Mary's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 13 Apr 2025 06:35:06 -0700 60 Mary's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Tales from Two Pockets 33409 365 Karel ÄŚapek 0945774257 Mary 0 currently-reading 4.14 1929 Tales from Two Pockets
author: Karel ÄŚapek
name: Mary
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/13
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<![CDATA[Feminism: A Very Short Introduction]]> 74661 159 Margaret Walters 019280510X Mary 3 3.60 2006 Feminism: A Very Short Introduction
author: Margaret Walters
name: Mary
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
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<![CDATA[A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places]]> 207567671
During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property—a brownfield site bisected with an abandoned petroleum pipeline and littered with concrete debris and landfill trash—was an unlikely site for a home. Along with his son, Brown had explored similar empty lots around Austin, so-called “ruinedâ€� spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment as Austin became a 21st century boom town. He discovered them to be teeming with natural activity, and embarked on a twenty-year project to live in and document such spaces. There, in our most damaged landscapes, he witnessed the remarkable resilience of wild nature, learned how easy it is to bring back the wild in our own backyards, and discovered that, by working to heal the wounds we have made on the Earth, we can also heal ourselves. Beautifully written and philosophically hard-hitting, A Natural History of Empty Lots offers a new lens on human disruption and nature, offering a sense of hope among the edgelands.Ěý±Ő±Ő>
320 Christopher Brown 1643263366 Mary 4 4.00 2024 A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places
author: Christopher Brown
name: Mary
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
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<![CDATA[The Making of Asian America: A History (Printing may vary)]]> 27276430
In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But much of their long history has been forgotten. “In her sweeping, powerful new book, Erika Lee considers the rich, complicated, and sometimes invisible histories of Asians in the United States� ( Huffington Post ).

The Making of Asian America shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life, from sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500 to the Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. But as Lee shows, Asian Americans have continued to struggle as both “despised minorities� and “model minorities,� revealing all the ways that racism has persisted in their lives and in the life of the country.

Published fifty years after the passage of the United States� Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, these “powerful Asian American stories…are inspiring, and Lee herself does them justice in a book that is long overdue� ( Los Angeles Times ). But more than that, The Making of Asian America is an “epic and eye-opening� ( Minneapolis Star-Tribune ) new way of understanding America itself, its complicated histories of race and immigration, and its place in the world today.]]>
560 Erika Lee 1476739412 Mary 4 4.38 2015 The Making of Asian America: A History (Printing may vary)
author: Erika Lee
name: Mary
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
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Kenilworth (Penguin Classics) 341278
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.]]>
528 Walter Scott 0140436545 Mary 0 currently-reading 3.62 1821 Kenilworth (Penguin Classics)
author: Walter Scott
name: Mary
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1821
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Golden Pot and Other Tales]]> 62348906
Ritchie Robertson's detailed introduction places the stories in their intellectual and historical context and explores their compelling narrative complexities.]]>
E.T.A. Hoffmann 0199552479 Mary 3 2.67 1814 The Golden Pot and Other Tales
author: E.T.A. Hoffmann
name: Mary
average rating: 2.67
book published: 1814
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2025/02/28
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<![CDATA[Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)]]> 32335808
In this Very Short Introduction David Norman discusses how dinosaurs were first discovered and interpreted, and how our understanding of them has changed over the past 200 years. He looks at some of the amazing discoveries that have enabled us to gain new and unexpected insights into dinosaurs as animals with natural histories and behaviors, and considers some of the biggest questions in dinosaur biology, such as the implications of them having warm blood. Norman also shows how research upon dinosaurs has been enriched, particularly in recent decades, by technological break-throughs, which complement the informed speculation and luck which have played a part in many of the major discoveries.

ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.]]>
192 David Norman 0198795920 Mary 3 3.86 2005 Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
author: David Norman
name: Mary
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
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<![CDATA[The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily]]> 83015
If The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily sounds too distressing to read alone, that's because it is. Lemony Snicket's introduction to this extraordinary tale is unlikely to make you feel any better, and a careful study of Snicket's Reader's Companion, cleverly hidden at the back, may actually make you feel worse. For that reason, among many others, it is recommended that you either abandon this book, abandon plans to read it, or abandon all hope.]]>
192 Dino Buzzati 0060726083 Mary 4 A delight! 4.05 1945 The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily
author: Dino Buzzati
name: Mary
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1945
rating: 4
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A delight!
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<![CDATA[Ecology of a Cracker Childhood]]> 196714 224 Janisse Ray 1571312471 Mary 4 4.02 1999 Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
author: Janisse Ray
name: Mary
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
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"We recognize that the loss of our forests--which is to say, of health, of culture, of heritage, of beauty, of the infinite hopefulness of a virgin forest where time stalls--is a loss we all share."
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<![CDATA[The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future]]> 26073005 A revelatory look at our national power grid--how it developed, its current flaws, and how it must be completely reimagined for our fast-approaching energy future.

America's electrical grid, an engineering triumph of the twentieth century, is turning out to be a poor fit for the present. It's not just that the grid has grown old and is now in dire need of basic repair. Today, as we invest great hope in new energy sources--solar, wind, and other alternatives--the grid is what stands most firmly in the way of a brighter energy future. If we hope to realize this future, we need to reimagine the grid according to twenty-first-century values. It's a project which forces visionaries to work with bureaucrats, legislators with storm-flattened communities, moneymen with hippies, and the left with the right. And though it might not yet be obvious, this revolution is already well under way.

Cultural anthropologist Gretchen Bakke unveils the many facets of America's energy infrastructure, its most dynamic moments and its most stable ones, and its essential role in personal and national life. The grid, she argues, is an essentially American artifact, one which developed with us: a product of bold expansion, the occasional foolhardy vision, some genius technologies, and constant improvisation. Most of all, her focus is on how Americans are changing the grid right now, sometimes with gumption and big dreams and sometimes with legislation or the brandishing of guns.

The Grid tells--entertainingly, perceptively--the story of what has been called "the largest machine in the world": its fascinating history, its problematic present, and its potential role in a brighter, cleaner future.]]>
384 Gretchen Bakke 1608196100 Mary 0 to-read 3.83 2016 The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
author: Gretchen Bakke
name: Mary
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[In Celebration Of Small Things: A Return to Creative Self-Reliance]]> 1772029 Sharon Cadwallader 0395180929 Mary 3 4.00 In Celebration Of Small Things: A Return to Creative Self-Reliance
author: Sharon Cadwallader
name: Mary
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
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This book was an interesting time capsule into a time of energy crisis, increased attention to organic farming and food, and do-it-yourself-ing... the 1970s, but with some lessons relevant to today.
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One Man's Garden 5062968 Whether he is being serious ("Tea The Secrets of Success") or hilarious ("Before You Bring In the Plants, Make Sure Your Rugs Are Clean"), Mitchell deftly deals with the likely and unlikely decisions a gardener is called upon to make every day. While rationing a precious Christmas gift of fertilizer, he observes that horse manure, like youth, goes all too quickly.
"When you first start to garden," he writes, "you usually have no idea what the real delights are going to be." Henry Mitchell shares both his delights and his agonies, whether he is happily hoarding pickle jars for growing seedlings or agitating over which plants to uproot and toss out of his garden.]]>
262 Henry Mitchell 0395633192 Mary 4 3.86 1992 One Man's Garden
author: Henry Mitchell
name: Mary
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
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Mitchell's writing is always a delight.
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<![CDATA[The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror]]> 35035160 The Merry Spinster takes up the trademark wit that endeared Lavery to readers of both The Toast and his best-selling debut Texts from Jane Eyre. The feature become among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Lavery’s eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief.

Readers of The Toast will instantly recognize Lavery's boisterous good humor and uber-nerd swagger: those new to Lavery's oeuvre will delight in his unique spin on fiction, where something a bit mischievous and unsettling is always at work just beneath the surface.

Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, The Merry Spinster also illuminates the unsuspected, and frequently, alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night.

Bedtime will never be the same.

