and strength and appetites. It’s always been that way. It’s the natural order of the world. And they only eat people sometimes.

But when the headman’s son, Torquell, dares lift his hand against the landlord’s son, he sets himself on a path to learn the terrible truth about the Ogres, and about the dark sciences that ensured their rule.]]> 159 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1786185288 J 0 to-read 4.17 2022
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: J
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/05
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]]> 49417653
In this anthology of short stories, we have both uplifting and incredibly depressing stories, but each one is entertaining and thought provoking. They span just about all the realms of speculative fiction, so you'll sure to find a story that fits your niche. Enjoy!

Contributors include: Daniel Ausema, George Alan Bradley, Sue Burke (award-nominated author), Scott J. Couturier, Andrew Leon Hudson, Matthew Hughes (fan favorite!), James Maxstadt, Jeremy Megargee, Lena Ng, Jez Patterson, Kat Pekin, P.J. Richards, Jude Reid, Shana Scott, Christopher Stanley, & N.E. White]]> 297 N.E. White J 0 to-read 3.58 2019
author: N.E. White
name: J
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/05
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]]> 61885104
Antonio Moro lost everything to the Leviathan League. Now he's alone in a city on an Arctic island fighting the ruthless, global pirates with the chance to be the artist he always wanted to be. Unfortunately, he thinks it’s a cover story for his real purpose―spying on sympathizers.

When things look bleak, he discovers an unusual ally. His new personal assistant program, Par Augustus. It’s insolent, extroverted, moody, and a not-quite-legal nascent A. I.

Together they create a secret rebellion from unlikely recruits to defend the island from ideological pirates with entitlement and guns, and capitalist pirates with entitlement and money.

Other Books by Sue Burke
Semiosis
Interference
Immunity Index]]> 352 Sue Burke 1250809134 J 0 to-read 3.42 2023
author: Sue Burke
name: J
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2023
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]]> 43263202 The sequel to Sue Burke's sweeping SF epic debut, Semiosis, continues in Interference as the colonists and a team from Earth confront a new and more implacable intelligence.

Over two hundred years after the first colonists landed on Pax, a new set of explorers arrives from Earth on what they claim is a temporary scientific mission.

But the Earthlings misunderstand the nature of the Pax settlement and its real leader. Even as Stevland attempts to protect his human tools, a more insidious enemy than the Earthlings makes itself known.

Stevland is not the apex species.

Semiosis duology
Semiosis
Interference]]> 320 Sue Burke 1250317843 J 5 3.89 2019
author: Sue Burke
name: J
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/10
date added: 2021/02/10
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The Semiosis Duology is the *Best* sci-fi focused on multi-species survival and conflict.
]]> 25183280 117 Patrick Stuart J 5
There are some amazing creatures and an implied setting that would be awesome to pull from.]]> 4.47 2015
author: Patrick Stuart
name: J
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2021/01/29
date added: 2021/01/29
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This was a difficult read but the material well worth the time and sore eyes.

There are some amazing creatures and an implied setting that would be awesome to pull from.
]]> 22821553 158 Matthew M. Bartlett 1500346721 J 4 3.92 2014
author: Matthew M. Bartlett
name: J
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/15
date added: 2021/01/21
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It took me awhile to recognize that the stories were actually interconnected as closely as they ended up being. At first I assumed these would be stochastic accounts of grotesque horror experiences with little connective tissue, and by the end I was really digging the way a world was evoked and a sense of momentum was built up. I'd like to return to the mythos Bartlett built through this short fiction.
]]> 312960 "The very notion of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human."

With this succinct formulation, Murray Bookchin launches his most ambitious work, The Ecology of Freedom. An engaging and extremely readable book of breathtaking scope, its inspired synthesis of ecology, anthropology, and political theory traces our conflicting legacies of hierarchy and freedom, from the first emergence of human culture to today's globalized capitalism, constantly pointing the way to a sane, sustainable ecological future. On a college syllabus or in an activist's backpack, this book is indispensable reading for anyone who's tired of living in a world where everything is an exploitable resource.]]> 480 Murray Bookchin 1904859267 J 4 4.20 1982
author: Murray Bookchin
name: J
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/21
date added: 2021/01/21
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At times difficult to muscle through, and the cynic in me sees how some of the conclusions and assertions about how to live in a world without hierarchy leads to a "society of individuals" in the most reactionary way, but Bookchin does spell out a pretty powerful case for an identity rooted in ecological epistemes.
]]> 25395296 215 Abdullah Ă–calan 8293064420 J 5 4.26 2009
author: Abdullah Ă–calan
name: J
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/27
date added: 2020/12/28
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]]> 1011154 Eros and Magic in the Renaissance challenges this view, providing an in-depth scholarly explanation of the workings of magic and showing that magic continues to exist in an altered form even today.

Renaissance magic, according to Ioan Couliano, was a scientifically plausible attempt to manipulate individuals and groups based on a knowledge of motivations, particularly erotic motivations. Its key principle was that everyone (and in a sense everything) could be influenced by appeal to sexual desire. In addition, the magician relied on a profound knowledge of the art of memory to manipulate the imaginations of his subjects. In these respects, Couliano suggests, magic is the precursor of the modern psychological and sociological sciences, and the magician is the distant ancestor of the psychoanalyst and the advertising and publicity agent.

In the course of his study, Couliano examines in detail the ideas of such writers as Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola and illuminates many aspects of Renaissance culture, including heresy, medicine, astrology, alchemy, courtly love, the influence of classical mythology, and even the role of fashion in clothing.

