en-US Mon, 15 Jul 2024 09:00:43 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 805047 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

What if the Allies had lost the Second World War ...? The Nazis have taken over New York - the Japanese control California. In a neutral buffer zone existing between the two states an underground author offers his own vision of reality, an alternative world that offers hope to the disenchanted.]]> 256 Philip K. Dick 0140285628 Andrea 4 3.68 1962
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2000/01/01
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 3118185
But in fact it is only just beginning. One day, Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles, enters his life and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly burned mercenary and she was a nun and a scribe who nursed him back to health in the famed monastery of Engelthal. As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Greenland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life �� and, finally, to love.

The Gargoyle is an extraordinary novel that will take you on a wild and original journey. It will have you believing in love, in miracles and in redemption.]]> 468 Andrew Davidson 1847671683 Andrea 3 recommended
You don't really know, in the end, whether you believe Marianne Engel's stories or think she's a complete psycho. I wanted to believe her as well as know she was psycho, because her stories were far too beautiful, both of undying love and tremendous suffering for that love.

Why is good fiction always about love (in the end)?]]> 4.00 2008
author: Andrew Davidson
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2023/12/29
shelves: recommended
review:
Our unnamed protagonist is severely burned in an accident, and while he is recuperating in hospital, is visited by the mysterious Marianne Engel, who claims to have been his lover in the early 14th century.

You don't really know, in the end, whether you believe Marianne Engel's stories or think she's a complete psycho. I wanted to believe her as well as know she was psycho, because her stories were far too beautiful, both of undying love and tremendous suffering for that love.

Why is good fiction always about love (in the end)?
]]> 18378 216 Daniel Keyes 1857989384 Andrea 4 library-books, recommended 4.38 1966
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at: 2011/08/02
date added: 2023/11/24
shelves: library-books, recommended
review:
Wonderful and sad. Charlie Gordon is given the chance to become smart, and in the progress reports he keeps (the format of the book is all about his reports) we live in his head.
]]> 9054748
Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, and Irene, haunted by a tragedy in her past, are trying to rebuild their life together. Following the outline of Gary's old dream, they're hauling logs out to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in health, to patch together the kind of cabin that drew them to Alaska in the first place.

Across the water on the mainland, Irene and Gary's grown daughter, Rhoda is starting her own life. She fantasizes about the perfect wedding day, whilst her betrothed, Jim the dentist, wonders about the possibility of an altogether different future.

From the author of the massively-acclaimed Legend of a Suicide, comes a devastating novel about a marriage, a couple blighted by past shadows and the weight of expectation, of themselves and of each other. Brilliantly drawn and fiercely honest in its depiction of love and disappointment, David Vann's first novel confirms him as one of America's most dazzling writers of fiction.]]> 293 David Vann 067091844X Andrea 4 highly-recommended
Caribou Island has a lot to live up to, then. It tells the story of a couple who are trying to build a new life on a remote island �� and quite shudderingly, starts with the re-telling of a suicide. We also follow the lives of their daughter and son, and the people they’re involved with.

I actually think my obsession with Legend of a Suicide has done Caribou Island a disservice. The absolute horror of the central event in Legend’s ‘Sukkwan Island�� novella made me expect something equally head-spinning, so I was reading the novel with a sort of morbid anticipation, ready to be thoroughly shocked. I’m not going to say if that does happen (the book isn’t even published till January), but I think I would have enjoyed it much, much more if I hadn’t retained such a clear picture of Legend in my head.

To me, David Vann is one of the best authors working right now. Just as I love Richard Yates�� work for his melancholic take on life in post-war America, David Vann looks to be the king of bleak Alaskan fiction. That’s quite the cheery and uplifting genre, isn’t it?]]> 3.61 2010
author: David Vann
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/17
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: highly-recommended
review:
Anyone who knows me knows my passionate affection for his first fiction Legend of a Suicide �� I’ve never recommended another book quite as much as I have that one. Seriously.

Caribou Island has a lot to live up to, then. It tells the story of a couple who are trying to build a new life on a remote island �� and quite shudderingly, starts with the re-telling of a suicide. We also follow the lives of their daughter and son, and the people they’re involved with.

I actually think my obsession with Legend of a Suicide has done Caribou Island a disservice. The absolute horror of the central event in Legend’s ‘Sukkwan Island�� novella made me expect something equally head-spinning, so I was reading the novel with a sort of morbid anticipation, ready to be thoroughly shocked. I’m not going to say if that does happen (the book isn’t even published till January), but I think I would have enjoyed it much, much more if I hadn’t retained such a clear picture of Legend in my head.

To me, David Vann is one of the best authors working right now. Just as I love Richard Yates�� work for his melancholic take on life in post-war America, David Vann looks to be the king of bleak Alaskan fiction. That’s quite the cheery and uplifting genre, isn’t it?
]]> 168646 ��
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
��
Slaughterhouse-Five , an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.��

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.�� George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.��

More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 215 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0440180295 Andrea 5 4.08 1969
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 1995/01/01
date added: 2023/06/04
shelves: favourites, highly-recommended
review:
This is the book that turned me on to Vonnegut. I loved the story and I think it was partly responsible for awakening an interest in politics and activism (although I'm not that active - I talk a good game!).
]]> 35469211
With his new partner in tow, McCoy uses his underworld network to lead the investigation but soon runs up against a secret society led by Glasgow's wealthiest family, the Dunlops.

McCoy's boss doesn't want him to investigate. The Dunlops seem untouchable. But McCoy has other ideas . . .

In a helter-skelter tale - winding from moneyed elite to hipster music groupies to the brutal gangs of the urban wasteland - Bloody January brings to life the dark underbelly of 1970s Glasgow and establishes Alan Parks as a new and exciting voice in Scottish noir.]]> 253 Alan Parks 1786891336 Andrea 4 3.78 2017
author: Alan Parks
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/02/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 42265672 336 Joyce Carol Oates 0008295484 Andrea 4 2.69 2018
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Andrea
average rating: 2.69
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/22
date added: 2023/02/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 59131324
When the sleepy English village of Green Bottom hosts its first literary festival, the good, the bad and the ugly of the book world descend upon its leafy lanes. But the villagers are not prepared for the peculiar habits, petty rivalries and unspeakable desires of the authors. And they are certainly not equipped to deal with Wilberforce Selfram, the ghoul-faced, ageing enfant terrible who wreaks havoc wherever he goes.