The daughter cells --
The thankless child --
Fear not: an incident log --
The six boy-coffins --
The rabbit --
The merry spinster --
The wedding party --
Some of us had been threatening our friend Mr.Toad --
Cast your bread upon the waters --
The frog's princess --
Good fences make good neighbors]]>
190 Daniel M. Lavery 1250113423 Mary 4 3.27 2018 The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror
author: Daniel M. Lavery
name: Mary
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/09
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<![CDATA[101 Baby Hacks: Infant Massage and Natural Solutions to Help with Sleep, Colic, Gas, Teething, Congestion, and More]]> 206120224 240 Elina Furman 1637745370 Mary 3 3.57 101 Baby Hacks: Infant Massage and Natural Solutions to Help with Sleep, Colic, Gas, Teething, Congestion, and More
author: Elina Furman
name: Mary
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
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<![CDATA[Murder at the White Palace (Sparks & Bainbridge, #6)]]> 195790850 In post-WWII London, the matchmakers of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are involved in yet another murder.In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture—The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous—and never discussed—past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a genteel war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family. Looking to throw a New Year’s Eve soiree for their clients, Sparks and Bainbridge scout an empty building—only to find a body contained in the walls. What they initially assume is a victim of the recent Blitz is uncovered instead to be a murder victim—stabbed several times.To make matters worse, the owner of the building is Sparks� beau, Archie Spelling, who has ties to a variety of enterprises on the right and wrong sides of the law, and the main investigator for the police is her ex-fiancée. Gwen, too, is dealing with her own complicated love life, as she tentatively steps back into the dating pool for the first time since her husband’s death. Murder is not something they want to add to their plates, but the murderer may be closer to home than is comfortable, and they must do all they can to protect their clients, their business and themselves.]]> 320 Allison Montclair 1250854210 Mary 3 4.14 2024 Murder at the White Palace (Sparks & Bainbridge, #6)
author: Allison Montclair
name: Mary
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/03
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The Gardener's Plot 203578860
After life threw Maggie Walker a few curveballs, she’s happy to be back in the small, Berkshires town where she spent so much time as a child. Marlowe holds many memories for her, and now it also offers a fresh start. Maggie has always loved gardening, so it’s only natural to sign on to help Violet Bloom set up a community garden.

When opening day arrives, Violet is nowhere to be found, and the gardeners are restless. Things go from bad to worse when Maggie finds a boot buried in one of the plots� and there’s a body attached to it. Suddenly, the police are looking for a killer and they keep asking questions about Violet. Maggie doesn’t believe her friend could do this, and she’s going to dig up the dirt needed to prove it.

The Gardener’s Plot takes readers to the heart of the Berkshires and introduces amateur sleuth Maggie Walker in Deborah J. Benoit’s Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award-winning debut.]]>
321 Deborah J. Benoit 1250334977 Mary 2 3.54 The Gardener's Plot
author: Deborah J. Benoit
name: Mary
average rating: 3.54
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/16
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<![CDATA[A Rogue's Company (Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery, #3)]]> 54860437
In London, 1946, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau is getting on its feet and expanding. Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge are making a go of it. That is until Lord Bainbridge—the widowed Gwen's father-in-law and legal guardian—returns from a business trip to Africa and threatens to undo everything important to her, even sending her six-year-old son away to a boarding school.

But there's more going on than that. A new client shows up at the agency, one whom Sparks and Bainbridge begin to suspect really has a secret agenda, somehow involving the Bainbridge family. A murder and a subsequent kidnapping sends Sparks to seek help from a dangerous quarter—and now their very survival is at stake.]]>
352 Allison Montclair 1250750326 Mary 4 4.12 2021 A Rogue's Company (Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery, #3)
author: Allison Montclair
name: Mary
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
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<![CDATA[The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats]]> 35342935 The true adventures of David Fairchild, a late-nineteenth-century food explorer who traveled the globe and introduced diverse crops like avocados, mangoes, seedless grapes--and thousands more--to the American plate.

In the nineteenth century, American meals were about subsistence, not enjoyment. But as a new century approached, appetites broadened, and David Fairchild, a young botanist with an insatiable lust to explore and experience the world, set out in search of foods that would enrich the American farmer and enchant the American eater.

Kale from Croatia, mangoes from India, and hops from Bavaria. Peaches from China, avocados from Chile, and pomegranates from Malta. Fairchild's finds weren't just limited to food: From Egypt he sent back a variety of cotton that revolutionized an industry, and via Japan he introduced the cherry blossom tree, forever brightening America's capital. Along the way, he was arrested, caught diseases, and bargained with island tribes. But his culinary ambition came during a formative era, and through him, America transformed into the most diverse food system ever created.]]>
397 Daniel Stone 1101990589 Mary 3 3.92 2018 The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
author: Daniel Stone
name: Mary
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
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<![CDATA[A Royal Affair (Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery #2)]]> 49349790
In London 1946, The Right Sort Marriage Bureau is just beginning to take off and the proprietors, Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, are in need of a bigger office and a secretary to handle the growing demand. Unfortunately, they don't yet have the necessary means. So when a woman arrives―a cousin of Gwen's―with an interesting and quite remunerative proposition, they two of them are all ears.

The cousin, one Lady Matheson, works for the Queen in "some capacity" and is in need of some discreet investigation. It seems that the Princess Elizabeth has developed feelings for a dashing Greek prince and a blackmail note has arrived, alluding to some potentially damaging information about said prince. Wanting to keep this out of the palace gossip circles, but also needing to find out what skeletons might lurk in the prince's closet, the palace has quietly turned to Gwen and Iris. Without causing a stir, the two of them must now find out what secrets lurk in the prince's past, before his engagement to the future Queen of England is announced. And there's more at stake than the future of the Empire ―there is their potential new office that lies in the balance.]]>
320 Allison Montclair 1250178398 Mary 3 3.90 2020 A Royal Affair (Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery #2)
author: Allison Montclair
name: Mary
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
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<![CDATA[The Lost World of the Dinosaurs: Uncovering the Secrets of the Prehistoric Age]]> 203647815 320 Armin Schmitt 1335081216 Mary 2 3.87 2024 The Lost World of the Dinosaurs: Uncovering the Secrets of the Prehistoric Age
author: Armin Schmitt
name: Mary
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
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Horse 59109077 A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse--one studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.]]>
401 Geraldine Brooks 0399562966 Mary 4 4.17 2022 Horse
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Mary
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
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<![CDATA[Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet]]> 58838928 "This remarkable book, staring curiously down at the soil beneath our feet, points us convincingly in one of the directions we must travel. I learned something on every page." --Bill McKibben

For the first time since the Neolithic, we have the opportunity to transform not only our food system but our entire relationship to the living world.


Farming is the world's greatest cause of environmental destruction - and the one we are least prepared to talk about. We criticise urban sprawl, but farming sprawls across thirty times as much land. We have ploughed, fenced and grazed great tracts of the planet, felling forests, killing wildlife, and poisoning rivers and oceans to feed ourselves. Yet millions still go hungry.

Now the food system itself is beginning to falter. But, as George Monbiot shows us in this brilliant, bracingly original new book, we can resolve the biggest of our dilemmas and feed the world without devouring the planet.

Regenesis is a breathtaking vision of a new future for food and for humanity. Drawing on astonishing advances in soil ecology, Monbiot reveals how our changing understanding of the world beneath our feet could allow us to grow more food with less farming. He meets the people who are unlocking these methods, from the fruit and vegetable grower revolutionising our understanding of fertility; through breeders of perennial grains, liberating the land from ploughs and poisons; to the scientists pioneering new ways to grow protein and fat. Together, they show how the tiniest life forms could help us make peace with the planet, restore its living systems, and replace the age of extinction with an age of regenesis.]]>
352 George Monbiot 0143135961 Mary 2 4.40 2022 Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet
author: George Monbiot
name: Mary
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/15
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Monbiot's provocative suggestion that we might feed the world via bacterial fermentation is unlikely to find many converts, at least at this point in time. But what really bothered me about this book was a chapter toward the end in which Monbiot charges that "poetry" (by which he seems to mean classical pastoral, which is blithely elided into children's farmyard books) is at fault for our more sentimental feelings about agriculture. I found this section baffling for several reasons--first, Monbiot is strikingly imprecise when discussing "poetry" (does he mean pastoral, Romantic poetry, lyric, stories in general, children's stories...?) and this section is also remarkably under-referenced, given the citational density of the rest of the book. Literary critics have spent *a lot* of time on the various genres that Monbiot seems to conflate, and much of that discussion has in fact centered on agriculture. Monbiot seems unaware of the existence of research outside his own discipline.
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<![CDATA[The Right Sort of Man (Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery #1)]]> 41150342 First comes love, then comes murder.

In a London slowly recovering from World War II, two very different women join forces to launch a business venture in the heart of Mayfair--The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. Miss Iris Sparks, quick-witted and impulsive, and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, practical and widowed with a young son, are determined to achieve some independence and do some good in a rapidly changing world.

But the promising start to their marriage bureau is threatened when their newest client, Tillie La Salle, is found murdered and the man arrested for the crime is the prospective husband they matched her with. While the police are convinced they have their man, Miss Sparks and Mrs. Bainbridge are not. To clear his name--and to rescue their fledging operation's reputation--Sparks and Bainbridge decide to investigate on their own, using the skills and contacts they've each acquired through life and their individual adventures during the recent war.