Just as science gives the present age its ruling myth, so magic gave a ruling myth to the Renaissance. Because magic relied upon the use of images, and images were repressed and banned in the Reformation and subsequent history, magic was replaced by exact science and modern technology and eventually forgotten. Couliano's remarkable scholarship helps us to recover much of its original significance and will interest a wide audience in the humanities and social sciences.
]]> 271 Ioan Petru Culianu 0226123162 J 4 4.40 1984
author: Ioan Petru Culianu
name: J
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2020/11/19
date added: 2020/11/19
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]]> 42385018
Good thing freelance mage Opal Yong-ae has never let little things like impossibility stop her. She’s found a way to put her overpriced magical art history degree to use as a Cleaner: a contract municipal employee who empties out abandoned apartments and resells the unusual treasures she finds inside for a profit. It’s not a pretty job, or a safe one--there’s a reason she wears bite-proof gloves--but when you’re neck-deep in debt to a very magical, very nasty individual, you can’t be picky about where the money comes from.

But even Opal’s low standards are put to the test when the only thing of value in her latest apartment is the body of the previous tenant. Dealing with the dead isn’t technically part of her job, but this mage died hiding a secret that could be worth a lot of money, and Opal’s the only one who knows. With debts she can’t pay due at the end of the week, this could be the big break she’s been waiting for, but in a city of runaway magic where getting in over your head generally means losing it, the cost of chasing this opportunity might be more than Opal can survive.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:
This is the first in a new series set in the same universe as my Heartstrikers books, but you don’t need to have read those stories to enjoy this one. MINIMUM WAGE MAGIC was written to stand by itself, so if you haven’t read the others, don’t worry! I wrote this book with you in mind. Thank you so much for reading!]]> 293 Rachel Aaron 1952367344 J 0 to-read 4.17 2018
author: Rachel Aaron
name: J
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 39325105 Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to Gideon the Ninth, turns a galaxy inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor's haunted space station.

She answered the Emperor's call.

She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.

In victory, her world has turned to ash.

After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath � but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.

Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?]]> 512 Tamsyn Muir 1250313228 J 4
If you liked Gideon for its plot structure, tropes, and character work, Harrow will not scratch the same itch. Be forewarned. If you like Muir's linguistic flourishes, space necromancy, and the universe alluded to in Gideon, then you should absolutely read Harrow. ]]> 4.30 2020
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: J
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/22
date added: 2020/10/23
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review:
At times too solipsistic. I didn't anticipate some of the author's stylistic decisions (a large portion of the narrative told in the second perspective, for example), but those rhetorical risks paid off for me.

If you liked Gideon for its plot structure, tropes, and character work, Harrow will not scratch the same itch. Be forewarned. If you like Muir's linguistic flourishes, space necromancy, and the universe alluded to in Gideon, then you should absolutely read Harrow.
]]> 42036538
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.]]> 448 Tamsyn Muir 1250313198 J 4 4.19 2019
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: J
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/18
date added: 2020/10/20
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]]> 54494840
Only the janissaries can stand against them. Their living legend, Kevah, once beheaded a magus amid a hail of ice daggers. But ever since his wife disappeared, he spends his days in a haze of hashish and poetry.

To save the kingdom, Kevah must conquer his grief and become the legend he once was. But Micah writes his own legend in blood, and his righteous conquest will stop at nothing.

When the gods choose sides, a legend will be etched upon the stars.]]> 520 Zamil Akhtar J 0 to-read 4.16 2020
author: Zamil Akhtar
name: J
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 39090931 120 Silvia Federici 1629635685 J 0 to-read 4.14 2018
author: Silvia Federici
name: J
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1860485 Murray Bookchin 0304338737 J 0 to-read 4.23 1997
author: Murray Bookchin
name: J
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54540065 235 Nils Hintze 9189143922 J 5 4.47 2020
author: Nils Hintze
name: J
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2020/10/04
date added: 2020/10/05
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]]> 25667920 A broken wing.
A stolen country.

The last job didn't end well.

Years go by, and scars fade, but memories only fester. For the animals of the Captain's company, survival has meant keeping a low profile, building a new life, and trying to forget the war they lost. But now the Captain's whiskers are twitching at the idea of evening the score.]]> 226 Daniel Polansky 0765384000 J 0 to-read 3.72 2015
author: Daniel Polansky
name: J
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/10/05
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]]> 49247320 Daniel Polansky returns with The Seventh Perfection, an innovative, mind-bending fantasy mystery

When a woman with perfect memory sets out to solve a riddle, the threads she tugs on could bring a whole city crashing down. The God-King who made her is at risk, and his other servants will do anything to stop her.

To become the God-King's Amanuensis, Manet had to master all seven perfections, developing her body and mind to the peak of human performance. She remembers everything that has happened to her, in absolute clarity, a gift that will surely drive her mad. But before she goes, Manet must unravel a secret which threatens not only the carefully prepared myths of the God-King's ascent, but her own identity and the nature of truth itself.]]> 173 Daniel Polansky 1250767563 J 0 to-read 3.59 2020
author: Daniel Polansky
name: J
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/10/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 107273
In Lost Christianities, Bart D. Ehrman offers a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and shows how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus's own followers. Modern archaeological work has recovered a number of key texts, and as Ehrman shows, these spectacular discoveries reveal religious diversity that says much about the ways in which history gets written by the winners. Ehrman's discussion ranges from considerations of various "lost scriptures"--including forged gospels supposedly written by Simon Peter, Jesus's closest disciple, and Judas Thomas, Jesus's alleged twin brother--to the disparate beliefs of such groups as the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and various "Gnostic" sects. Ehrman examines in depth the battles that raged between "proto-orthodox Christians"--those who eventually compiled the canonical books of the New Testament and standardized Christian belief--and the groups they denounced as heretics and ultimately overcame.