Sour Grapes is a hilarious satire on the literary world which takes no prisoners as it skewers authors, agents, publishers and reviewers alike.]]> 384 Dan Rhodes 1785632922 Andrea 4 3.64 2021
author: Dan Rhodes
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/31
date added: 2023/02/01
shelves:
review:
Dan's almost-cathartic (according to him, he's still mad) view of the publishing industry and the mad, 'literary' world that envelopes it. I know Dan through the publishing company he used to be signed to, so there's that. I can't be objective.
]]> 11345575 A comprehensive��collection of verses from more than��80 of the world's greatest poets, spanning from the thirteenth century to the present day��Including such leading luminaries as Burns, Keats, Tennyson, T. S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, and Carol Ann Duffy, this is a marvelous reminder of the poetry��many of us once knew��by heart, as well as a collection of some of the finest poems in the English��language. Arranged thematically in chapters that cover childhood and youth, nature, love and romance, home and travel, elegies, and more, and enlivened with Ana Sampson's crisply witty introductions and notes on the poets, this is the ultimate poetic compendium for language lovers everywhere.]]> 192 Ana Sampson 1843175940 Andrea 0 abandoned 3.70 2011
author: Ana Sampson
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/01
shelves: abandoned
review:

]]> 1156228 Island Landfalls, The Ebb-Tide, and The Wrecker. Driven to the South Seas by ill health, Stevenson could not close his eyes to the impact of colonialism, the "stirabout of epochs and races, barbarisms and civilisations, virtues and crimes." Setting his imaginative writings within the social and political contexts of his letters and essays from the South Seas, reveals the deepening and broadening of Stevenson's genius and his growing awareness of and anger at white exploitation. It was a society in which his love of adventure, his awareness of the extremes of human nature, and his fascination with good and evil, could find full release. Tales of the South Seas gathers together all of Stevenson's South Sea fiction and a selection of prose and letters provides not only a vivid portrait of a colorful and exotic world, but also a full and rounded picture of a superb writer at the height of his powers. Edited and introduced by Jenni Calder.]]> 264 Robert Louis Stevenson 0862416434 Andrea 0 abandoned 3.70 2001
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/01
shelves: abandoned
review:

]]> 21265230
Who is he really? And what could make someone change their mind about the human race. . . ?]]> 294 Matt Haig Andrea 4 library-books, recommended 4.04 2013
author: Matt Haig
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/28
date added: 2022/03/21
shelves: library-books, recommended
review:

]]> 43807359
Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He's just a regular 12-year-old, except he's not just smart, he's super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use...

Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local Sherrif. He's basically just walking the beat. But he's about to take on the biggest case of his career.

Back in the Institute's downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise 'just another day in paradise', Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape.

But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments - even the infamous Mrs Sigsby - suspect.

Thrilling, suspenseful, heartbreaking, The Institute is a stunning novel of childhood betrayed and hope regained.]]> 485 Stephen King 1529355397 Andrea 0 4.17 2019
author: Stephen King
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2021/09/13
date added: 2022/03/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 25983128
Set in contemporary Northern California, The Harder They Come explores the volatile connections between three damaged people—an aging ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran, his psychologically unstable son, and the son's paranoid, much older lover—as they careen towards an explosive confrontation.

On a vacation cruise to Central America with his wife, seventy-year-old Sten Stensen unflinchingly kills a gun-wielding robber menacing a busload of senior tourists. The reluctant hero is relieved to return home to Fort Bragg, California, after the ordeal—only to find that his delusional son, Adam, has spiraled out of control.

Adam has become involved with Sara Hovarty Jennings, a hardened member of the Sovereign Citizens�� Movement, right-wing anarchists who refuse to acknowledge the laws and regulations of the state, considering them to be false and non-applicable. Adam’s senior by some fifteen years, Sara becomes his protector and inamorata. As Adam's mental state fractures, he becomes increasingly schizophrenic—a breakdown that leads him to shoot two people in separate instances. On the run, he takes to the woods, spurring the biggest manhunt in California history.

As he explores a father’s legacy of violence and his powerlessness in relating to his equally violent son, T. C. Boyle offers unparalleled psychological insights into the American psyche. Inspired by a true story, The Harder They Come is a devastating and indelible novel from a modern master.]]> 384 T. Coraghessan Boyle 1408859939 Andrea 4 3.44 2015
author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/24
date added: 2021/11/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 33590076 “The first rule is that you don’t fall in love," he said��, "There are other rules too, but that is the main one. No falling in love. No staying in love. No daydreaming of love. If you stick to this you will just about be okay."

A love story across the ages - and for the ages - about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live.

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history--performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life.

So Tom moves back his to London, his old home, to become a high school history teacher--the perfect job for someone who has witnessed the city's history first hand. Better yet, a captivating French teacher at his school seems fascinated by him.

But the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present.

How to Stop Time is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.]]> 325 Matt Haig 1782118616 Andrea 4 3.94 2018
author: Matt Haig
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/25
date added: 2021/11/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 42923169
While T. C. Boyle is known as one of our greatest American novelists, he is also an acknowledged master of the short story. In The Relive Box, his first collection following two hugely influential collected volumes, Boyle’s crackling wit and thematic range combine with a penetrating social consciousness to produce his trademark “inventive and often crushingly comic�� (NPR) short fiction.

From the title story, featuring a so-called relive box that allows users to experience anew almost any moment from their past, to “The Five-Pound Burrito,�� the tale of a man aiming to build the biggest burrito in town, the twelve stories in this collection represent a whole new way of looking at the world from one of the best storytellers at work today.

The Relive Box is an exuberant, linguistically dazzling book from someone the Boston Globe has said is “such a good storyteller it will probably take, as in Alice Munro’s case, the Nobel Prize or retirement for us to realize what tremendous talent has lain right in front of our noses.”]]> 272 T. Coraghessan Boyle 1408890100 Andrea 5 3.64 2014
author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/04
date added: 2021/11/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 58314919 From bestselling and award-winning author T.C. Boyle, a lively, thought-provoking novel that asks us what it would be like if we could really talk to the animals

When animal behaviorist Guy Schermerhorn demonstrates on a TV game show that he has taught Sam, his juvenile chimp, to speak in sign language, Aimee Villard, an undergraduate at Guy's university, is so taken with the performance that she applies to become his assistant. A romantic and intellectual attachment soon morphs into an interspecies love triangle that pushes hard at the boundaries of consciousness and the question of what we know and how we know it.


What if it were possible to speak to the members of another species--to converse with them, not just give commands or coach them but to really have an exchange of ideas and a meeting of minds? Did apes have God? Did they have souls? Did they know about death and redemption? About prayer? The economy, rockets, space? Did they miss the jungle? Did they even know what the jungle was? Did they dream? Make wishes? Hope for the future?

These are some the questions T.C. Boyle asks in his wide-ranging and hilarious new novel Talk to Me, exploring what it means to be human, to communicate with another, and to truly know another person--or animal...]]> 296 T. Coraghessan Boyle 1526630001 Andrea 0 3.65 2021
author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2021/10/21
date added: 2021/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 56876299
How about everything.

This spectacular can't-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It's about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.

You won't put this story down, and you won't forget Billy.

From legendary storyteller and No. 1 bestseller Stephen King, whose 'restless imagination is a power that cannot be contained' (The New York Times Book Review), comes a thrilling new novel about a good guy in a bad job.]]> 432 Stephen King 1529365724 Andrea 5 4.14 2021
author: Stephen King
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/10/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 33641267 The cell rings twice, and then his old partner in his ear... 'I'm at the scene of what appears to be a murder-suicide... Come and take a look. Bring your sidekick with you.'

Bill Hodges, who now runs a two-person agency called Finders Keepers with partner Holly Gibney, is intrigued by the letter Z written with a marker at the scene of the crime.

As similar cases mount up, Hodges is stunned to discover the evidence points to Brady Hartsfield, the notorious 'Mercedes Killer'. It should be impossible: Brady is confined to a hospital room in a seemingly unresponsive state.

But Brady Hartsfield has lethal new powers. And he's planning revenge not just on Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.

The clocking is ticking in unexpected ways...