Little do they know that this will put their very lives at risk.]]>
320 Allison Montclair 1250178363 Mary 4 3.90 2019 The Right Sort of Man (Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery #1)
author: Allison Montclair
name: Mary
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
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<![CDATA[Empire of Cotton: A Global History]]> 20758057
Cotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism. Sven Beckert’s rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, and combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially reshape the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia, and how industrial capitalism gave birth to an empire, and how this force transformed the world.

The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.

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640 Sven Beckert 0375414142 Mary 3 3.88 2014 Empire of Cotton: A Global History
author: Sven Beckert
name: Mary
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
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<![CDATA[The Lady from Burma (Sparks & Bainbridge, #5)]]> 61884950
In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture - The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous - and never discussed - past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family. Mostly their clients are people trying to start (or restart) their lives in this much-changed world, but their new client is something different. A happily married woman has come to them to find a new wife for her husband. Dying of cancer, she wants the two to make sure her entomologist, academic husband finds someone new once she passes.

Shortly thereafter, she's found dead in Epping Forest, in what appears to be a suicide. But that doesn't make sense to either Sparks or Bainbridge. At the same time, Bainbridge is attempting to regain legal control of her life, opposed by the conservator who has been managing her assets - perhaps not always in her best interest. When that conservator is found dead, Bainbridge herself is one of the prime suspects. Attempting to make sense of two deaths at once, to protect themselves and their clients, the redoubtable owners of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau are once again on the case.]]>
336 Allison Montclair 1250854199 Mary 4 4.11 2023 The Lady from Burma (Sparks & Bainbridge, #5)
author: Allison Montclair
name: Mary
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
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I really enjoyed this sharp, smartly written and very funny mystery - looking forward to checking out the others in the series!
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<![CDATA[The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice]]> 355730 228 Wilkie Collins 1587156911 Mary 3 3.44 1879 The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice
author: Wilkie Collins
name: Mary
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1879
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
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<![CDATA[The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women]]> 31409135 The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive—until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

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479 Kate Moore 149264935X Mary 3 4.13 2016 The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
author: Kate Moore
name: Mary
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
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<![CDATA[The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot]]> 13369533
Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations.]]>
433 Robert Macfarlane 0241143810 Mary 3 4.14 2012 The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
author: Robert Macfarlane
name: Mary
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England (Washington Mews Books, 6)]]> 48815987
Meg Muckenhoupt begins with a simple question: When did Bostonians start making Boston Baked Beans? Storekeepers in Faneuil Hall and Duck Tour guides may tell you that the Pilgrims learned a recipe for beans with maple syrup and bear fat from Native Americans, but in fact, the recipe for Boston Baked Beans is the result of a conscious effort in the late nineteenth century to create New England foods. New England foods were selected and resourcefully reinvented from fanciful stories about what English colonists cooked prior to the American revolution―while pointedly ignoring the foods cooked by contemporary New Englanders, especially the large immigrant populations who were powering industry and taking over farms around the region.

The Truth about Baked Beans explores New England’s culinary myths and reality through some of the region’s most famous foods: baked beans, brown bread, clams, cod and lobster, maple syrup, pies, and Yankee pot roast. From 1870 to 1920, the idea of New England food was carefully constructed in magazines, newspapers, and cookbooks, often through fictitious and sometimes bizarre origin stories touted as time-honored American legends. This toothsome volume reveals the effort that went into the creation of these foods, and lets us begin to reclaim the culinary heritage of immigrant New England―the French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Portuguese, Polish, indigenous people, African-Americans, and other New Englanders whose culinary contributions were erased from this version of New England food. Complete with historic and contemporary recipes, The Truth about Baked Beans delves into the surprising history of this curious cuisine, explaining why and how “New England food� actually came to be.]]>
352 Meg Muckenhoupt 1479882763 Mary 3 3.81 2020 The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England (Washington Mews Books, 6)
author: Meg Muckenhoupt
name: Mary
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/08
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Nothing to See Here 42519313
Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth.

Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other—and stay cool—while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her—urgently and fiercely. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for?]]>
288 Kevin Wilson 0062913484 Mary 3 3.95 2019 Nothing to See Here
author: Kevin Wilson
name: Mary
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
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An Island Garden 42372527
Celia Thaxter’s small garden with hollyhocks and poppies and scarlet flax was much admired by friends, neighbors, and visitors to the island off the coast of Portland, Maine. There, she wrote this collection of remembrances and gardening advice that was originally published in 1894, shortly before her death. It has never been out of print since.

In vivid prose, Thaxter captures the stretching stems and blossoming flowers in moods ranging from bitter defeat―delivered by unrelenting slugs―to the exultant triumph of birdsong and bursting blooms. Any gardener will understand and take heart from Thaxter’s philosophical outlook. “I am fully and intensely aware,� she writes, “that plants are conscious of love and respond to it as they do to nothing else.�

Many artists found inspiration in Celia Thaxter’s garden including the American impressionist, Childe Hassam, who provided this enduring book’s many full-page paintings and chapter head decorations. This book is perfect for anyone passionate about flowers and the many trials and triumphs of gardening.]]>
156 Celia Laighton Thaxter 1567926436 Mary 3 3.33 1894 An Island Garden
author: Celia Laighton Thaxter
name: Mary
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1894
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/02
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<![CDATA[Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent]]> 6334219 336 John Reader 0300141092 Mary 3 3.85 2008 Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent
author: John Reader
name: Mary
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/29
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The Underground Railroad 30555488
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey--hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.]]>
320 Colson Whitehead 0385542364 Mary 0 4.04 2016 The Underground Railroad
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Mary
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

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

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

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

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]>
368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Mary 3 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Mary
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir (Machete)]]> 63850269 “A fascinating search for personal and cultural identity.� � Kirkus



Thomas C. Gannon’sĚýBirding While IndianĚýspans more than fifty years of childhood walks and adult road trips to deliver, via a compendium of birds recorded and revered, the author’s life as a part-Lakota inhabitant of the Great Plains. Great Horned Owl, Sandhill Crane, such species form a kind of rosary, a corrective to the rosaries that evoke Gannon’s traumatic time in an Indian boarding school in South Dakota, his mother’s devastation at racist bullying from coworkers, and the violent erasure colonialism demanded of the people and other animals indigenous to the United States.



Birding has always been Gannon’s escape and solace. He later found similar solace in literature, particularly by Native authors. He draws on both throughout this expansive, hilarious, and humane memoir. An acerbic observer—of birds, the environment, the aftershocks of history, and human nature—Gannon navigates his obsession with the ostensibly objective avocation of birding and his own mixed-blood subjectivity, searching for that elusive Snowy OwlĚýandĚýhis own identity. The result is a rich reflection not only on one man’s life but on the transformative power of building a deeper relationship with the natural world.



Ěý±Ő±Ő>
255 Thomas C. Gannon 0814258727 Mary 3 4.11 Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir (Machete)
author: Thomas C. Gannon
name: Mary
average rating: 4.11
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rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Rain: A Natural and Cultural History]]> 22822881
It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source ofĚýthe world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain.

Cynthia Barnett's ĚýRain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River.ĚýIt offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge.ĚýRainĚýis also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume.

Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.]]>
355 Cynthia Barnett 0804137099 Mary 4 3.82 2015 Rain: A Natural and Cultural History
author: Cynthia Barnett
name: Mary
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/18
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Women's Hotel 199793688 From the New York Times bestselling author and advice columnist, a poignant and funny debut novel about the residents of a women’s hotel in 1960s New York City.

The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.

The residents give up breakfast, juggle competing jobs at rival presses, abandon their children, get laid off from the telephone company, attempt to retrain as stenographers, all with the shared awareness that their days as an institution are numbered, and they’d better make the most of it while it lasts.

As trenchant as the novels of Dawn Powell and Rona Jaffe and as immersive as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Lessons in Chemistry, Women’s Hotel is a modern classic—and it is very, very funny.]]>
272 Daniel M. Lavery 0063343533 Mary 0 to-read 2.85 2024 Women's Hotel
author: Daniel M. Lavery
name: Mary
average rating: 2.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, MieczysĹ‚aw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inĚýGörbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]>
320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Mary 0 to-read 3.66 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Mary
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Tales of the Elders of Ireland]]> 1046404 Tales of the Elders of Ireland is the first complete translation of the late Middle-Irish Acallam na Senorach, the largest literary text surviving from twelfth-century Ireland. It contains the earliest and most comprehensive collection of Fenian stories and poetry, intermingling the contemporary Christian world of Saint Patrick with his scribes; clerics; occasional angels and souls rescued from Hell; the earlier pagan world of the ancient, giant Fenians and Irish kings; and the parallel, timeless Otherworld (peopled by ever-young, shape-shifting fairies). This readable, lucid new translation is based on existing manuscript sources and is richly annotated, complete with an Introduction discussing the place of the Acallam in Irish tradition and the impact of the Fenian or Ossianic tradition on English and European literature."]]> 245 Anonymous 0192839187 Mary 3 3.70 1200 Tales of the Elders of Ireland
author: Anonymous
name: Mary
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1200
rating: 3
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A rather surprising amount of grave-robbing.
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How I Became a Tree 34532567 238 Sumana Roy 9386021404 Mary 3 3.48 2017 How I Became a Tree
author: Sumana Roy
name: Mary
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/09/07
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At the Mountains of Madness 32767 At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition's uncanny discoveries --and their encounter with an untold menace in the ruins of a lost civilization--is a milestone of macabre literature.