Scrupulously researched and lucidly written, Lost Christianities is an eye-opening account of politics, power, and the clash of ideas among Christians in the decades before one group came to see its views prevail.]]> 294 Bart D. Ehrman 0195182499 J 0 to-read 4.06 2002
author: Bart D. Ehrman
name: J
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 16086852
In some ways, this is the equivalent of Nihilist Communism for a green anarchist audience.]]> 68 Anonymous J 0 to-read 3.73 2011
author: Anonymous
name: J
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 10185738 Why Marx Was Right is as urgent and timely as it is brave and candid. Written with Eagleton's familiar wit, humor, and clarity, it will attract an audience far beyond the confines of academia.]]> 258 Terry Eagleton J 0 to-read 3.88 2011
author: Terry Eagleton
name: J
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 23719305 A new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, law enforcement, and our understanding of the human mind.

Emotions feel automatic, like uncontrollable reactions to things we think and experience. Scientists have long supported this assumption by claiming that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology—ans this paradigm shift has far-reaching implications for us all.

Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose theory of emotion is driving a deeper understanding of the mind and brain, and shedding new light on what it means to be human. Her research overturns the widely held belief that emotions are housed in different parts of the brain and are universally expressed and recognized. Instead, she has shown that emotion is constructed in the moment, by core systems that interact across the whole brain, aided by a lifetime of learning. This new theory means that you play a much greater role in your emotional life than you ever thought. Its repercussions are already shaking the foundations not only of psychology but also of medicine, the legal system, child-rearing, meditation, and even airport security.

Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent? How Emotions Are MadeĚýanswers these questions and many more, revealing the latest research and intriguing practical applications of the new science of emotion, mind, and brain.Ěý]]> 425 Lisa Feldman Barrett 0544133315 J 0 to-read 4.09 2017
author: Lisa Feldman Barrett
name: J
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/28
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]]> 49295297 Stranger Things meets World War Z in this heart-racing conspiracy thriller as a lonely young woman teams up with a group of fellow outcasts to survive the night in a town overcome by a science experiment gone wrong.

Turner Falls is a small tourist town nestled in the hills of western Oregon, the kind of town you escape to for a vacation. When an inexplicable outbreak rapidly develops, this idyllic town becomes the epicenter of an epidemic of violence as the teenaged children of several executives from the local biotech firm become ill and aggressively murderous. Suddenly the town is on edge, and Lucy and her friends must do everything it takes just to fight through the night.]]> 306 Jeremy Robert Johnson 1534454292 J 0 to-read 3.36 2020
author: Jeremy Robert Johnson
name: J
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/25
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]]> 886066
Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy.

Concealing her new identity � and her particular set of abilities � might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter.

Cover illustration by Debra Lill]]> 593 Iain M. Banks 1841494186 J 4 4.09 2008
author: Iain M. Banks
name: J
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/09/21
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]]> 28186015 But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination--propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process.]]> 259 Cathy O'Neil 0553418815 J 0 to-read 3.86 2016
author: Cathy O'Neil
name: J
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 41735103 The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading

As Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: "For centuries there's been one path through fiction we're most likely to travel―one we're actually told to follow―and that's the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides...But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?"

W. G. Sebald's Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc―or, in nature, wave. Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her "museum of specimens" include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison.

Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let's leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike.

Runtime: 5. 84 hours]]> 272 Jane Alison 1948226138 J 0 to-read 4.08 2019
author: Jane Alison
name: J
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/14
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]]> 25809801 Ěý
Captain Beniko Ishimura's job is to censor video games, and he's working with Agent Akiko Tsukino of the secret police to get to the bottom of this disturbing new development. But Ishimura's hiding something... He's slowly been discovering that the case of the George Washingtons is more complicated than it seems, and the subversive videogame's origins are even more controversial and dangerous than either of them originally suspected.

Part detective story, part brutal alternate history,ĚýUnited States of JapanĚýis a stunning successor to Philip K Dick’sĚýThe Man in the High Castle.

File under: Science Fiction [ Gamechanger | Area #11 | Robot Wars | Strike Back the Empire ]]]> 345 Peter Tieryas 0857665340 J 0 to-read 3.49 2016
author: Peter Tieryas
name: J
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 43550429 Brand-new stories of witches and witchcraft written by popular female fantasy authors, including Kelley Armstrong, Rachel Caine and Sherrilyn Kenyon writing in their own bestselling universes!

These are tales of wickedness... stories of evil and cunning, written by today's women you should fear. Includes tales from Kelley Armstong, Rachel Caine and Sherrilyn Kenyon, writing in their own bestselling universes.

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of WitcheryĚýwill take the classic tropes of tales of witchcraft and infuse them with fresh, feminist perspective and present-day concerns--even if they're set in the past. These witches might be monstrous, or they might be heroes, depending on their own definitions. Even the kind hostess with the candy cottage thought of herself as the hero of her own story. After all, a woman's gotta eat.

Bring out your dread.

From TI 9781789090345 HC.]]> 400 Christopher Golden J 4 3.63 2019
author: Christopher Golden
name: J
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/08/24
date added: 2020/09/14
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]]> 37589179
A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose name he has forgotten and whose purpose remains hidden.

Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts presents a City with no name of its own where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth � all the Earths.]]> 352 Jeff VanderMeer J 0 to-read 3.35 2019
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: J
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 31451186
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still make creatures and send them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse.

Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an attachment she resents; attachments are traps, and in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet when she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, the Balcony Cliffs, Rachel convinces her lover, Wick, not to render Borne down to raw genetic material for the drugs he sells—she cannot break that bond.

Wick is a special kind of supplier, because the drug dealers in the city don’t sell the usual things. They sell tiny creatures that can be swallowed or stuck in the ear, and that release powerful memories of other people’s happier times or pull out forgotten memories from the user’s own mind—or just produce beautiful visions that provide escape from the barren, craterous landscapes of the city.