BRADY IS BACK
AND SO IS HODGES]]> 354 Stephen King Andrea 5 3.94 2016
author: Stephen King
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/21
date added: 2021/10/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 50606503
Celebrities could be heroes or villains; warriors or murderers; brilliant talents, or fraudsters with a flair for fibbing; trendsetters, wilful provocateurs, or tragic victims marketed as freaks of nature. Some craved fame while others had it forced upon them. A few found fame as small children, some had to wait decades to get their break. But uniting them all is the shared origin point: since the early 1700s, celebrity has been one of the most emphatic driving forces in popular culture; it is a lurid cousin to Ancient Greek ideas of glorious and notorious reputation, and its emergence helped to shape public attitudes to ethics, national identity, religious faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender roles.

In this ambitious history, that spans the Bronze Age to the coming of Hollywood's Golden Age, Greg Jenner assembles a vibrant cast of over 125 actors, singers, dancers, sportspeople, freaks, demigods, ruffians, and more, in search of celebrity's historical roots. He reveals why celebrity burst into life in the early eighteenth century, how it differs to ancient ideas of fame, the techniques through which it was acquired, how it was maintained, the effect it had on public tastes, and the psychological burden stardom could place on those in the glaring limelight. DEAD FAMOUS is a surprising, funny, and fascinating exploration of both a bygone age and how we came to inhabit our modern, fame obsessed society.]]> 389 Greg Jenner 0297869809 Andrea 5 3.91 2020
author: Greg Jenner
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/07
date added: 2021/09/09
shelves:
review:
Very entertainingly-written look at the history of celebrity, and why it isn't the same thing as fame.
]]> 52202 How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, Francis Wheen brilliantly laments the extraordinary rise of superstition, relativism and emotional hysteria. From Middle Eastern fundamentalism to the rise of lotteries, astrology to mysticism, poststructuralism to the Third Way, Wheen shows that there has been a pervasive erosion of Enlightenment values, which have been displaced by nonsense. And no country has a more vivid parade of the bogus and bizarre than the one founded to embody Enlightenment values: the USA. In turn comic, indignant, outraged, and just plain baffled by the idiocy of it all, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World is a masterful depiction of the absurdity of our times and a plea that we might just think a little more and believe a little less.]]> 354 Francis Wheen 0007140975 Andrea 0 to-read 3.64 2004
author: Francis Wheen
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2080673 * What is the value of art in our society?
* Are we in danger of ignoring our most precious commodity?

A brilliantly argued defence of the importance of creativity in our increasingly money-orientated society, The Gift is a modern classic. It is even more relevant now than when it originally appeared twenty years ago. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, beloved by artists, writers and thinkers, The Gift will transform the way you look at the world.]]> 345 Lewis Hyde 1841959936 Andrea 0 abandoned 3.60 1979
author: Lewis Hyde
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/09/16
shelves: abandoned
review:

]]> 5941054
Born an old man, Benjamin Button lived a very curious life, backwards. When Benjamin Button's father arrives at hospital he is surprised and ashamed to find his new baby boy is a weathered, aged man, to all appearances no younger than seventy years old. As time goes by, young Benjamin comes to no longer require a cane, his hair ceases to be grey, his limbs become less frail, his wrinkles less deep, but still the world around him fails to come to terms with his oddness, as he ages towards infancy and beyond...]]> 128 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0141039345 Andrea 3 library-books 3.49 2010
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/05/03
date added: 2019/08/02
shelves: library-books
review:

]]> 7987557 346 Frances Garrood 0230736262 Andrea 3 library-books 4.00 2008
author: Frances Garrood
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/05/15
shelves: library-books
review:

]]> 224787 164 Stefan Zweig 1901285545 Andrea 0 wishlist 4.11 1922
author: Stefan Zweig
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/08
shelves: wishlist
review:

]]> 35849599 A Place Called Winter comes a new novel of boyhood, coming of age, and the confusions of desire and reality. For all readers of Ian McEwan's Atonement or L P Hartley's The Go-Between.

1970s Weston-Super-Mare and ten-year-old oddball Eustace, an only child, has life transformed by his mother's quixotic decision to sign him up for cello lessons. Music-making brings release for a boy who is discovering he is an emotional volcano. He laps up lessons from his young teacher, not noticing how her brand of glamour is casting a damaging spell over his frustrated and controlling mother.

When he is enrolled in holiday courses in the Scottish borders, lessons in love, rejection, and humility are added to daily practice.

Drawing in part on his own boyhood, Patrick Gale's new novel explores a collision between childish hero worship and extremely messy adult love lives.]]> 310 Patrick Gale Andrea 4 4.07 2018
author: Patrick Gale
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/23
date added: 2018/11/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 29561799 336 Nigel Williams 1472118588 Andrea 3 3.08 2015
author: Nigel Williams
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/11/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 10374638 Kabul Beauty School comes a fiction debut as compelling as real life: the story of a remarkable coffee shop in the heart of Afghanistan, and the men and women who meet there �� thrown together by circumstance, bonded by secrets, and united in an extraordinary friendship.
After hard luck and some bad choices, Sunny has finally found a place to call home �� it just happens to be in the middle of a war zone.
The thirty-eight-year-old American’s pride and joy is the Kabul Coffee House, where she brings hospitality to the expatriates, misfits, missionaries, and mercenaries who stroll through its doors. She’s especially grateful that the busy days allow her to forget Tommy, the love of her life, who left her in pursuit of money and adventure.
Working alongside Sunny is the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son �� who, unbeknownst to her, is facing his own religious doubts. Into the café come Isabel, a British journalist on the trail of a risky story; Jack, who left his family back home in Michigan to earn “danger pay�� as a consultant; and Candace, a wealthy and well-connected American whose desire to help threatens to cloud her judgment.
When Yazmina, a young Afghan from a remote village, is kidnapped and left on a city street pregnant and alone, Sunny welcomes her into the café and gives her a home �� but Yazmina hides a secret that could put all their lives in jeopardy.
As this group of men and women discover that there’s more to one another than meets the eye, they’ll form an unlikely friendship that will change not only their own lives but the lives of an entire country.
Brimming with Deborah Rodriguez’s remarkable gift for depicting the nuances of life in Kabul, and filled with vibrant characters that readers will truly care about, A Cup of Friendship is the best kind of fiction—full of heart yet smart and thought-provoking.]]> 317 Deborah Rodriguez 174275001X Andrea 2
However, on reading it, I felt as though there was character development and a back story with which I should already be familiar, as though it was a sequel.

So I couldn't really get into it. I've read worse, I've read better.]]> 3.60 2011
author: Deborah Rodriguez
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2018/11/03
shelves:
review:
I liked the premise - five women whose stories intersect at a little coffee shop.

However, on reading it, I felt as though there was character development and a back story with which I should already be familiar, as though it was a sequel.

So I couldn't really get into it. I've read worse, I've read better.
]]> 2220037 The meadows were green, and so was the rising wheat which had been sown, but which neither had nor would receive any further care. Such arable fields as had not been sown, but where the last stubble had been ploughed up, were overrun with couch-grass, and where the short stubble had not been ploughed, the weeds hid it.

Jefferies�� novel can be seen as an early example of post-apocalyptic fiction. After some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life.