This Definitive Edition of At the Mountains of Madness (The Modern Library) also includes Lovecraft's long essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature."]]>
194 H.P. Lovecraft 0812974417 Mary 3 3.85 1931 At the Mountains of Madness
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Mary
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1931
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)]]> 741615 Fogg and Passepartout, his devoted manservant, avail themselves of virtually every known means of transportation in their wild race against time. All the while, a devious detective dogs their every step and introduces fresh obstacles. The resourceful Fogg faces each new trial with unshakable aplomb, through a constantly shifting background of exotic locales � from the jungles of India, a Chinese opium den, and a Japanese circus to a full-throttle train ride under attack by Sioux and a bloodless mutiny aboard a tramp steamer.
The most popular of Jules Verne's fantastic adventure stories, Around the World in Eighty Days first appeared as a newspaper serial in 1872, much to the delight of a world already agog with recent advances in technology. Its enduring blend of comic misadventures and thrilling suspense continues to enchant generations of readers.]]>
176 Jules Verne 0486411117 Mary 3 3.84 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)
author: Jules Verne
name: Mary
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1872
rating: 3
read at: 2016/02/12
date added: 2024/08/31
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Hester 6829259 Hester tells the story of the aging but powerful Catherine Vernon, and her conflict with the young and determined Hester, whose growing attachment to Edward, Catherine's favorite, spells disaster for all concerned.

Catherine Vernon, jilted in her youth, has risen to power in a man's world as head of the family bank. She thinks she sees through everyone and rules over a family of dependents with knowing cynicism. But there are two people in Redborough who resist her. One is Hester, a young relation with a personality as strong as Catherine's, and as determined to find a role for herself. The other is Edward, who Catherine treats like a son. Conflict between the young and the old is inevitable, and in its depiction of the complex relationships that develop between the three principal characters, Hester is a masterpiece of psychological realism. In exploring the difficulty of understanding human nature, it is also a compulsive story of financial and sexual risk-taking that inevitably results in a searing climax.

Margaret Oliphant is one of the great Victorian novelists, and this edition re-establishes her importance.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.]]>
512 Mrs. Oliphant 0199555494 Mary 3 3.98 1883 Hester
author: Mrs. Oliphant
name: Mary
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1883
rating: 3
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Henry Mitchell On Gardening 319758 256 Henry Mitchell 0395957672 Mary 4 4.37 1998 Henry Mitchell On Gardening
author: Henry Mitchell
name: Mary
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
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"I well know gardeners are not idiots, or at least not because we garden, and no class of folk is more keenly aware how shaky the world is and how quickly the big sun is obscured and storms batter the frail erigerons that would have been strong enough in another two weeks, and so on endlessly."
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<![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naĂŻve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TłÜ°ů˛Ô±đ»ĺ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]>
129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Mary 4 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Mary
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Twenty Years After (Trilogie des Mousquetaires #2)]]> 7184
Twenty Years After (1845), the sequel to The Three Musketeers, is a supreme creation of suspense and heroic adventure.

Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and stratagems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.]]>
845 Alexandre Dumas 0192838431 Mary 3 4.06 1845 Twenty Years After (Trilogie des Mousquetaires #2)
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Mary
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1845
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Mary 3 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Mary
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 3
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Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Mary 4 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Mary
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Letters from an American Farmer]]> 7326904 Letters from an American Farmer (1782) posed the famous question: "What, then, is the American, this new man?," as a new nation took shape before the eyes of the world. Addressing some of American literature's most pressing concerns and identity issues, these Letters celebrate personal determination, freedom from institutional oppression, and the largeness and fertility of the land. They also address darker and more symbolic elements, particularly slavery. This book is the only critical edition available of what is seen by many as the first-ever work of American literature.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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288 0199554749 Mary 3 3.17 Letters from an American Farmer
author: J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
name: Mary
average rating: 3.17
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2016/08/04
date added: 2024/08/07
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"Men are like plants. The goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employment" (45).
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The Bullet Swallower 123847255 A dazzling magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez, The Bullet Swallower follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to save his family, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generations in the making.

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He’s good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he’s also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul.

In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico’s most renowned actor and singer. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio’s timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors� crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower.

A family saga that’s epic in scope and magical in its blood, and based loosely on the author’s own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.]]>
272 Elizabeth Gonzalez James 1668009323 Mary 4 3.75 2024 The Bullet Swallower
author: Elizabeth Gonzalez James
name: Mary
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/27
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The Tale of Tales 25568829
Funny and scary, romantic and gruesome, and featuring kings and queens, dragons and seduction, The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature]]>
475 Giambattista Basile 0143129147 Mary 3 3.85 1634 The Tale of Tales
author: Giambattista Basile
name: Mary
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1634
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/22
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<![CDATA[Cherish the First Six Weeks: A Plan that Creates Calm, Confident Parents and a Happy, Secure Baby]]> 15792482
Have you ever wondered why celebrities look so rested in such a short time after giving birth? The baby specialists like Helen Moon. A baby specialist and professional nanny for the past 25 years, Helen has worked closely with hundreds of families, including some of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Helen knows that the first six weeks of a baby's life—when parents tend to be nervous, siblings are needy, and new babies need immediate and constant attention—has a huge impact on the entire family. Getting a baby on a sleeping and eating schedule is an achievable dream, and it's not a mystery. Helen's step-by-step plan shows new parents exactly how to integrate their baby into the family so that she will be able to sleep when she's tired, eat when she's hungry, and calm herself when she's fussy—self-regulating skills that will enable her to thrive for the rest of her life.

Assured that their babies are secure and happy, parents can confidently enjoy this most precious time of their baby's life, trusting their own instincts, and—most importantly—sleeping through the night themselves!]]>
320 Helen Moon 0307987272 Mary 3 4.02 2013 Cherish the First Six Weeks: A Plan that Creates Calm, Confident Parents and a Happy, Secure Baby
author: Helen Moon
name: Mary
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
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<![CDATA[Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories]]> 127282658
When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis trilogy ten years ago, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those opium. Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story.

Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, a memoir, and an essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empire’s financial survival. Tracing the profits further, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the world’s biggest corporations, of America’s most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.

Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, in Smoke and Ashes Amitav Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.]]>
416 Amitav Ghosh 0374602921 Mary 4 3.94 2024 Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2024/07/05
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Ghosh's exploration of 18th- and 19th-century opium trading networks treats the opium poppy as an agent in its own right, one that continues to influence us through the 21st-century prescription opiates epidemic.
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Black Beauty 10931946
This Penguin Threads edition of Anna Sewell's moving novelĚý Black Beauty Ěýincludes a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley, cover art by Jillian Tamaki and deluxe French flaps.

Commissioned by award-winning Penguin art director Paul Buckley, the Penguin Threads series debuts with cover art by Jillian Tamaki for three gift-worthy Penguin Classics. Sketched out in a traditional illustrative manner, then hand stitched using needle and thread, the final covers are sculpt embossed for a tactile, textured, and beautiful book design that will appeal to the Etsy(tm)-loving world of handmade crafts.