Against his better judgment, out of affection for Rachel or perhaps some other impulse, Wick respects her decision. Rachel, meanwhile, despite her loyalty to Wick, knows he has kept secrets from her. Searching his apartment, she finds a burnt, unreadable journal titled “Mord,� a cryptic reference to the Magician (a rival drug dealer) and evidence that Wick has planned the layout of the Balcony Cliffs to match the blueprint of the Company building. What is he hiding? Why won’t he tell her about what happened when he worked for the Company?]]> 323 Jeff VanderMeer 0374115249 J 5 3.93 2017
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: J
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2020/09/05
date added: 2020/09/09
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]]> 43199733 500 Brian Catling 1101873787 J 2 3.37 2012
author: Brian Catling
name: J
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/08/31
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]]> 52379336 656 Seth Dickinson 0765380765 J 0 to-read 4.31 2020
author: Seth Dickinson
name: J
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> 174174 Lord of the Flies, Cold Skin is literary horror that deals with the basest forms of human behavior imaginable, while exploring why we so vehemently fear the Other.]]> 240 Albert Sánchez Piñol 1841958832 J 0 to-read 3.71 2002
author: Albert Sánchez Piñol
name: J
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 27245999
From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. The tale features a rough wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman—and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok’s interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent.]]> 306 Indra Das 110196751X J 0 to-read 3.74 2016
author: Indra Das
name: J
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 30780005 The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.]]> 281 Ahmed Saadawi 0143128795 J 0 to-read 3.65 2013
author: Ahmed Saadawi
name: J
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 49090884
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.� Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.]]> 209 Agustina Bazterrica 1982150920 J 0 to-read 3.76 2017
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: J
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 25721087 The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult.)
The Story Grid is a tool with many applications:
1. It will tell a writer if a Story "works" or "doesn't work."
2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story...the Story) has failed.
3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems.
4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer.
5. It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.

Shawn Coyne is a twenty-five year book-publishing veteran. He's acquired, edited, published or represented works from James Bamford, John Brenkus, James Lee Burke, Barbara Bush, Dick Butkus, Harlan Coben, Nellie Connally, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Ben Crenshaw, Catherine Crier, Brett Favre, David Feherty, John Feinstein, Tyler Florence, Jim Gant, Col. David H. Hackworth, Jamie Harrison, Mo Hayder, William Hjortsberg, Stephen Graham Jones, Jon Krakauer, David Leadbetter, Alan Lomax, David Mamet, Troon McAllister, Robert McKee, Matthew Modine, Bill Murray, Joe Namath, John J. Nance, Jack Olsen, Scott Patterson, Steven Pressfield, Matthew Quirk, Anita Raghavan, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell, Jerry Rice, Giora Romm, Tim Rosaforte, William Safire, Dava Sobel, Michael Thomas, Nick Tosches, Ann Scott Tyson, Minette Walters, Betty White, Randy Wayne White, Steven White, and Don Winslow among many others. During his years as an editor at the Big Five publishing houses, as an independent publisher, as a literary agent both at a major Hollywood talent agency and as head of Genre Management Inc., and as a bestselling co-writer and ghostwriter, Coyne created a methodology called The Story Grid to teach the editing craft.]]> 344 Shawn Coyne 1936891352 J 4 4.33 2015
author: Shawn Coyne
name: J
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2020/08/24
date added: 2020/08/24
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]]> 26883558
Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?]]> 149 Victor LaValle 0765387867 J 4 3.81 2016
author: Victor LaValle
name: J
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/08/10
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]]> 49882356
Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.]]> 121 Nghi Vo 125075030X J 5 to-read 4.00 2020
author: Nghi Vo
name: J
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/08/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 35018907 In this character driven novel of first contact by debut author Sue Burke, human survival hinges on an bizarre alliance.

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that mammals are more than tools.

Forced to land on a planet they aren't prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape--trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.]]> 333 Sue Burke 076539135X J 5 3.85 2018
author: Sue Burke
name: J
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/10
date added: 2020/08/10
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]]> 2568999
There are many legends and ancient tales concerning Mount Agiochook, the second tallest mountain in Maine. Some of these tales speak of a demon that resides on the rocky slopes near the mountain's snow-crested summit. Legend has it that a force of supernatural evil periodically emerges from the mists that shroud the mountain and comes down to the valley, looking to claim a life.

Sometimes the life it claims is an animal � perhaps a stray dog or a farmer's cow or a horse. At other times, it claims a human life, a straying hiker or a lost camper.

Mark Newman has hiked the numerous trails to the summit of Mount Agiochook many times. He has heard the stories and Indian legend, but he doesn't believe them.

Not until one September afternoon, when an early snow storm sweeps through the mountains, and he witnesses something he knows can't possibly be real.

But it is all too real!

Convinced that there is something lurking near the summit of the mountain... something terrible... something that won't be satisfied with claiming just one human life, Mark vows to hunt it down and destroy it.

What he doesn't know is that he, too, is being hunted. Under suspicion for the murders of his best friend and his wife's lover, Mark is being pursued by the local police, an angry mob, and something else... something he can't begin to comprehend until he confronts it, face to face.

From international best-selling author Rick Hautala comes this terrifying adventure story of horror and suspense that will thrill you and haunt you long after you've finished reading it.]]> 379 Rick Hautala 0843948876 J 0 to-read 3.59 1996
author: Rick Hautala
name: J
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/10
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]]> 51171377
It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government—and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him—until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades.

Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.]]> 384 Lindsay Ellis 1250256739 J 0 to-read 3.68 2020
author: Lindsay Ellis
name: J
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/07
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]]> 1724365 312 Toby Barlow 0061430226 J 0 to-read 3.88 2007
author: Toby Barlow
name: J
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/07
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]]> 186074
The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.]]> 662 Patrick Rothfuss 075640407X J 3 4.52 2007
author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: J
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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date added: 2020/08/07
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]]> 22744907
Are you writing a novel, but having trouble getting your first draft written? You’ve heard of “outlining,� but that sounds too rigid for you. You’ve heard of “organic writing,� but that seems a bit squishy to you.