The first part, The Relapse into Barbarism, is the account by some later historian of the fall of civilisation and its consequences, with a loving description of nature reclaiming England. The second part, Wild England, is an adventure set many years later in the wild landscape and society.

The book is not without its flaws but is redeemed by the quality of the writing, particularly the unnervingly prophetic descriptions of the post-apocalyptic city and countryside.
(Summary by Ruth Golding and Wikipedia)]]> 232 Richard Jefferies 142647461X Andrea 4 3.04 1885
author: Richard Jefferies
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.04
book published: 1885
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/08/21
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]]> 18633333
Fresh from university, Emma Woodhouse arrives home in Norfolk ready to embark on adult life with a splash. Not only has her sister, Isabella, been whisked away on amotorbike to London, but her astute governess, Miss Taylor is at a loose end watching as Mr. Woodhouse worries about his girls. Someone is needed to rule the roost and young Emma is more than happy to oblige.

At the helm of her own dinner parties, and often found either rearranging the furniture at the family home of Hartfield, or instructing her new protégée, Harriet Smith, Emma is in
charge. You don’t have to be in London to go to parties, find amusement or make trouble.

Not if you’re Emma, the very big fish in the rather small pond.

But for someone who knows everything, Emma doesn’t know her own heart. And there is only one person who can play with Emma’s indestructible confidence, her friend and inscrutable neighbour George Knightly �� this time has Emma finally met her match?

Ever alive to the social comedy of village life, beloved author Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma is the busybody we all know and love, and a true modern delight.]]> 361 Alexander McCall Smith 0007553854 Andrea 3 3.04 2014
author: Alexander McCall Smith
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 815399 371 Smiley Jane Andrea 4 3.90 1991
author: Smiley Jane
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/07/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 25202313
When a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere. But unforeseen dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain��

Five thousand years later, their progeny �� seven distinct races now three billion strong �� embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown, to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is at once extraordinary and eerily recognizable. He explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.]]> 867 Neal Stephenson 0008132518 Andrea 4 3.99 2015
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/07/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 18633327
Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master's degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won't discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane's fortieth birthday fast approaches.

Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip's friend, neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy, reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . . And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.]]> 518 Curtis Sittenfeld 0007486294 Andrea 4 3.61 2016
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 30317957
Their inheritance turned to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment, but also �� as the effects of the downturn start to hit �� the challenge of sheer survival.

Recently affluent Avery is petulant that she can’t buy olive oil, while her sister Florence is forced to absorb strays into her increasingly cramped household. As their father Carter fumes at having to care for his demented stepmother now that a nursing home is too expensive, his sister Nollie, an expat author, returns from abroad at 73 to a country that’s unrecognizable.

Perhaps only Florence’s oddball teenage son Willing, an economics autodidact, can save this formerly august American family from the streets.

This is not science fiction.

This is a frightening, fascinating, scabrously funny glimpse into the decline that may await the United States all too soon, from the pen of perhaps the most consistently perceptive and topical author of our times.]]> 402 Lionel Shriver 0007560745 Andrea 4 3.76 2016
author: Lionel Shriver
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 23694795
Morris is livid �� not just because Rothstein has stopped writing but because he has made the nonconformist Jimmy sell out for a career in advertising. Morris breaks into Rothstein’s house and empties his safe of cash. But the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel �� and Morris is prepared to kill for them. Later, he goes to jail for another crime but not before he has hidden the spoils.

2009: Meet young Pete Saubers, whose father was brutally injured by a stolen Mercedes while he was queuing at a job fair. When Pete discovers a buried trunk containing the money and notebooks, he realises he has the means to rescue his family from poverty. If he can keep it secret��

2014: Morris is up for parole. And he’s hell-bent on recovering his treasure. That’s when retired detective Bill Hodges �� who has set up a company called ‘Finders Keepers�� �� is asked to investigate. Together with colleagues Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson, Hodges must rescue Pete from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris��

Not since Misery has King written with such visceral power about a reader with such a dangerous obsession. Finders Keepers is spectacular suspense, and it is also King writing about how literature shapes a life �� for good, for bad, for ever.

Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 371 Stephen King 1473698995 Andrea 5 4.02 2015
author: Stephen King
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/04/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 21070859 Expo 58 288 Jonathan Coe 0241966906 Andrea 4 3.61 2011
author: Jonathan Coe
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/02/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 10929763 351 Lucy Worsley 0571259529 Andrea 3 3.84 2011
author: Lucy Worsley
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/02/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 863005 59 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0860682013 Andrea 2 library-books 4.08 1892
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1892
rating: 2
read at: 2009/11/21
date added: 2018/02/24
shelves: library-books
review:

]]> 1331653 For Dr. Alfred Jones, life is a quiet mixture of civil service at the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence and marriage to Mary—an ambitious, no-nonsense financier. But a strange turn of fate from an unexpected direction forces Jones to upend his existence and spend all of his time in pursuit of another man’s ludicrous dream. Can there be salmon in the Yemen? Science says no. But if resources are limitless and the visionary is inspired, maybe salmon fishing in the Yemen isn’t impossible. Then again, maybe nothing is.]]> 329 Paul Torday Andrea 0 3.52 2007
author: Paul Torday
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 33551985
Caroline, having shredded a wardrobe-full of Henry’s suits, has gone after them.

Craig and Lesley have dropped over briefly from next door to catch up on the fallout from Henry and Caroline’s all-night row.

And Janice, Caroline’s sister, is staying for the weekend to look after the girls because Janice is the sensible one. A microbiologist with a job she loves, a fervent belief in the beauty of the scientific method and a determination to make a solo life after her divorce from Alec.

Then Craig returns through the bedroom window expecting a tryst with Caroline and finds Janice in her bed, Lesley storms in with a jealous heart and a mouthful of threats, Henry, Caroline and Martha arrive back from the airport in separate taxis—and let’s not even get started on Brayden the pizza guy.

Janice can cope with all that. But when Alec knocks on the door things suddenly get complicated.

Harnessing the exquisite timing of the great comedies to the narrative power and emotional intelligence for which she is famous, Toni Jordan brings all her wit, wisdom and flair to this brilliant, hilarious novel.]]> 288 Toni Jordan 1760293814 Andrea 3 library-books 2.90 2016
author: Toni Jordan
name: Andrea
average rating: 2.90
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2018/01/17
date added: 2018/01/18
shelves: library-books
review:

]]> 7856358
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.]]> 444 Kathryn Stockett 0141039280 Andrea 0 4.39 2009
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/11/29
shelves:
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]]> 29790540
Moving freely between London and New York, between photojournalism and fashion photography, and between the men who love her on complicated terms, Amory establishes her reputation as a risk taker and a passionate life traveler. Her hunger for experience draws her to the decadence of Weimar-era Berlin and the violence of London's Blackshirt riots, to the Rhineland with Allied troops and into the political tangle of war-torn Vietnam. During her ambitious career, the seminal moments of the twentieth century will become the unforgettable moments of her own biography as well.