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.]]>
203 Anna Sewell 0143106473 Mary 3 3.91 1877 Black Beauty
author: Anna Sewell
name: Mary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1877
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
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<![CDATA[Abundant Beauty: The Adventurous Travels of Marianne North, Botanical Artist]]> 9748332
North—high-spirited, indefatigable, and brave—also kept detailed journals, which were posthumously published in three volumes in the late 1800s. Abundant Beauty collects the most engaging writings from those journals in one edition, including rich descriptions of botanica and delightful accounts of local people and customs from her sometimes dangerous travels. Abundant Beauty is a fascinating and informative read for botanists, gardeners, historians, and armchair travellers.]]>
224 Marianne North 1553655419 Mary 3 3.50 2010 Abundant Beauty: The Adventurous Travels of Marianne North, Botanical Artist
author: Marianne North
name: Mary
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
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<![CDATA[The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes]]> 625213
Recently 221 "A" Baker Street Associates found an entire season of long-lost Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce radio broadcasts. Here were the answers to many of the questions only hinted at in the original stories: How and when did Sherlock Holmes meet Professor Moriarty? Why did Sherlock Holmes buy his Sussex bee farm? These puzzles and many others are solved in this collection of The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Join Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as they struggle with a headless monk on the mist-shrouded moors; try to discover how a priceless painting was stolen from a locked room; use a pocket watch to catch a killer; meet a terrified man who wakes up each morning with fresh blood on his hands. These thirteen new mystery adventures, based on the Denis Green and Anthony Boucher radio plays, written by Ken Greenwald, present the Great Detective and his loyal companion in the new adventures that will keep you guessing until the final solution.]]>
199 Ken Greenwald 1566195403 Mary 3 4.21 1993 The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
author: Ken Greenwald
name: Mary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2024/06/19
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My Dog Tulip 8910040 J. R. Ackerley hardly thought of himself as a dog lover when, well into middleage, he came into possession of a German shepherd.
To his surprise, she turned out to be the love of his life, 'the ideal friend' he had been searching for in vain for years.
My Dog Tulip is a bittersweet retrospective account of their sixteen-year companionship, as well as a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness that lies at the heart of all relationships.
In vivid and sometimes startling detail, Ackerley tells of Tulip's often erratic behavior and very canine tastes, and of his own fumbling but determined efforts to ensure for her an existence of perfect happiness.]]>
190 J.R. Ackerley 1590174143 Mary 3 3.19 1956 My Dog Tulip
author: J.R. Ackerley
name: Mary
average rating: 3.19
book published: 1956
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/06/17
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Hungry Hearts 375272
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.]]>
180 Anzia Yezierska 0141180056 Mary 3 3.79 1920 Hungry Hearts
author: Anzia Yezierska
name: Mary
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1920
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/13
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Man and Wife 6067069 Man and Wife (1870) combines the fast pace and sensational plot structure of Collins's most famous novels with a biting attack on the inequitable marriage laws in Victorian Britain. At its centre is the plight of a woman who fears that the archaic marriage laws of Scotland and Ireland may have forced her into committing unintentional bigamy. As the novel progresses, the atmosphere grows increasingly sinister when the setting moves from a country house to a London suburb and a world of confinement, plotting, and murder.]]> 688 Wilkie Collins 0199538174 Mary 3 4.02 1870 Man and Wife
author: Wilkie Collins
name: Mary
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1870
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
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<![CDATA[Oak: The Frame of Civilization]]> 319754 336 William Bryant Logan 0393327787 Mary 3 3.93 2005 Oak: The Frame of Civilization
author: William Bryant Logan
name: Mary
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
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<![CDATA[Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak: Dictated by Himself (Penguin Classics)]]> 2378955 A rediscovered, defiant work of Native American literature, presented here on the 175th anniversary of its first publication

Upon its publication in 1833, this unflinching narrative by the vanquished Sauk leader Black Hawk was the first thoroughly adversarial account of frontier hostilities between white settlers and Native Americans. Black Hawk, a complex, contradictory figure, relates his life story and that of his people, who had been forced from western Illinois in what was known as the Black Hawk War. The first published account of a victim of the American war of extermination, this vivid portrait of Indian life stands as a tribute to the author and his extraordinary people, as well as an invaluable historical document.

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.]]>
144 Black Hawk 0143105396 Mary 3 3.54 1833 Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak: Dictated by Himself (Penguin Classics)
author: Black Hawk
name: Mary
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1833
rating: 3
read at: 2021/04/29
date added: 2024/06/03
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Glory 63876143
“Manifoldly clever…brilliantâ€� â€Gloryâ€� is its own vivid world, drawn from its own folklore.ĚýThis is a satire with sharper teeth, angrier, and also very, very funny.”Ěý—Violet Kupersmith, The New York Times Book Review

"Genius."�#1 New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds

From the award-winning author of the Booker-prize finalist We Need New Names , an exhilarating novel about the fall of an oppressive regime, and the chaos and opportunity that rise in its wake.

NoViolet Bulawayo’s bold new novel follows the fall of the Old Horse, the long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearly four decades, Glory shows a country's imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely. By immersing readers in the daily lives of a population in upheaval, Bulawayo reveals the dazzling life force and irresistible wit that lie barely concealed beneath the surface of seemingly bleak circumstances.

And at the center of this tumult is Destiny, a young goat who returns to Jidada to bear witness to revolution—and to recount the unofficial history and the potential legacy of the females who have quietly pulled the strings here. The animal kingdom—its connection to our primal responses and its resonance in the mythology, folktales, and fairy tales that define cultures the world over—unmasks the surreality of contemporary global politics to help us understand our world more clearly, even as Bulawayo plucks us right out of it.

Although Zimbabwe is the immediate inspiration for this thrilling story, Glory was written in a time of global clamor, with resistance movements across the world challenging different forms of oppression. Thus it often feels like Bulawayo captures several places in one blockbuster allegory, crystallizing a turning point in history with the texture and nuance that only the greatest fiction can.]]>
416 NoViolet Bulawayo 0525561153 Mary 4 3.75 2022 Glory
author: NoViolet Bulawayo
name: Mary
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/02
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<![CDATA[A Reunion of Trees: The Discovery of Exotic Plants and Their Introduction into North American and European Landscapes]]> 1733134
In the seventeenth century, gardening in England and Europe was in the throes of revolution. Plants―no longer cultivated solely for their practical value as a source of food or medicinal herbs―were woven into the landscape for architectural effects. Flowers were grown and arranged to beautify banquet tables, and the gardens surrounding palaces and country estates became pleasure grounds, their design vying with the genius of the houses themselves. Where did these hundreds of trees and shrubs originate? Virginia creepers, American sycamores, Washington thorns, black walnuts, umbrella trees. Franklin trees, and even poison ivy are just a few of the many species that were brought to European gardens by adventurous plantsmen exploring colonial America.

Following the Revolutionary War, scientific and agricultural societies were formed in Boston and Philadelphia, botanical gardens were established in New York and Cambridge, and scientific expeditions were organized for the purpose of fostering the discovery of new plants throughout the world that could be grown in the North American climate.

Without doubt, the most fertile plant explorations by Americans and Europeans were conducted in the mysterious Orient. With the opening of Japanese and Chinese ports to foreign trade in the middle of the nineteenth century, European plantsmen were able to indulge their insatiable appetite for some of the most astounding ornamental plants the Western world had ever ginkgo trees, lacebark pines, Japanese yew, honeysuckles, lilacs, crabapples, magnolias, cherry trees, to name only a few.

A Reunion of Trees focuses on the particular contribution of the Arnold Arboretum, which was established in Boston in 1872 for the purpose of displaying and studying exotic plants from around the globe. Scores of trees and shrubs on the Arboretum grounds are described and illustrated in this handsomely produced volume. The landscape designer interested in recreating period gardens will find this book a treasure trove of information about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while amateur and professional gardeners alike will discover a unique resource book for many unusual plants.]]>
Stephen A. Spongberg 0674766938 Mary 3 3.67 1990 A Reunion of Trees: The Discovery of Exotic Plants and Their Introduction into North American and European Landscapes
author: Stephen A. Spongberg
name: Mary
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at: 2017/02/03
date added: 2024/05/29
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Spongberg's work focuses primarily on the importation of trees and other ligneous/woody plants (shrubs, bushes, etc.) into North America and Europe. The second half of the book discusses European and North American plant hunters' explorations in East Asia, especially Japan. The book is focalized through Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, an important importer of exotic plants since its founding in 1872.
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Carmen and Other Stories 193853 400 Prosper Mérimée 0192837222 Mary 3 3.87 Carmen and Other Stories
author: Prosper Mérimée
name: Mary
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/23
date added: 2024/05/23
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Calling for a Blanket Dance 58328439 A moving and deeply engaging debut novel about a young Native American man struggling to find strength in his familial identity, from a stellar new voice in literary fiction.

Told in a series of voices, Calling for a Blanket Dance takes us into the life of Ever Geimausaddle through the multigenerational perspectives of his family as they soldier through a myriad of difficulties: his father's sudden kidney failure and subsequent disability, his mother's struggle to hold on to her job and care for her husband, the constant resettlement of the family, and Ever's own bottled-up rage at the instability all around him. Meanwhile, all of Ever's relatives have ideas about who he is and who he shouldĚýbe. His Cherokee grandmother urges the family to move across the state to find security; his dying grandfather hopes to reunite him with his heritage through traditional gourd dances; his Kiowa cousin reminds him that he's connected to an ancestral past. And once an adult, Ever must take the strength given to him by his relatives to save not only himself, but also the next generation of family.