Take a look at the wildly popular Snowflake Method—a battle-tested series of ten steps that jump-start your creativity and help you quickly map out your story. All around the world, novelists are using the Snowflake Method right now to ignite their imaginations and get their first drafts down on paper.

In this book, you’ll follow the story of a fictitious novelist as she learns to tap into the amazing power of the Snowflake Method. Almost magically, she finds her story growing from a simple idea into a deep and powerful novel. And she finds her novel changing her—turning her into a stronger, more courageous person.

Zany, Over the Top, and Just Plain Fun

How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method is a “business parable”—a how-to guide written in story form. It’s zany. It’s over the top. It’s just plain fun. Most important, it’s effective, because it shows you, rather than telling you.

You’ll learn by example how to grow your story idea into a sizzling first draft.

You’ll discover:
* How to define your “target audience� the right way, so you know exactly how your ideal readers think and feel. Forget what the experts tell you about “demographics.�
* How to create a dynamite selling tool that will instantly tell people whether they’ll love your story or hate it. And you want them to either love it or hate it.
* How to get inside the skin of every one of your characters—even your villain. Especially your villain.
* How to find a deep, emotively powerful theme for your story. Do you know the one best point in your novel to unveil your theme—when your reader is most eager to hear it?
* How to know when to backtrack, and why backtracking is essential to writing great fiction.
* How to fire-test each scene to guarantee it’ll be high-impact—before you write it.

Excerpt from Chapter 1:

Goldilocks had always wanted to write a novel.

She learned to read before she went to kindergarten.

In grade school, she always had her nose in a book.

In junior high, the other kids thought she was weird, because she actually liked reading those dusty old novels in literature class.

All through high school, Goldilocks dreamed of writing a book of her own someday.

But when she went to college, her parents persuaded her to study something practical.

Goldilocks hated practical, and secretly she kept reading novels. But she was a very obedient girl, so she did what her parents told her. She got a very practical degree in marketing.

After college, she got a job that bored her to tears—but at least it was practical.

Then she got married, and within a few years, she had two children, a girl and then a boy. She quit her job to devote full time to them.

As the children grew, Goldilocks took great joy in introducing them to the stories she had loved as a child.

When her son went off to kindergarten, Goldilocks thought about looking for a job. But her resume now had a seven-year hole in it, and her practical skills were long out of date.

The only jobs Goldilocks could qualify for were minimum wage.

She suddenly realized that being practical had made her horribly unhappy.

On a whim, Goldilocks decided to do the one thing she had always wanted more than anything else—she was finally going to write a novel.

She didn’t care if it was impractical.

She didn’t care if nobody would ever read her novel.

She was going to do it just because she wanted to.

For the first time in years, she was going to do something just for herself.

And nobody was going to stop her.]]> 234 Randy Ingermanson 1937031128 J 5 4.18 2014
author: Randy Ingermanson
name: J
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/05
date added: 2020/08/07
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]]> 979125 426 Jeremy Brecher 0896085694 J 5 4.19 1972
author: Jeremy Brecher
name: J
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1972
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/05
date added: 2020/08/07
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]]> 29247950 NOMINATED FOR THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDĚýâ€� NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OFĚý2016 BYĚýTOR.COMĚýAND BOOK RIOT

A spellbinding and darkly humorous coming-of-age story about an unusual boy, whose family lives on the fringe of society and struggles to survive in a hostile world that shuns and fears them.

He was born an outsider, like the rest of his family. Poor yet resilient, he lives in the shadows with his aunt Libby and uncle Darren, folk who stubbornly make their way in a society that does not understand or want them. They are mongrels, mixed blood, neither this nor that. The boy at the center of Mongrels must decide if he belongs on the road with his aunt and uncle, or if he fits with the people on the other side of the tracks.

For ten years, he and his family have lived a life of late-night exits and narrow escapes—always on the move across the South to stay one step ahead of the law. But the time is drawing near when Darren and Libby will finally know if their nephew is like them or not. And the close calls they’ve been running from for so long are catching up fast now. Everything is about to change.

A compelling and fascinating journey, Mongrels alternates between past and present to create an unforgettable portrait of a boy trying to understand his family and his place in a complex and unforgiving world. A smart and innovative story� funny, bloody, raw, and real—told in a rhythmic voice full of heart, Mongrels is a deeply moving, sometimes grisly, novel that illuminates the challenges and tender joys of a life beyond the ordinary in a bold and imaginative new way.]]> 320 Stephen Graham Jones 0062412701 J 5 3.91 2016
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: J
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 21425047
A New York Times Bestseller in Sports and Travel!

The ultimate resource for experiencing the backcountry!

Written by survivalist expert Dave Canterbury, Bushcraft 101 gets you ready for your next backcountry trip with advice on making the most of your time outdoors. Based on the 5Cs of Survivability--cutting tools, covering, combustion devices, containers, and cordages--this valuable guide offers only the most important survival skills to help you craft resources from your surroundings and truly experience the beauty and thrill of the wilderness. Inside, you'll also discover detailed information on:

Choosing the right items for your kit.

Manufacturing needed tools and supplies.

Collecting and cooking food.

Protecting yourself from the elements.

With Canterbury's guidance, you'll not only prepare yourself for any climate and situation, you'll also learn how to use the art of bushcraft to reconnect with nature in ways you've never imagined.]]> 256 Dave Canterbury 1440579776 J 0 to-read 4.12 2014
author: Dave Canterbury
name: J
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 13542540
Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives,Ěý Twelve Years a Slave Ěýis a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation.