In Sweet Caress, Amory Clay comes wondrously to life, her vibrant personality enveloping the reader from the start. And, running through the novel, her photographs over the decades allow us to experience this vast story not only with Amory's voice but with her vision. William Boyd's Sweet Caress captures an entire lifetime unforgettably within its pages. It captivates.]]> 450 William Boyd 1408867990 Andrea 4 3.86 2015
author: William Boyd
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/05/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 21213753 296 Stephan Pastis 1406347876 Andrea 3 3.71 2013
author: Stephan Pastis
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/05/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 18627404 256 Robert Williams 0571308171 Andrea 3 3.34 2014
author: Robert Williams
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/05/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 25053272 In The Establishment Owen Jones, author of the international bestseller Chavs, offers a biting critique of the British Establishment and a passionate plea for democracy

Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Exposing the revolving doors that link these worlds, and the vested interests that bind them together, Jones shows how, in claiming to work on our behalf, the people at the top are doing precisely the opposite. In fact, they represent the biggest threat to our democracy today - and it is time they were challenged.

Owen Jones may have the face of a baby and the voice of George Formby but he is our generation's Orwell and we must cherish him (Russell Brand)

This is the most important book on the real politics of the UK in my lifetime, and the only one you will ever need to read. You will be enlightened and angry (Irvine Welsh)

Owen Jones displays a powerful combination of cool analysis and fiery anger in this dissection of the profoundly and sickeningly corrupt state that is present-day Britain. He is a fine writer, and this is a truly necessary book (Philip Pullman)]]> 359 Owen Jones 0141974990 Andrea 4 4.06 2014
author: Owen Jones
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 25314496
Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain or our heart, yet we know very little about how it works. In Gut, Giulia Enders shows that rather than the utilitarian and �� let’s be honest �� somewhat embarrassing body part we imagine it to be, it is one of the most complex, important, and even miraculous parts of our anatomy. And scientists are only just discovering quite how much it has to offer; new research shows that gut bacteria can play a role in everything from obesity and allergies to Alzheimer’s.
Beginning with the personal experience of illness that inspired her research, and going on to explain everything from the basics of nutrient absorption to the latest science linking bowel bacteria with depression, Enders has written an entertaining, informative health handbook. Gut definitely shows that we can all benefit from getting to know the wondrous world of our inner workings.

In this charming book, young scientist Giulia Enders takes us on a fascinating tour of our insides. Her message is simple �� if we treat our gut well, it will treat us well in return. But how do we do that? And why do we need to? Find out in this surprising, and surprisingly funny, exploration of the least understood of our organs.]]> 262 Giulia Enders 1922247960 Andrea 4 4.03 2014
author: Giulia Enders
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/03/21
shelves:
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]]> 574440 The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century

"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't-which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance. The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is bestselling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.

Pollan has divided The Omnivore's Dilemma into three parts, one for each of the food chains that sustain us: industrialized food, alternative or "organic" food, and food people obtain by dint of their own hunting, gathering, or gardening. Pollan follows each food chain literally from the ground up to the table, emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the species we depend on. He concludes each section by sitting down to a meal--at McDonald's, at home with his family sharing a dinner from Whole Foods, and in a revolutionary "beyond organic" farm in Virginia. For each meal he traces the provenance of everything consumed, revealing the hidden components we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods reflects our environmental and biological inheritance.

We are indeed what we eat-and what we eat remakes the world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the natural world. The Omnivore's Dilemma is a long-overdue book and one that will become known for bringing a completely fresh perspective to a question as ordinary and yet momentous as What shall we have for dinner?]]> 464 Michael Pollan 0747586837 Andrea 0 wishlist 4.17 2006
author: Michael Pollan
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/03/07
shelves: wishlist
review:

]]> 17832311 A BIG NOVEL ABOUT A SMALL TOWN��

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford appears to be an English idyll—with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey—but behind its charming façade lies a town at war. The rich clash with the poor, teenagers battle their parents, wives contend with their husbands, and teachers struggle with their pupils. Pagford is far from what it seems.

The empty seat Barry leaves on the town council becomes the catalyst for the fiercest conflict the town has ever seen. The election to fill his seat is fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations. Who will triumph in this battle of wills?

Blackly comic, thought-provoking, and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.]]> 568 J.K. Rowling 0751552860 Andrea 4 library-books, recommended 3.63 2012
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/09/06
date added: 2017/03/07
shelves: library-books, recommended
review:
I wanted to like it, so I'm glad it didn't disappoint. Not much I can say without spoiling the plot, though!
]]> 23507203 BOOKS 464 Elton Ben 0552770914 Andrea 5 recommended 3.91 2014
author: Elton Ben
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2017/01/31
date added: 2017/02/06
shelves: recommended
review:

]]> 29428593 In the Unlikely Event 400 Judy Blume 1509801677 Andrea 5 3.69 2015
author: Judy Blume
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2016/10/01
date added: 2016/11/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 20895196
Retired homicide detective Bill Hodges is haunted by the few cases he left open, and by one in particular: in the pre-dawn hours, hundreds of desperate unemployed people were lined up for a spot at a job fair in a distressed Midwestern city. Without warning, a lone driver ploughed through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes. Eight people were killed, fifteen wounded. The killer escaped.

Months later, on the other side of the city, Bill Hodges gets a taunting letter in the mail, from a man claiming to be the perpetrator. Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on hunting him down.

Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. And he is preparing to kill again.

Hodges, with a couple of misfit friends, must apprehend the killer in this high-stakes race against time. Because Brady's next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim hundreds, even thousands.

Mr Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.]]> 407 Stephen King 1444788620 Andrea 5 3.96 2014
author: Stephen King
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2016/09/01
date added: 2016/11/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 817661 Even Kitty, Esme's beloved sister, is beginning to lose patience. Something will have to be done.
Years later, in the same city, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released.
Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox and the one person who should know more, her grandmother Kitty, is too adrift in her own memories to answer Iris's questions. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family's history?

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is a stunning depiction of a life stolen and reclaimed: an outstanding achievement from one of our finest novelists.]]> 245 Maggie O'Farrell 0755308433 Andrea 4 4.05 2006
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2016/10/01
date added: 2016/11/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 23415324 281 Matthew Quick 1447247485 Andrea 4 3.53 2014
author: Matthew Quick
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2016/10/01
date added: 2016/11/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 24831147 To Kill a Mockingbird.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch - 'Scout' - returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past - a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience.

Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor and effortless precision - a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to an American classic.]]> 278 Harper Lee 1785150286 Andrea 3 3.27 2015
author: Harper Lee
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2016/09/01
date added: 2016/11/13
shelves:
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]]> 4467823 Revelation, Sansom's newest book in the series, the year is 1543 and King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, a woman sympathetic to reform, whom he wants for his sixth wife- much to the dismay of Archbishop Cranmer and the embattled Protestant faction at court. Meanwhile, Matthew Shardlake is working to defend a teenage boy, a religious fanatic who is being held in the infamous Bedlam hospital for the insane. When an old friend of Shardlake's is murdered, he vows to bring the killer to justice. His search leads him back to Bedlam but also to Catherine Parr-and the dark prophecies of the Book of Revelation. As Bishop Bonner prepares to purge London of Protestants, Shardlake, with his assistant Jack Barak, uncovers a series of horrific murders that shake them all to the core. Revelation-the strongest novel in the series to date-is sure to delight Sansom's many fans and bring him to a wider audience.]]> 549 C.J. Sansom 0230736238 Andrea 3 bookcrossing 4.34 2008
author: C.J. Sansom
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2009/06/22
date added: 2016/10/25
shelves: bookcrossing
review:

]]> 15926207 272 Sue Townsend 0241958407 Andrea 4 3.59 1997
author: Sue Townsend
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/09/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 1182702 191 Sue Townsend 1569471177 Andrea 0 3.58 1997
author: Sue Townsend
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2016/09/15
date added: 2016/09/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 24512951
Nora Webster is the heartbreaking new novel from one of the greatest novelists writing today.