How will this young man visualize a place for himself when the world hasn't given him a place to start with? Honest, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting, Calling for a Blanket DanceĚýis the story of how Ever Geimausaddle found his way to home.]]>
258 Oscar Hokeah 1643751476 Mary 0 to-read 4.23 2022 Calling for a Blanket Dance
author: Oscar Hokeah
name: Mary
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare]]> 65211335 From major new storytelling talent Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, a blazing, bodily, raucous journey through contemporary Hawaiian identity and womanhood.

Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's wrenching and sensational debut story collection follows a cast of mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women through a contemporary landscape thick with inherited wisdom and the ghosts of colonization. This is a Hawai'i where unruly sexuality and generational memory overflow the postcard image of paradise and the boundaries of the real, where the superstitions born of the islands take on the weight of truth.

A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (pig) on the haunted Pali highway portends one young woman's fraught relationship with her pregnant body. An elderly widow begins seeing her deceased lover in a giant flower. A kanaka writer, mid-manuscript, feels her raw pages quaking and knocking in the briefcase.

Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare is both a fierce love letter to Hawaiian identity and mythology, and a searing dispatch from an occupied territory threatening to erupt with violent secrets.]]>
272 Megan Kamalei Kakimoto 1639731164 Mary 0 to-read 3.62 2023 Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare
author: Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
name: Mary
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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Birnam Wood 60784757 Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker--or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.]]>
432 Eleanor Catton 0374110336 Mary 3 3.79 2023 Birnam Wood
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Mary
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/10
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<![CDATA[Through the Arc of the Rain Forest]]> 730618 192 Karen Tei Yamashita 0356203220 Mary 0 to-read 3.86 1990 Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
author: Karen Tei Yamashita
name: Mary
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/22
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<![CDATA[The Return of the Native (The ^AWorld's Classics)]]> 4343183 510 Thomas Hardy 0192827170 Mary 4 3.93 1878 The Return of the Native (The ^AWorld's Classics)
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Mary
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/20
date added: 2024/04/20
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<![CDATA[Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool]]> 40121328
With EXPECTING BETTER, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In CRIBSHEET, she now tackles an even great challenge: decision making in the early years of parenting.

As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There's a rule--or three--for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the tradeoffs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision?]]>
352 Emily Oster 0525559256 Mary 3 4.12 2019 Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool
author: Emily Oster
name: Mary
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/20
date added: 2024/04/20
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<![CDATA[Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know]]> 16158576 What to Expect When You're Expecting meets Freakonomics: an award-winning economist disproves standard recommendationsĚýabout pregnancy to empower women while they're expecting.

Pregnancy—unquestionably one of the most pro­found, meaningful experiences of adulthood—can reduce otherwise intelligent women to, well, babies. Pregnant women are told to avoid cold cuts, sushi, alcohol, and coffee without ever being told why these are forbidden. Rules for prenatal testing are similarly unexplained. Moms-to-be desperately want a resource that empowers them to make their own right choices.

When award-winning economist Emily Oster was a mom-to-be herself, she evaluated the data behind the accepted rules of pregnancy and discovered that most are often misguided and some are just flat-out wrong. Debunking myths and explaining everything from the real effects of caffeine to the surprising dangers of gardening, Expecting Better is the book for every pregnant woman who wants to enjoy a healthy and relaxed pregnancy.]]>
336 Emily Oster 1594204756 Mary 3 4.28 2013 Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know
author: Emily Oster
name: Mary
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/08
date added: 2024/04/08
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Kingdomtide 45730891 The lives of two women -- the sole survivor of an airplane crash and the troubled park ranger leading the rescue mission -- collide in this "gripping" novel of tough-minded resilience (Vogue).


The sole survivor of a plane crash, seventy-two-year-old Cloris Waldrip finds herself lost and alone in the unforgiving wilderness of Montana's rugged Bitterroot Range, exposed to the elements with no tools beyond her wits and ingenuity. Intertwined with her story is Debra Lewis, a park ranger struggling with addiction, a recent divorce, and a new mission: to find and rescue Cloris.


As Cloris wanders mountain forests and valleys, subsisting on whatever she can find as her hold on life grows more precarious, Ranger Lewis and her motley group of oddball rescuers follow the trail of clues she's left behind. Days stretch into weeks, and hope begins to fade. But with nearly everyone else giving up, Ranger Lewis stays true until the end.


Dramatic and morally complex, Kingdomtide is a story of the decency and surprising resilience of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances. In powerful, exquisite prose, debut novelist Rye Curtis delivers an inspiring account of two unforgettable characters whose heroism reminds us that survival is only the beginning.]]>
295 Rye Curtis 0316420107 Mary 4 3.23 2020 Kingdomtide
author: Rye Curtis
name: Mary
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2024/03/30
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A fascinating premise and deeply authentic, moving characterization. Highly recommended!
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<![CDATA[The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse]]> 783174 384 Louise Erdrich 0060931221 Mary 4 4.11 2001 The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Mary
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/25
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<![CDATA[In Search of the Old Ones: An Odyssey among Ancient Trees]]> 138233556
Follow award-winning author Anthony D. Fredericks's adventures across the United States to uncover the remarkable secrets and lives of ancient trees. He introduces some of the oldest trees in the country using up-to-date research, interviews with scientists, captivating storytelling, and a contagious wonder for the natural world. Fredericks's visits to the trees turn readers into fellow travelers. Through firsthand accounts and scientific detail, these enduring trees come to life off the page.

Each chapter begins with a time-travel story that immerses readers in Earth's past, as early as ~58,000 BCE, for a sweeping view of what was happening during human history when the ancient tree took root. It then zooms into present-day to investigate the tree in all its mature glory and the changed world around it.

Some of the featured trees


Marvelously detailed and deeply passionate, In Search of the Old Ones will transform your perspective of the trees and forests around you.]]>
248 Anthony D. Fredericks 1588347478 Mary 3 4.00 In Search of the Old Ones: An Odyssey among Ancient Trees
author: Anthony D. Fredericks
name: Mary
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/03/16
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<![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]>
182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Mary 3 3.98 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Mary
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[Nature's Temples: A Natural History of Old-Growth Forests]]> 61282577
Standing in an old-growth forest, you can instinctively sense the ways it is different from forests shaped by humans. These ancient, undisturbed ecosystems are increasingly rare and largely misunderstood. Nature’s Temples explores the science and alchemy of old-growth forests and makes a compelling case for their protection.

Many foresters are proponents of forest management, while ecologists and conservation biologists believe that the healthiest forests are those we leave alone. Joan Maloof brings together the scientific data we have about old-growth forests, drawing on diverse fields of study to explain the ecological differences among forests of various ages. She describes the life forms and relationships that make old-growth forests unique―from salamanders and micro-snails to plants that communicate through fungi―and reveals why human attempts to manage forests can never replicate nature’s sublime handiwork. This revised and expanded edition also sheds new light on the special role forests play in removing carbon from the atmosphere and shares what we know about the interplay between wildfires and ancient forests.

With drawings by Andrew Joslin that illustrate scientific concepts and capture the remarkable beauty of ancient trees, Nature’s Temples invites you to discover the power of these fragile realms that are so inextricably connected to our planet, our fellow species, and our spirits.]]>
232 Joan Maloof 0691230501 Mary 4 4.11 2016 Nature's Temples: A Natural History of Old-Growth Forests
author: Joan Maloof
name: Mary
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/18
date added: 2024/03/07
shelves:
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"... our baselines are shifting. We don't even know what forests should look like anymore" (80). Maloof's book is an impassioned and deeply researched plea to save what remains of our old growth and second-growth forests, which provide unparalleled benefits to all who live in and near them.
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Wandering Stars 174147294
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family.

Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.]]>
315 Tommy Orange 0593318250 Mary 0 to-read 3.83 2024 Wandering Stars
author: Tommy Orange
name: Mary
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward (Penguin Classics)]]> 918351
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]>
304 Horatio Alger Jr. 0140390332 Mary 4 3.27 1868 Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward (Penguin Classics)
author: Horatio Alger Jr.
name: Mary
average rating: 3.27
book published: 1868
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/14
date added: 2024/02/14
shelves:
review:
This was a surprisingly fun read--it's easy to see where Alger's popularity comes from, even as he does endorse some problematic messages.
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The Fraud 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]>
464 Zadie Smith Mary 3 3.25 2023 The Fraud
author: Zadie Smith
name: Mary
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves:
review:
I have to admit I found this (much anticipated!) book a bit disappointing. I thought Bogle's life narration was the highlight of the book, but the connection between him and Mrs. Touchet was unconvincing, and Mrs. Touchet is also not a particularly sympathetic character. The extraordinarily short chapters (with a single conversation at times broken into 5-6 chapters) work against readerly immersion, which makes the book feel like more of a slog than it should.
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<![CDATA[The Experience of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective]]> 57285931 The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective is a collection of seven short stories, each portraying an individual mystery, varying crimes and intrigue. The Black Bag on the Doorstep is the first title in the collection, and follows a Christmas Eve robbery. Featuring a more heinous crime, The Murder at Troyte's Hill depicts a murder mystery after a local lodge-keeper is found dead in a ransacked room. Challenged with one of her most puzzling mysteries, Brooke attempts to find a young girl who vanished without a trace in the fan-favorite story, Missing. Unable to find a lead even after ten days of searching, the police are ready to give up, but Loveday Brooke is determined to reunite the girl with her family.