After his rescue, Northup published this exceptionally vivid and detailed account of slave life. It became an immediate bestseller and today is recognized for its unusual insight and eloquence as one of the very few portraits of American slavery produced by someone as educated as Solomon Northup, or by someone with the dual perspective of having been both a free man and a slave.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 304 Solomon Northup 0143106708 J 5 4.23 1853
author: Solomon Northup
name: J
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1853
rating: 5
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]]> 25452472 The future is here…the future is now!Ěý Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson and Larry Niven have seen the future. Now, you can, too.

A constellation of the brightest lights in the Science Fiction and Fantasy firmament have judged these authors to be the best, the brightest, the truest emerging stars in the field.

From Alien Invasion to Alternate History, from Cyberpunk to Comic Fantasy to Post-Apocalyptic Worlds, these are the winning writers who have mastered every version and vision of sci-fi and fantasy.

Don’t be left behind. Get a read on what’s next.

“The Writers of the Future contest looks for people with the best imaginations who can see through the possibilities of the strangest and best ideas and tell stories that intrigue us and involve us.� —ORSON SCOTT CARD

Celebrate the 31st anniversary of the Writers of the Future contest and the 26th anniversary of the Illustrators of the Future contest

#WofF31]]> 478 David Farland 1619863200 J 5 3.90 2015
author: David Farland
name: J
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 2408737
Offering an overarching, pointed synthesis of the interpenetration of magic, rhetoric, and literacy, William A. Covino draws from theorists ranging from Plato and Cornelius Agrippa to Paulo Freire and Mary Daly, and analyzes the different magics that operate in Renaissance occult philosophy and Romantic literature, as well as in popular indicators of mass literacy such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and The National Enquirer.

Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy distinguishes two kinds of magic-rhetoric that continue to affect our psychological and cultural life today. Generative magic-rhetoric creates novel possibilities for action, within a broad sympathetic universe of signs and symbols. Arresting magic-rhetoric attempts to induce automatistic behavior, by inculcating rules and maxims that function like magic ritual JUST SAY NO. In this connection, the literate individual is one who can interrogate arresting language, and generate "counter-spells."]]> 189 William A. Covino 0791420841 J 5 4.29 2009
author: William A. Covino
name: J
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> 23012596
Overweight, unemployed slacker Nelson Jent is not a hero. But with the twist of a dial, he can become one. A broken-down payphone down a forgotten alley holds the power to transform anyone with the right number into a host of different superheroes. And Nelson knows the 4-3-7-6. The number that spells HERO.

Award-winning novelist China Miéville (winner of the World Fantasy Award, the British Science Fiction Award, the Hugo Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award) and artists Mateus Santolouco (AMERICAN VAMPIRE) and Alberto Ponticelli (UNKNOWN SOLDIER) breathe new life into a classic Silver Age series with this surrealist masterpiece. This special Deluxe Edition includes the complete series of DIAL H as well sketches from the artists and afterword by China Miéville. Collects DIAL H #0-15.]]> 368 China Miéville 1401255205 J 5 3.59 2015
author: China Miéville
name: J
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> 31491784
This richly-illustrated, 400+ page supplement for any 5E game includes monsters from the entire history of Kobold Press, with longtime favorites such as clockwork creatures, drakes and dragons, devils and arch-devils, and dangerous flavors of the fey--illustrated by some of the finest artists working in fantasy today.

These monsters have been designed so that GMs can use them in their favorite settings for fantasy adventure, whether it's Kobold Press's world of Midgard, one of the classic realms of d20-rolling gaming, or their own homebrew worlds.]]> 400 Wolfgang Baur 1936781565 J 4 4.44 2016
author: Wolfgang Baur
name: J
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 35457979
The Xanathar...
Waterdeep's most infamous crime lord, and a beholder to boot...
You'd be shocked to discover just how much he knows about you...
Yes, you... adventurers.

Assembled here for the first time is new information on adventurers of every stripe. In addition, you'll find and valuable advice for those of nefarious intent who must deal with such meddling do-gooders, including the Xanathar's personal thoughts on how to dispatch anyone foolish enough to interfere with his business dealings. Alongside observations on "heroes" themselves, the beholder fills the pages of this tome with his personal thoughts on tricks, traps, and even treasures and how they can be put to villainous use.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but evil is in its heart!

For use with the fifth edition Player's Handbook(R), Monster Manual(R), and Dungeon Master's Guide(R).
- Complete rules for more than twenty new subclasses for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons(R), including the cavalier, the inquisitive, the horizon walker, and many more.
- Dozens of new feats and spells, and a system to give your character a unique, randomized back story
- A variety of systems and tools that provide Dungeon Masters new ways to personalize their home games, while also expanding the ways players can engage in organized play and shared world campaigns.
- Fans of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS(R) can get a sample of what this book has in store for them by visiting their local hobby retailer and participating in the D&D Adventurers LeagueTM organized play program.
- Design and development by the Wizards tabletop RPG team.

The leader in providing contemporary fantasy entertainment, Dungeons & Dragons is the wellspring for the entire modern game industry, digital as well as analog. This newest edition draws from every prior edition to create a universally compelling play experience, and exemplifies the true spirit of a game that holds captive the hearts and minds of millions of players worldwide.]]> 192 Wizards of the Coast 0786966114 J 4 4.58 2017
author: Wizards of the Coast
name: J
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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]]> 35457978 for the world's greatest roleplaying game
The talk of the streets and taverns has all been about the so-called death curse: a wasting disease afflicting everyone who's ever been raised from the dead. Victims grow thinner and weaker each day, slowly but steadily sliding toward the death they once denied.

When they finally succumb, they can't be raised-and neither can anyone else, regardless of whether they've ever received that miracle in the past. Temples and scholars of divine magic are at a loss to explain a curse that has affected the entire region, and possibly the entire world.

The cause is a necromantic artifact called the Soulmonger, which is located somewhere in Chult, a mysterious peninsula far to the south, ringed with mountains and choked with rain forests.