It is the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kind, but she is trapped by her circumstances, and waiting for any chance which will lift her beyond them.

Slowly, through the gift of music and the power of friendship, she finds a glimmer of hope and a way of starting again. As the dynamic of the family changes, she seems both fiercely self-possessed but also a figure of great moral ambiguity, making her one of the most memorable heroines in contemporary fiction.

The portrait that is painted in the years that follow is harrowing, piercingly insightful, always tender and deeply true. Colm Tóibín's Nora is a character as resonant as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary and Nora Webster is a novel that illuminates our own lives in a way that is rare in literature. Its humanity and compassion forge an unforgettable reading experience.]]> 321 Colm Tóibín 0141041757 Andrea 0 3.67 2014
author: Colm Tóibín
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2016/09/15
date added: 2016/09/15
shelves:
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]]> 18775247
Months later, an ex-cop named Bill Hodges, still haunted by the unsolved crime, contemplates suicide. When he gets a crazed letter from "the perk," claiming credit for the murders, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, fearing another even more diabolical attack and hell-bent on preventing it.

Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of eccentric and mismatched allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady's next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.

Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.
--front flap]]> 437 Stephen King 1476754454 Andrea 4 4.01 2014
author: Stephen King
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/09/15
shelves:
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]]> 20892558
Summer, 1546. King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councilors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government. As heretics are hunted across London, and radical Protestants are burned at the stake, the Catholic party focuses its attack on Henry's sixth wife - and Matthew Shardlake's old mentor - Queen Catherine Parr.

Shardlake, still haunted by his narrow escape from death the year before, steps into action when the beleaguered and desperate Queen summons him to Whitehall Palace to help her recover a dangerous manuscript. The Queen has authored a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, so radically Protestant that if it came to the King's attention it could bring both her and her sympathizers crashing down. Although the secret book was kept hidden inside a locked chest in the Queen's private chamber, it has inexplicably vanished. Only one page has been recovered - clutched in the hand of a murdered London printer.

Shardlake's investigations take him on a trail that begins among the backstreet printshops of London, but leads him and his trusty assistant Jack Barak into the dark and labyrinthine world of court politics, a world Shardlake swore never to enter again. In this crucible of power and ambition, Protestant friends can be as dangerous as Catholic enemies, and those with shifting allegiances can be the most dangerous of all.

©2015 C.J. Sansom (P)2015 Hachette Audio]]> 656 C.J. Sansom 0316254967 Andrea 5 4.36 2014
author: C.J. Sansom
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2016/08/09
date added: 2016/08/15
shelves:
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]]> 7716390 چرا برابری به سود همگان است 368 Richard G. Wilkinson 0141032367 Andrea 0 4.11 2009
author: Richard G. Wilkinson
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2015/11/15
date added: 2016/08/15
shelves:
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]]> 25179757
Clarke's been investigating the death of a senior lawyer whose body was found along with a threatening note. On the other side of Edinburgh, Big Ger Cafferty - Rebus's long-time nemesis - has received an identical note and a bullet through his window.
Now it's up to Clarke and Rebus to connect the dots and stop a killer.

Even Dogs in the Wild brings back Ian Rankin's greatest characters in a story exploring the darkest corners of our instincts and desires.]]> 353 Ian Rankin Andrea 4 4.19 2015
author: Ian Rankin
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/07/15
date added: 2016/08/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 3300399 265 Richard Matheson 0765361183 Andrea 0 3.87 1978
author: Richard Matheson
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/06/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 12477 In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.

An alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.]]> 336 Truman Capote 0141182571 Andrea 0 wishlist 4.17 1966
author: Truman Capote
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/06/03
shelves: wishlist
review:

]]> 3891793
This true story has all the hallmarks of a classic gripping murder mystery. A body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets and a whole family of suspects - it is the original Victorian whodunnit.

~from the back cover]]> 373 Kate Summerscale 0747596484 Andrea 3
I actually felt a bit creeped out at the end when she was talking about the stereoscope images.]]> 3.37 2008
author: Kate Summerscale
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2009/06/11
date added: 2016/06/03
shelves:
review:
True crime is great, and examining popular culture at the time is even better!

I actually felt a bit creeped out at the end when she was talking about the stereoscope images.
]]> 12510082 MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOUR

Katniss Everdeen survived the hunger games. Now the Capitol wants revenge.


Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are still alive. Katniss should be relieved, but now there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol -- a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

As the nation watches Katniss and Peeta, the stakes are higher than ever. One false move and the consequences will be unimaginable.



Cover image by Tim O'Brien]]> 472 Suzanne Collins Andrea 4 recommended 4.37 2009
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2012/03/21
date added: 2016/05/05
shelves: recommended
review:

]]> 3437 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.]]> 272 Mark Haddon 0099450259 Andrea 4 recommended
I got this free from Waterstone's, they had spare copies left over from World Book Night.]]> 3.87 2003
author: Mark Haddon
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2011/06/21
date added: 2016/04/25
shelves: recommended
review:
There's no secret that Christopher Boone is autistic, pretty much from page one. The fact that it was set in Swindon was a bonus. It was sad, touching, funny.

I got this free from Waterstone's, they had spare copies left over from World Book Night.
]]> 19375689
Would-be novelist Fleur Talbot works for the snooty, irascible Sir Quentin Oliver at the Autobiographical Association, whose members are all at work on their memoirs. When her employer gets his hands on Fleur's novel-in-progress, mayhem ensues when its scenes begin coming true.

Generating hilarious turns of phrase and larger-than-life characters (especially Sir Quentin's batty mother), Spark's inimitable style make this literary joyride thoroughly appealing.]]> 169 Muriel Spark Andrea 3 3.86 1981
author: Muriel Spark
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1981
rating: 3
read at: 2016/03/22
date added: 2016/03/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 15853638 356 Ian Rankin 1409144720 Andrea 4 library-books 4.01 2012
author: Ian Rankin
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/08/05
date added: 2016/02/29
shelves: library-books
review:

]]> 553476 372 A.M. Homes 1862079331 Andrea 3 recommended
Now I want doughnuts!]]> 3.51 2006
author: A.M. Homes
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2012/01/24
date added: 2016/02/23
shelves: recommended
review:
I only bought this because I enjoyed Jack. I didn't read the blurb on the back before I started, and it was a delight to read.

Now I want doughnuts!
]]> 3106983
The intelligent and outspoken child of radical Marxists, and the great-grandaughter of Iran's last emperor, Satrapi bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. This is a beautiful and intimate story full of tragedy and humour - raw, honest and incredibly illuminating.]]> 344 Marjane Satrapi 009952399X Andrea 5 4.40 2007
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2014/06/11
date added: 2016/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 883718 225 Niccolò Ammaniti 184195442X Andrea 4 recommended 3.66 2001
author: Niccolò Ammaniti
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2009/08/04
date added: 2015/09/18
shelves: recommended
review:
This is the second Ammaniti book I've read, and it's another good'un. He seems to excel at examining the darker side of human nature. Definitely worth reading if you like novels that aren't all fluffy bunnies and rainbows.
]]> 12512617 MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOUR

"If we burn
you burn with us"


Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But she's still not safe. A revolution is unfolding, and everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans -- everyone except Katniss.