With an original approach to the mystery genre, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective was among Catherine Louisa Pirkis' most popular work. Often compared to Sherlock Holmes, Loveday Brooke remains to be a beloved and memorable character from the detective fiction genre, and is one of the earliest depictions of a woman working in the detective field in literature. With mysteries ranging from crimes of theft, murder, kidnap, and conspiracy, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective provides a fun and fresh reading experience, as it has remained to be progressive and intriguing nearly one-hundred and thirty years after its original publication.

This edition of The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis is now available in an easy-to-read font, and features a new, eye-catching cover design. With these accommodations, The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective is restored to modern standards while the original mastery of Catherine Louisa Pirkis' work is preserved.]]>
156 Catherine Louisa Pirkis 1513271989 Mary 4 3.33 1894 The Experience of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective
author: Catherine Louisa Pirkis
name: Mary
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1894
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/29
shelves:
review:
Excellent mysteries, well-worth checking out!
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<![CDATA[Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene]]> 49415258 Ěý
How we interpret the causes and consequences of extinction and their ensuing moral imperatives is deeply embedded in the cultural values of any given historical moment. And, as David Sepkoski reveals, the history of scientific ideas about extinction over the past two hundred years—as both a past and a current process—is implicated in major changes in the way Western society has approached biological and cultural diversity. It seems self-evident to most of us that diverse ecosystems and societies are intrinsically valuable, but the current fascination with diversity is a relatively recent phenomenon. In fact, the way we value diversity depends crucially on our sense that it is precarious—that it is something actively threatened, and that its loss could have profound consequences. In Catastrophic Thinking, Sepkoski uncovers how and why we learned to value diversity as a precious resource at the same time as we learned to think catastrophically about extinction.]]>
360 David Sepkoski 022634861X Mary 0 to-read 4.36 2020 Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene
author: David Sepkoski
name: Mary
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/26
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America]]> 60145000
NPR Science Friday Book Club Selection An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver—the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.

From award-winning writer Leila Philip, BEAVERLAND is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers .
Ěý
Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer�.
Ěý
What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, BEAVERLAND reveals the profound ways in which one oddĚýcreature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.]]>
336 Leila Philip 153875519X Mary 3 3.69 2022 Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America
author: Leila Philip
name: Mary
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/25
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves:
review:
Many interesting aspects of this book. I will say that I would have liked to learn a lot more about WHY beavers were re-introduced into so many parts of the U.S. after their virtual elimination.
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Dr. Wortle's School 149784
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.]]>
222 Anthony Trollope 0140434046 Mary 3 3.84 1879 Dr. Wortle's School
author: Anthony Trollope
name: Mary
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1879
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves:
review:
Who knew Trollope had a bigamy novel in him?
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<![CDATA[Our Little Farm: Adventures in Sustainable Living]]> 123941180
Called "a veritable tree whisperer" by the Wall Street Journal , Peter Wohlleben is known across the world for his illuminating books about forests and how to help them thrive. Now, the German forester invites readers into his home for the first time in Our Little Farm , describing the steps he and his wife, Miriam, have taken to live sustainably and in harmony with nature.

Peter and Miriam moved from the city to a remote forest lodge in the early nineties. Amidst juggling careers and raising a young family, they learned how to plant and rotate crops, harvest and preserve nature's bounty, and tend to the unique needs of their animals and environment. Along the way, they made mistakes and abandoned some projects (sheep raising was not their thing) but maintained a sense of joy in their shared goal.

Brimming with insights, wisdom, and tips on everything from constructing farm buildings to choosing the perfect chicken, Our Little Farm shows that, with a little grit, humor, and self-compassion, it's possible to live according to our values and to care for the earth even as we care for ourselves, our homes, and our families.


Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.]]>
224 Peter Wohlleben 177164625X Mary 4 3.64 Our Little Farm: Adventures in Sustainable Living
author: Peter Wohlleben
name: Mary
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/04
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves:
review:
A warmly written, practical examination of how to build self-sufficiency.
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Scenes of Clerical Life 1907763 432 George Eliot 0140430873 Mary 0 3.70 1857 Scenes of Clerical Life
author: George Eliot
name: Mary
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1857
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
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<![CDATA[Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees]]> 9755956
Deakin lives in forest shacks, goes "coppicing" in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts bushplums with Aboriginal women in the outback. Along the way, he ferrets out the mysteries of woods, detailing the life stories of the timber beams composing his Elizabethan house and searching for the origin of the apple.

As the world's forests are whittled away, Deakin's sparkling prose evokes woodlands anarchic with life, rendering each tree as an individual, living being. At once a traveler's tale and a splendid work of natural history, Wildwood reveals, amid the world's marvelous diversity, that which is universal in human experience.]]>
416 Roger Deakin 1416595325 Mary 4 A lovely ramble through wood. 4.16 2007 Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees
author: Roger Deakin
name: Mary
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2023/12/26
shelves:
review:
A lovely ramble through wood.
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Orley Farm 7543444 860 Anthony Trollope 0192817132 Mary 2 NOT Trollope's finest. 3.88 1861 Orley Farm
author: Anthony Trollope
name: Mary
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1861
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2023/12/26
shelves:
review:
NOT Trollope's finest.
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<![CDATA[When Two Feathers Fell From The Sky]]> 56058677 Ěý

TwoĚýFeathers, a young Cherokee horse-diver on loan to Glendale Park Zoo from a Wild West show, is determined toĚýfindĚýher own way in the world.ĚýTwo’s closest friend at Glendale is Hank Crawford, who loves horses almost as much as she does. He is part of a high-achieving, land-owning Black family. NeitherĚýTwo nor HankĚýfitĚýeasily into the highly segregated society of 1920s Nashville.

When disaster strikes during one ofĚýTwo’s shows, strange things start to happen at the park.ĚýVestiges of the ancient past begin to surface, apparitions appear, and then the hippo falls mysteriously ill. At the same time, Two dodges her unsettling, lurking admirer and bonds with Clive, Glendale’s zookeeper and a World War I veteran,Ěýwho is haunted—literally—by horrific memories of war. To get to the bottom of it, an eclectic cast of park performers, employees, and even the wealthy stakeholders must come together, making When Ěý TwoĚýFeathers Fell from the Sky Ěýan unforgettable and irresistible tale of exotic animals, lingering spirits, and unexpected friendship.]]>
384 Margaret Verble 0358554837 Mary 4 3.56 2021 When Two Feathers Fell From The Sky
author: Margaret Verble
name: Mary
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/12
date added: 2023/12/12
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<![CDATA[The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Nicholas Meyer Holmes Pastiches #1)]]> 77378 The Seven-Per-Cent Solution relates the astounding and previously unknown collaboration of Sigmund Freud with Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Holmes's friend and chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson. In addition to its breathtaking account of their collaboration on a case of diabolic conspiracy in which the lives of millions hang in the balance, it reveals such matters as the real identity of the heinous professor Moriarty, the dark secret shared by Sherlock and his brother Mycroft Holmes, and the detective's true whereabouts during the Great Hiatus, when the world believed him to be dead.]]> 224 Nicholas Meyer 0393311198 Mary 4 4.15 1974 The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Nicholas Meyer Holmes Pastiches #1)
author: Nicholas Meyer
name: Mary
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/05
date added: 2023/12/05
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The Art of Eating 924837 768 M.F.K. Fisher 0020322208 Mary 3 4.25 1954 The Art of Eating
author: M.F.K. Fisher
name: Mary
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1954
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/01
date added: 2023/12/03
shelves:
review:
I originally wanted to read this book--or rather, one of the books in this omnibus volume, How to Cook a Wolf--back in April, when food shortages were at their height. But the library was still closed then, and I finally had a chance to read this now, when food shortages are likely just around the corner again. Fisher's wit, good humor, and sparkling prose are cheering. And I'm glad that this current world crisis doesn't involve Atwood-esque food substitutes like the NuEg (or something like that) described in How to Cook a Wolf. I wish I'd had a bit more time to savor this. Reading five books at one go in order to return this on time felt a little too much like over-eating.
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Conversations with Birds 59867830
So begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than human life, and discouraged by the civilization she saw contributing to its destruction. It was only in her twenties, living in Los Angeles and working on films, that she began to rediscover her place in the landscape � and in the cosmos � by way of watching birds.