- An adventure for characters of levels 1 - 11, Tomb of Annihilation provides the Dungeon Master with the core adventure needed to create an exciting and memorable play experience.
- Expands on the Forgotten Realms setting of Chult, providing extensive detail on the hidden peninsula, and includes a large pull-out map of the region.
- Fans of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS(R) Roleplaying Game can expand and enhance their experience by participating in the D&D Adventurers LeagueTM organized play program while playing this adventure.
- Adventure design by Christopher Perkins, Will Doyle, and Steve Winter, with additional design by Adam Lee.
- Story consulting by the award-winning creator of Adventure Time, Pendleton Ward.

The leader in providing contemporary fantasy entertainment, Dungeons & Dragons is the wellspring for the entire modern game industry, digital as well as analog. This newest edition draws from every prior edition to create a universally compelling play experience, and exemplifies the true spirit of a game that holds captive the hearts and minds of millions of players worldwide.]]> 256 Christopher Perkins 0786966106 J 4 4.44 2017
author: Christopher Perkins
name: J
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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]]> 48654 466 Robert McKee 0060391685 J 5 4.27 1997
author: Robert McKee
name: J
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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]]> 30556352 Immerse yourself in monster lore in this supplement for the world's greatest roleplaying game

This is NOT just another Monster Manual! Volo's Guide to Monsters provides something exciting for players and Dungeon Masters everywhere.
- A deep dive into the lore behind some of D&D's most popular and iconic monsters
- Dozens of monsters new to the fifth edition to include in your epic adventures
- New playable races to allow you to build characters to fit nearly any type of story in your D&D game.

The esteemed loremaster Volothamp Geddarm is back and he's written a fantastical dissertation, covering some of the most iconic monsters in the Forgotten Realms. Unfortunately, the Sage of Shadowdale himself, Elminster, doesn't believe Volo gets some of the important details quite right. Don't miss out as Volo and Elminster square off (academically speaking of course) to illuminate the uninitiated on creatures both common and obscure. Uncover the machinations of the mysterious Kraken Society, what is the origin of the bizarre froghemoth, or how to avoid participating in the ghastly reproductive cycle of the grotesque vargouille. Dungeon Masters and players will get some much-needed guidance as you plan your next venture, traipsing about some dusty old ruin in search of treasure, lore, and let's not forget ... dangerous creatures whose horns, claws, fangs, heads, or even hides might comfortably adorn the walls of your trophy room. If you survive.

Research has never been so dangerous!]]> 224 Wizards of the Coast 0786966017 J 4 4.45 2016
author: Wizards of the Coast
name: J
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 60071 216 Espen J. Aarseth 0801855799 J 5 3.87 1997
author: Espen J. Aarseth
name: J
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 15784099
Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.

Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.]]> 334 Max Gladstone J 4 4.12 2012
author: Max Gladstone
name: J
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 38357953
This tome is built on the writings of the renowned wizard from the world of Greyhawk, gathered over a lifetime of research and scholarship. In his travels to other realms and other planes of existence, he has made many friends, and has risked his life an equal number of times, to amass the knowledge contained herein. In addition to Mordenkainen's musings on the endless wars of the multiverse, the book contains game statistics for dozens of monsters: new demons and devils, several varieties of elves and duergar, and a vast array of other creatures from throughout the planes of existence.]]> 256 Wizards of the Coast J 4 4.37 2018
author: Wizards of the Coast
name: J
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 25138822 When his fate becomes woven with that of Tabat’s most famous gladiator, Bella Kanto, his existence becomes even more imperiled. Kanto’s magical battle determines the weather each year, and the wealthy merchants are tired of the long winters she’s brought. Can Teo and Bella save each other from the plots that are closing in on them from all sides?
]]> 353 Cat Rambo 1614752982 J 4 3.55 2015
author: Cat Rambo
name: J
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 34417038 The Murders of Molly Southbourne.

The rule is simple: don't bleed.

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?]]> 122 Tade Thompson J 5 3.79 2017
author: Tade Thompson
name: J
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 35625645
Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.]]> 340 Rivers Solomon J 4 4.12 2017
author: Rivers Solomon
name: J
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 31702749
With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?

Infomocracy is Malka Older's debut novel.]]> 397 Malka Ann Older 0765392364 J 4 3.66 2016
author: Malka Ann Older
name: J
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 23444482
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.

In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery - and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.

But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.

]]> 399 Seth Dickinson 0765380722 J 5 4.04 2015
author: Seth Dickinson
name: J
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
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]]> 34730465 Brian McClellan, author of the acclaimed Powder Mage series, introduces a new universe, new armies, and new monsters in War Cry

Teado is a Changer, a shape-shifting military asset trained to win wars. His platoon has been stationed in the Bavares high plains for years, stranded. As they ration supplies and scan the airwaves for news, any news, their numbers dwindle. He's not sure how much time they have left.

Desperate and starving, armed with aging, faulting equipment, the team jumps at the chance for a risky resupply mission, even if it means not all of them might come. What they discover could change the course of the war.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 112 Brian McClellan 125017015X J 4 3.73 2018
author: Brian McClellan
name: J
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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]]> 36898823 NPR on Infomocracy

Null States continues Campbell Award finalist Malka Older's Centenal Cycle, the near-future science fiction trilogy beginning with Infomocracy

- The book The Huffington Post called "one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history"
- Named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, The Verge, Flavorwire, Kirkus, and Book Riot
- A Locus Award Finalist for Best First Novel

The future of democracy is about to implode.

After the last controversial global election, the global infomocracy that has ensured thirty years of world peace is fraying at the edges. As the new Supermajority government struggles to establish its legitimacy, agents of Information across the globe strive to keep the peace and maintain the flows of data that feed the new world order.