And yet she must play the most vital part in the final battle. Katniss must become their Mockingjay -- the symbol of rebellion -- no matter what the personal cost.



Cover image by Tim O'Brien]]> 458 Suzanne Collins 1407132105 Andrea 4 recommended 4.05 2010
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2012/03/22
date added: 2015/09/11
shelves: recommended
review:

]]> 12217119 544 Louis de Bernières 0099553996 Andrea 0 library-books, abandoned 4.09 1994
author: Louis de Bernières
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/08/22
shelves: library-books, abandoned
review:

]]> 23363874 I want life. I want to read it and write it and feel it and live it. I want, for as much of the time as possible in this blink-of-an-eye existence we have, to feel all that can be felt. I hate depression. I am scared of it. Terrified, in fact. But at the same time, it has made me who I am. And if - for me - it is the price of feeling life, it's a price always worth paying.

Reasons to Stay Alive is about making the most of your time on earth. In the western world the suicide rate is highest amongst men under the age of 35. Matt Haig could have added to that statistic when, aged 24, he found himself staring at a cliff-edge about to jump off. This is the story of why he didn't, how he recovered and learned to live with anxiety and depression. It's also an upbeat, joyous and very funny exploration of how to live better, love better, read better and feel more.]]> 266 Matt Haig 1782115080 Andrea 4 to-read 4.14 2015
author: Matt Haig
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2015/07/04
date added: 2015/07/04
shelves: to-read
review:
A really eye-opening read. I lost a friend recently to depression, so it has been especially poignant for me.
]]> 161037 560 Alasdair Gray 184195120X Andrea 0 4.12 1981
author: Alasdair Gray
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 21412400 No One Belongs Here More Than You, a spectacular debut novel that is so heartbreaking, so dirty, so tender, so funny--so Miranda July--readers will be blown away.

Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people's babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defense non-profit where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one.

When Cheryl's bosses ask if their twenty-one-year-old daughter Clee can move into her house for a little while, Cheryl's eccentrically-ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee--the selfish, cruel blond bombshell--who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, provides her the love of a lifetime.

Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual fantasies and fierce maternal love, Miranda July's first novel confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic and important voice today, and a writer for all time. The First Bad Man is dazzling, disorienting, and unforgettable.]]> 288 Miranda July 1439172560 Andrea 0 3.67 2015
author: Miranda July
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 4046 192 Richard Holloway 0862419093 Andrea 0 3.92 2000
author: Richard Holloway
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/06/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 9967578
The play is a journey through human consciousness, and through time. As Emily tells you about her life, we are introduced to a host of striking characters. We see sharp vignettes of a period in Singapore which is no longer familiar. And when we have heard her story, we ask: Who is Emily? Is she a nurturer or a destroyer, a domestic tyrant or a frightened child? Is she a traditional Asian wife, or Singapore's first truly liberated lady? Can we really understand her? Does she understand herself?

The play leaves us fascinated. It enlarges our experience of life.

Since its award-winning appearance in 1985, Emily of Emerald Hill has become an icon of the English-language theatre in Singapore and Malaysia. Many different actresses have played the role, and it has been seen by more people than any other locally-written play.]]> 0 Stella Kon 0333516583 Andrea 3 3.53 1989
author: Stella Kon
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2012/04/01
date added: 2015/05/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 9411147 454 Jay Parini 184767979X Andrea 3 3.50 2010
author: Jay Parini
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/14
date added: 2015/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 1251964 Rare book 405 James Meek 1841957658 Andrea 3 3.70 2003
author: James Meek
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/07
date added: 2015/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 5598045
But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.

Prepare yourself. From this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.]]> 501 Sarah Waters 1844086011 Andrea 3 3.69 2009
author: Sarah Waters
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2015/04/05
date added: 2015/04/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 25150035 J.M. Coetzee

Academy Street is the heart-breaking and evocative story of one woman’s life spanning six decades. Tess’s childhood in 1940’s rural Ireland is defined by the sudden death of her mother. Later, in New York, she encounters the ferocious power and calamity of love, and the effects of catastrophic fate. The novel resonates with the rhythms of memory and home as well as those of America’s greatest city.

This is an intimate story about unexpected gifts and unbearable losses, and the perpetual ache for belonging. It is exquisitely written and profoundly moving.]]> 192 Mary Costello 1782114203 Andrea 2 3.73 2014
author: Mary Costello
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2015/03/19
date added: 2015/03/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 77544 328 Alice Sebold 0316666343 Andrea 4 3.67 2002
author: Alice Sebold
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2004/01/01
date added: 2015/03/24
shelves:
review:
My friend Kristen gave me this book. I'd have given it five stars if not for that ONE scene near the end between the boy she liked and the girl who could feel spirits. If you've read it, you know what scene I mean.
]]> 199366 Bill McKibben 0747565430 Andrea 4 recommended 4.50 2003
author: Bill McKibben
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2015/03/15
date added: 2015/03/15
shelves: recommended
review:
A really good meditation on what it means to be human, in the face of all the biotechnological advancement in our society. Germline manipulation is all the more real now, we do need to consider if meddling with our genes is truly what we want.
]]> 259028 447 Erik Larson 0375725601 Andrea 5 recommended 3.97 2003
author: Erik Larson
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2015/03/09
shelves: recommended
review:
This was a great book! I've always enjoyed peering into the minds of serial killers (yeah...) and his way of telling the story, interweaving it with the World's Fair in Chicago really put it into context. I loved the trivia I picked up, too.
]]> 951121 278 Andrew O'Hagan 0571216048 Andrea 3 3.44 2006
author: Andrew O'Hagan
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2015/03/01
date added: 2015/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X Andrea 0 to-read 3.56 2015
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 22668848
In crystalline, chiseled yet graceful prose, Aquarium takes us into the heart of a brave young girl whose longing for love and capacity for forgiveness transforms the damaged people around her.]]> 266 David Vann 080212352X Andrea 0 to-read 3.71 2015
author: David Vann
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8733603 The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour.]]> 602 Julie Orringer 0670914584 Andrea 3 4.24 2010
author: Julie Orringer
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2015/02/21
date added: 2015/02/23
shelves:
review:
The story of a young Hungarian man and his family from the pre-WWII period, when he travels to Paris to study architecture, through to the privations of WWII and beyond. It's of interest to me because I know an older gentleman who fled Hungary after WWII, during the Commnunist occupation.
]]> 6359544
"The Greatest Show on Earth" is a stunning counter-attack on creationists, followers of "Intelligent Design" and all those who still question evolution as scientific fact. In this brilliant tour de force, Richard Dawkins pulls together the incontrovertible evidence that underpins it: from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics.