Tracing her movements across the American West, this stirring collection of essays brings the avian world richly to life. Kumar’s perspective is not that of a list keeper, counting and cataloguing species. Rather, from the mango-colored western tanager that rescues her from a bout of altitude sickness in Sequoia National Park to ancient sandhill cranes in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, and from the snowy plovers building shallow nests with bits of shell and grass to the white-breasted nuthatch that regularly visits the apricot tree behind her family’s casita in Sante Fe, for Kumar, birds “become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world.�

At a time when climate change, habitat loss, and the reckless use of pesticides are causing widespread extinction of species, Kumar’s reflections on these messengers from our distant past and harbingers of our future offer luminous evidence of her suggestion that “seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us.”]]>
281 Priyanka Kumar 1571313990 Mary 4 3.57 Conversations with Birds
author: Priyanka Kumar
name: Mary
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/02
date added: 2023/12/02
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<![CDATA[Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation]]> 123410681
Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The Indigenous women’s basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 World’s Fair. Celebrating women like these who acted on their confidence outdoors, Wild Girls brings new context to misunderstood icons like Sacagawea and Pocahontas, and to underappreciated figures like Native American activist writer Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, farmworkers� champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.

This beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women’s independence, resourcefulness, and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, Wild Girls evokes landscapes as richly as the girls who roamed in them—and argues for equal access to outdoor spaces for young women of every race and class today.]]>
192 Tiya Miles 1324020873 Mary 4 3.53 2023 Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation
author: Tiya Miles
name: Mary
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/16
date added: 2023/11/16
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<![CDATA[We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth]]> 60423701
Although for a great many people, the human impact on the Earth—countless species becoming extinct, pandemics claiming millions of lives, and climate crisis causing worldwide social and environmental upheaval—was not apparent until recently, this is not the case for all people or cultures. For the Indigenous people of the world, radical alteration of the planet, and of life itself, is a story that is many generations long. They have had to adapt, to persevere, and to be courageous and resourceful in the face of genocide and destruction—and their experience has given them a unique understanding of civilizational devastation.

An innovative work of research and reportage, We Are the Middle of Forever places Indigenous voices at the center of conversations about today’s environmental crisis. The book draws on interviews with people from different North American Indigenous cultures and communities, generations, and geographic regions, who share their knowledge and experience, their questions, their observations, and their dreams of maintaining the best relationship possible to all of life. A welcome antidote to the despair arising from the climate crisis, We Are the Middle of Forever brings to the forefront the perspectives of those who have long been attuned to climate change and will be an indispensable aid to those looking for new and different ideas and responses to the challenges we face.]]>
368 Dahr Jamail 1620976692 Mary 0 to-read 4.46 2022 We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth
author: Dahr Jamail
name: Mary
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/06
shelves: to-read
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Sinking Bell: Stories 59808506
An ex-con hired to fix up a school bus for a couple living off the grid in the desert finds himself in the middle of their tattered relationship. An electrician’s plan to take his young nephew on a hike in the mountains, as a break from the motel room where they live, goes awry thanks to an untrustworthy new coworker. A night custodian makes the mistake of revealing too much about his work at a medical research facility to a girl who shares his passion for death metal. A relapsing addict struggles to square his desire for a white woman he meets in a writing class with family expectations and traditions.

Set in and around Flagstaff, the stories in Sinking Bell depict violent collisions of love, cultures, and racism. In his gritty and searching fiction debut, Bojan Louis draws empathetic portraits of day laborers, metalheads, motel managers, aspiring writers and musicians, construction workers, people passing through with the hope of something better somewhere else. His characters strain to temper predatory or self-destructive impulses; they raise families, choose families, and abandon families; they endeavor to end cycles of abuse and remake themselves anew.]]>
192 Bojan Louis 1644452030 Mary 0 to-read 3.82 2022 Sinking Bell: Stories
author: Bojan Louis
name: Mary
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/06
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Kinauvit?: What’s Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter’s Search for her Grandmother]]> 72331072 184 Norma Dunning Mary 0 to-read 3.96 2022 Kinauvit?: What’s Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter’s Search for her Grandmother
author: Norma Dunning
name: Mary
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/06
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History]]> 61871743 A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America
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� A National Bestseller
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“Eloquent and comprehensive. . . . In the book’s sweeping synthesis, standard flashpoints of U.S. history take on new meaning.”—Kathleen DuVal, Wall Street Journal
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“In accounts of American history, Indigenous peoples are often treated as largely incidental—either obstacles to be overcome or part of a narrative separate from the arc of nation-building. Blackhawk . . . [shows] that Native communities have, instead, been inseparable from the American story all along.”� Washington Post Book World, “Books to Read in 2023�
Ěý
The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.
Ěý
Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that
Ěý
� European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success;
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� Native nations helped shape England’s crisis of empire;
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� the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior;
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� California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War;
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� the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West;
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â€� twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Ěý
Ěý
Blackhawk’s retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.]]>
596 Ned Blackhawk 0300244053 Mary 0 to-read 4.15 2023 The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
author: Ned Blackhawk
name: Mary
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/06
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<![CDATA[Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1)]]> 35008814 New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson weaves a delicate tale of murder and mystery in the first book of a striking new series, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and E. Lockhart.

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,� he said, “where learning is a game.�

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.� It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.Ěý

The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.]]>
420 Maureen Johnson 0062338056 Mary 3 4.06 2018 Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1)
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Mary
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/06
date added: 2023/11/06
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<![CDATA[The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature]]> 15808516
In this wholly original book, biologist David Haskell uses a one- square-meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest as a window onto the entire natural world. Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature's path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life.

Each of this book's short chapters begins with a simple observation: a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossom of spring wildflowers. From these, Haskell spins a brilliant web of biology and ecology, explaining the science that binds together the tiniest microbes and the largest mammals and describing the ecosystems that have cycled for thousands- sometimes millions-of years. Each visit to the forest presents a nature story in miniature as Haskell elegantly teases out the intricate relationships that order the creatures and plants that call it home.
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288 David George Haskell 0143122940 Mary 3 4.33 2012 The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature
author: David George Haskell
name: Mary
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/02
date added: 2023/11/02
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<![CDATA[Fruit Trees for Every Garden: An Organic Approach to Growing Apples, Pears, Peaches, Plums, Citrus, and More]]> 40163161
WINNER OF THE AMERICAN HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY BOOK AWARD

For more than forty years, Orin Martin has taught thousands of apprentices, students, and home gardeners the art and craft of growing fruit trees organically. In Fruit Trees for Every Garden , Orin shares--with hard-won wisdom and plenty of humor--his recommended fruit varieties and techniques for productive trees, including apple, pear, peach, plum, apricot, nectarine, sweet cherry, orange, lemon, fig, and more.

If you crave crisp apples, juicy peaches, or varieties of fruit that can never be found in the store, they are all within reach in your own backyard. Whether you have one tree or a hundred, Orin gives you all the tools you need, from tree selection and planting practices to seasonal feeding guidelines and in-depth pruning tutorials. Along the way, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the core principles of organic gardening and soil compost, cultivation, cover crops, and increasing biodiversity for a healthier garden. This book is more than just a gardening manual; it's designed to help you understand the why behind the how , allowing you to apply these techniques to your own slice of paradise and make the best choices for your individual trees.

Filled with informative illustrations, full-color photography, and evocative intaglio etchings by artist Stephanie Martin, Fruit Trees for Every Garden is a striking and practical guide that will enable you to enjoy the great pleasure and beauty of raising homegrown, organic fruit for years to come.]]>
288 Orin Martin 0399580026 Mary 3 4.12 Fruit Trees for Every Garden: An Organic Approach to Growing Apples, Pears, Peaches, Plums, Citrus, and More
author: Orin Martin
name: Mary
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/08
date added: 2023/10/24
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A helpful introduction with a more diverse slate of fruit trees than many others (I especially appreciated the sections on persimmons and figs).
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Melmoth the Wanderer 207313 659 Charles Robert Maturin 014044761X Mary 3 3.76 1820 Melmoth the Wanderer
author: Charles Robert Maturin
name: Mary
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1820
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/22
date added: 2023/10/22
shelves:
review:
One of the strangest books I've ever read.
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