In the newly-incorporated DarFur, a governor dies in a fiery explosion. In Geneva, a superpower hatches plans to bring microdemocracy to its knees. In Central Asia, a sprawling war among archaic states threatens to explode into a global crisis. And across the world, a shadowy plot is growing, threatening to strangle Information with the reins of power.]]> 448 Malka Ann Older 0765399547 J 4 3.77 2017
author: Malka Ann Older
name: J
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 39863238
Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion—all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret—one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life—or rescue it from annihilation.]]> 462 Arkady Martine 1250186439 J 5 4.07 2019
author: Arkady Martine
name: J
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 40524312
Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written an adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf explores the fundamentals of truths, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all.]]> 620 Marlon James 0735220174 J 3 3.42 2019
author: Marlon James
name: J
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2019
rating: 3
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 31702744 Ghost Talkers: a new novel from beloved fantasy author Mary Robinette Kowal featuring the mysterious spirit corps and their heroic work in World War I.

Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Harford, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force.

Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the Corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence.

Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels. While Ben is away at the front, Ginger discovers the presence of a traitor. Without the presence of her fiance to validate her findings, the top brass thinks she's just imagining things. Even worse, it is clear that the Spirit Corps is now being directly targeted by the German war effort. Left to her own devices, Ginger has to find out how the Germans are targeting the Spirit Corps and stop them. This is a difficult and dangerous task for a woman of that era, but this time both the spirit and the flesh are willing…]]> 299 Mary Robinette Kowal 0765378264 J 4 3.78 2016
author: Mary Robinette Kowal
name: J
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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]]> 45838163 9781635570298

A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]> 830 Samantha Shannon J 5 4.25 2019
author: Samantha Shannon
name: J
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 18405492 128 Nathan Hale 1419708082 J 3 4.40 2014
author: Nathan Hale
name: J
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 1760104 126 Nisi Shawl 193350000X J 4 4.16 2007
author: Nisi Shawl
name: J
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 31866071
Kentucky Kaiju lets you travel deep into the hills of Kentucky and uncover all of its monsters without ever leaving the safety of your home.]]> 104 Justin Stewart 1937009459 J 5 4.24 2016
author: Justin Stewart
name: J
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 33099586 The Red Threads of Fortune is one of a pair of unique, standalone introductions to JY Yang's Tensorate Series, which Kate Elliott calls "effortlessly fascinating." For more of the story you can read its twin novella The Black Tides of Heaven, available now.

Fallen prophet, master of the elements, and daughter of the supreme Protector, Sanao Mokoya has abandoned the life that once bound her. Once her visions shaped the lives of citizens across the land, but no matter what tragedy Mokoya foresaw, she could never reshape the future. Broken by the loss of her young daughter, she now hunts deadly, sky-obscuring naga in the harsh outer reaches of the kingdom with packs of dinosaurs at her side, far from everything she used to love.

On the trail of a massive naga that threatens the rebellious mining city of Bataanar, Mokoya meets the mysterious and alluring Rider. But all is not as it seems: the beast they both hunt harbors a secret that could ignite war throughout the Protectorate. As she is drawn into a conspiracy of magic and betrayal, Mokoya must come to terms with her extraordinary and dangerous gifts, or risk losing the little she has left to hold dear.]]> 213 Neon Yang 0765395398 J 3 3.84 2017
author: Neon Yang
name: J
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 8561344
In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.� This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.]]> 442 James C. Scott 0300169175 J 5 4.17 2009
author: James C. Scott
name: J
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> 20186 ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural "modernization" in the Tropics—the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?

In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not—and cannot—be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against "development theory" and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a "high-modernist ideology" that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.]]> 461 James C. Scott 0300078153 J 5 4.21 1998
author: James C. Scott
name: J
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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]]> 43521119
When the djinn king Melek Ahmar wakes up after millennia of imprisoned slumber, he finds a world vastly different from what he remembers. Arrogant and bombastic, he comes down the mountain expecting an easy the wealthy, spectacular city state of Kathmandu, ruled by the all-knowing, all-seeing tyrant AI Karma. To his surprise, he finds that Kathmandu is a cut-price paradise, where citizens want for nothing and even the dregs of society are distinctly unwilling to revolt.

Everyone seems happy, except for the old Gurkha soldier Bhan Gurung. Knife saint, recidivist, and mass murderer, he is an exile from Kathmandu, pursuing a forty-year-old vendetta that leads to the very heart of Karma. Pushed and prodded by Gurung, Melek Ahmer finds himself in ever deeper conflicts, until they finally face off against Karma and her forces. In the upheaval that follows, old crimes will come to light and the city itself will be forced to change.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 107 Saad Z. Hossain 1250209102 J 5 4.23 2019
author: Saad Z. Hossain
name: J
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/06/29
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]]> 35606041
On the blood-soaked borders of Angland, Leo dan Brock struggles to win fame on the battlefield, and defeat the marauding armies of Stour Nightfall. He hopes for help from the crown. But King Jezal's son, the feckless Prince Orso, is a man who specializes in disappointments.

Savine dan Glokta - socialite, investor, and daughter of the most feared man in the Union - plans to claw her way to the top of the slag-heap of society by any means necessary. But the slums boil over with a rage that all the money in the world cannot control.

The age of the machine dawns, but the age of magic refuses to die. With the help of the mad hillwoman Isern-i-Phail, Rikke struggles to control the blessing, or the curse, of the Long Eye. Glimpsing the future is one thing, but with the guiding hand of the First of the Magi still pulling the strings, changing it will be quite another...

]]> 480 Joe Abercrombie 031618716X J 4 4.45 2019
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: J
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/01
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]]> 17333324
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.]]> 386 Ann Leckie J 0 to-read 3.98 2013
author: Ann Leckie
name: J
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/29
shelves: to-read
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