"The Greatest Show on Earth" comes at a critical time as systematic opposition to the fact of evolution flourishes as never before in many schools worldwide. Dawkins wields a devastating argument against this ignorance whilst sharing with us his palpable love of science and the natural world. Written with elegance, wit and passion, it is hard-hitting, absorbing and totally convincing.]]> 470 Richard Dawkins 1416594787 Andrea 4 recommended 4.24 2009
author: Richard Dawkins
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2015/01/18
date added: 2015/01/19
shelves: recommended
review:
Richard Dawkins is like the grumpy old man to Alice Roberts' fresh passion. It was good to read their books back to back.
]]> 23355265
Bringing together the latest scientific discoveries, Professor Alice Roberts illustrates that evolution has made something which is far from perfect. Our bodies are a quirky mix of new and old, with strokes of genius alongside glitches and imperfections which are all inherited from distant ancestors. Our development and evolutionary past explains why, as embryos, we have what look like gills, and as adults we suffer from back pain.

This is a tale of discovery, not only exploring why and how we have developed as we have, but also looking at the history of our anatomical understanding. It combines the remarkable skills and qualifications Alice Roberts has as a doctor, anatomist, osteoarchaeologist and writer. Above all, she has a rare ability to make science accessible, relevant and interesting to mainstream audiences and readers.]]> 392 Alice Roberts 184866477X Andrea 4 highly-recommended Very interesting! 4.24 2014
author: Alice Roberts
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/12/23
date added: 2015/01/06
shelves: highly-recommended
review:
Very interesting!
]]> 16103840
Katherine Parr, widowed for the second time aged thirty-one, is obliged to return to court but, suspicious of the ageing king and those who surround him, she does so with reluctance. Nevertheless, when she finds herself caught up in a passionate affair with the dashing and seductive Thomas Seymour, she believes she might finally be able to marry for love. But her presence at court has attracted the attentions of another . . .

Captivated by her honesty and intelligence, Henry Tudor has his own plans for Katherine and no one is in the position to refuse a proposal from the king. So with her charismatic lover dispatched to the continent, Katherine must accept the hand of the ailing egotistical monarch and become Henry's sixth wife - and yet she has still not quite given up on love.]]> 452 Elizabeth Fremantle 0718177061 Andrea 3 real-readers 3.74 2012
author: Elizabeth Fremantle
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/10/01
date added: 2014/12/17
shelves: real-readers
review:

]]> 1696879
Tank Girl and Booga have launched an all-out assault on the town of Chankers, starting with the church. But what prompted this attack? Could it have something to do with Booga’s nightmare vacation there years ago? Well whaddyou think?

Destined to become a literary classic �� y’know, like Watership Down or something �� and a mainstay of high school syllabuses, this is Tank Girl as you’ve never experienced her before: in attractively justified eight point serif.]]> 232 Alan C. Martin 1845764846 Andrea 3 4.09 2008
author: Alan C. Martin
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/08
date added: 2014/12/08
shelves:
review:
For fans only... otherwise you'll just think Alan Martin's a complete lunatic.
]]> 9331
In a triumph of magic realism, Allende constructs a spirit-ridden world and fills it with colorful and all-too-human inhabitants. The Trueba family’s passions, struggles, and secrets span three generations and a century of violent social change, culminating in a crisis that brings the proud and tyrannical patriarch and his beloved granddaughter to opposite sides of the barricades. Against a backdrop of revolution and counterrevolution, Allende brings to life a family whose private bonds of love and hatred are more complex and enduring than the political allegiances that set them at odds. The House of the Spirits not only brings another nation’s history thrillingly to life, but also makes its people’s joys and anguishes wholly our own.]]> 433 Isabel Allende 0553273914 Andrea 4 recommended 4.14 1982
author: Isabel Allende
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/21
date added: 2014/11/21
shelves: recommended
review:
It is a pretty spectacular novel, one I wasn't sure I would like, but I'm glad I made the effort.
]]> 6259 483 Sebastian Faulks 0679776818 Andrea 4 recommended 4.11 1993
author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/18
date added: 2014/11/17
shelves: recommended
review:
In my opinion, the romance part was a bit meh. The outstanding part of the novel was about war, and the true brutality of the conflict. There's been so much sentimentality in this centenary year of the First World War that I'm glad I finally felt brave enough to read it now. War is beyond terrible, it extracts such a price from those who fight it.
]]> 120482
A charming young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson—who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist—Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England, she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her she is forced to choose between convention and passion.

The enduring delight of this tale of romantic intrigue is rooted in Forster’s colorful characters, including outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen, and outspoken patriots. Written in 1908, A Room with a View is one of E. M. Forster’s earliest and most celebrated works.]]> 204 E.M. Forster 0553213237 Andrea 3 3.85 1908
author: E.M. Forster
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1908
rating: 3
read at: 2014/11/12
date added: 2014/11/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 65031 272 Philip K. Dick Andrea 2 the drugs clearly do work. 3.75 1981
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1981
rating: 2
read at: 2014/11/04
date added: 2014/11/14
shelves:
review:
the drugs clearly do work.
]]> 16078220
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.]]> 248 Neil Gaiman 1472200314 Andrea 4 library-books 4.06 2013
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2014/10/05
date added: 2014/11/14
shelves: library-books
review:

]]> 23111744 One death can still change everything...

Sarajevo, 1943: Marija Vukic, a beautiful young filmmaker and socialite, and a German officer are brutally murdered.

Assigned to the case is military intelligence officer Captain Gregor Reinhardt. Already haunted by his wartime actions and the mistakes he’s made off the battlefield, he soon finds that his investigation may be more than just a murder - and that the late Yugoslav heroine may have been more treacherous than anyone knew.

Reinhardt manoeuvres his way through a minefield of political, military, and personal agendas and vendettas, as a trail of dead bodies leads him to a secret hidden within the ranks of the powerful �� a secret they will do anything to keep.

But Reinhardt has rediscovered a purpose in life once lost, and he is determined to follow the case to the end, whatever the cost may be.]]> 448 Luke McCallin 1843445476 Andrea 3 first-reads
It's well written and set in a time I am interested in; it's also set in a place I know very little about, so it was interesting to read.]]> 3.83 2013
author: Luke McCallin
name: Andrea
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/10/14
date added: 2014/10/16
shelves: first-reads
review:
Gregor Reinhardt is the kind of WWII German soldier we like - the kind with a conscience, who disagrees with his government. This is essentially a crime thriller where he solves the violent and unexplained murders of a journalist and German officer.

It's well written and set in a time I am interested in; it's also set in a place I know very little about, so it was interesting to read.
]]> 19758379
In The Casebook, you can read the final twelve stories that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about his brilliant detective. They are perhaps the most unusual and the darkest that he penned. Treachery, mutilation and the terrible consequences of infidelity are just some of the themes explored in these stories, along with atmospheric touches of the gothic, involving a bloodsucking vampire, crypts at midnight and strange bones in a furnace. The collection His Last Bow features some of Sherlock Holmes�� most dramatic cases, including the vicious revenge intrigue connected with ‘The Red Circle�� and the insidious murders in ‘The Devil’s Foot��. The title story recounts how Sherlock Holmes is brought out of retirement to help the government foil a German plot on the eve of the First World War.These two fascinating sets of stories make a glorious farewell to the greatest detective of them all and his erstwhile companion, Dr Watson.]]> 432 Arthur Conan Doyle Andrea 3 4.01 1927
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Andrea
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1927
rating: 3
read at: 2014/09/24
date added: 2014/09/25
shelves:
review:

]]>