en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 17:21:07 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 8935689
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.]]> 467 Iain M. Banks 1857231384 Adam 4 3.86 1987
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Adam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 597790 The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales , also edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher, only hinted at the depth and power of the tragic story of Túrin and Niënor, the children of Húrin, the lord of Dor-lómin, who achieved renown for having confronted Morgoth, who was the master of Sauron, the manifestation of evil in the Lord of the Rings.

Six thousand years before the One Ring is destroyed, Middle-earth lies under the shadow of the Dark Lord Morgoth. The greatest warriors among elves and men have perished, and all is in darkness and despair. But a deadly new leader rises, Túrin, son of Húrin, and with his grim band of outlaws begins to turn the tide in the war for Middle-earth -- awaiting the day he confronts his destiny and the deadly curse laid upon him.]]> 315 J.R.R. Tolkien 0007246226 Adam 0 to-read 4.04 2007
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Adam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 38470178 Nora Krug's story of her attempt to confront the hidden truths of her family's wartime past in Nazi Germany and to comprehend the forces that have shaped her life, her generation, and history.

Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow throughout her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. For Nora, the simple fact of her German citizenship bound her to the Holocaust and its unspeakable atrocities and left her without a sense of cultural belonging. Yet Nora knew little about her own family’s involvement in the war: though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it.

In her late thirties, after twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child and young adult. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier in Italy. Her quest, spanning continents and generations, pieces together her family’s troubling story and reflects on what it means to be a German of her generation.]]> 288 Nora Krug 0241183561 Adam 0 currently-reading 4.36 2018
author: Nora Krug
name: Adam
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 45252 Second Chance, is dispatched to learn what has occurred and whether it represents a threat. In command is Wilson Kime, a five-time rejuvenated ex-NASA pilot whose glory days are centuries behind him.

Opposed to the mission are the Guardians of Selfhood, a cult that believes the human race is being manipulated by an alien entity they call the Starflyer. Bradley Johansson, leader of the Guardians, warns of sabotage, fearing the Starflyer means to use the starship's mission for its own ends.

Pursued by a Commonwealth special agent convinced the Guardians are crazy but dangerous, Johansson flees. But the danger is not averted. Aboard the Second Chance, Kime wonders if his crew has been infiltrated. Soon enough, he will have other worries. A thousand light-years away, something truly incredible is waiting: a deadly discovery whose unleashing will threaten to destroy the Commonwealth... and humanity itself. Could it be that Johansson was right?]]> 768 Peter F. Hamilton 0345461622 Adam 0 to-read 4.23 2004
author: Peter F. Hamilton
name: Adam
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18630 293 Iain M. Banks 0061053562 Adam 0 to-read 4.28 1988
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Adam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 176444106 Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.

To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.]]> 304 Ezra Klein 1668023482 Adam 4 4.11 2025
author: Ezra Klein
name: Adam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 55399 Vast legions of gods, mages, humans, dragons and all manner of creatures play out the fate of the Malazan Empire in this first book in a major epic fantasy series from Steven Erikson.

The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen's rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.

For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving cadre mage of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, yet holds out. It is to this ancient citadel that Laseen turns her predatory gaze.

However, it would appear that the Empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister, shadowbound forces are gathering as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand...

Conceived and written on a panoramic scale, Gardens of the Moon is epic fantasy of the highest order--an enthralling adventure by an outstanding new voice.]]> 666 Steven Erikson 0765348780 Adam 0 dnf 3.91 1999
author: Steven Erikson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> 6297739 An ambitious and enlightening look at why the so-called Dark Ages were anything but that.

Prizewinning historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the Dark Ages in European history with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of new material and featuring a thoughtful synthesis of historical and archaeological approaches, Wickham argues that these centuries were critical in the formulation of European identity. Far from being a middle period between more significant epochs, this age has much to tell us in its own right about the progress of culture and the development of political thought.

Sweeping in its breadth, Wickham's incisive history focuses on a world still profoundly shaped by Rome, which encompassed the remarkable Byzantine, Carolingian, and Ottonian empires, and peoples ranging from Goths, Franks, and Vandals to Arabs, Anglo- Saxons, and Vikings. Digging deep into each culture, Wickham constructs a vivid portrait of a vast and varied world stretching from Ireland to Constantinople, the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The Inheritance of Rome brilliantly presents a fresh understanding of the crucible in which Europe would ultimately be created.

]]> 651 Chris Wickham 0670020982 Adam 0 currently-reading 3.94 2009
author: Chris Wickham
name: Adam
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 203578847 The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive―the iconic epic fantasy masterpiece that has sold more than 10 million copies, from acclaimed bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare―and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray.

Desperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide―Adolin in Azimir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah at Thaylen City. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade. He is accompanied by Kaladin, who faces a new battle helping Szeth fight his own demons . . . and who must do the same for the insane Herald of the Almighty, Ishar.

At the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]> 1344 Brandon Sanderson 1250319188 Adam 0 dnf 4.36 2024
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> 123204507 Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.]]> 288 Rob Harvilla 1538759462 Adam 0 3.88 2023
author: Rob Harvilla
name: Adam
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 91981
Simon, a kitchen boy from the royal castle unknowingly apprenticed to a member of this League, will be sent on a quest that offers the only hope of salvation, a deadly riddle concerning long-lost swords of power. Compelled by fate and perilous magics, he must leave the only home he’s ever known and face enemies more terrifying than Osten Ard has ever seen, even as the land itself begins to die.

After the landmark Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, the epic saga of Osten Ard continues with the brand-new novel, The Heart of What Was Lost. Then don’t miss the upcoming trilogy, The Last King of Osten Ard, beginning with The Witchwood Crown!]]> 672 Tad Williams 0756402697 Adam 0 dnf 3.96 1988
author: Tad Williams
name: Adam
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> 60018232 From the master storyteller and internationally bestselling author - the story of humanity from prehistory to the present day, told through the one thing all humans have in common: family.

We begin with the footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago. From here, Montefiore takes us on an exhilarating epic journey through the families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads.

A rich cast of complex characters form the beating heart of the story. Some are well-known leaders, from Alexander the Great, Attila, Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan to Hitler, Thatcher, Obama, Putin and Zelensky. Some are creative, from Socrates, Michelangelo and Shakespeare to Newton, Mozart, Balzac, Freud, Bowie and Tim Berners-Lee.

Others are lesser-known: Hongwu, who began life as a beggar and founded the Ming dynasty; Kamehameha, conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, Arab empress who defied Rome; King Henry of Haiti; Lady Murasaki, first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, Moroccan pirate-queen. Here are not just conquerors and queens but prophets, charlatans, actors, gangsters, artists, scientists, doctors, tycoons, lovers, wives, husbands and children.

This is world history on the most grand and intimate scale - spanning centuries, continents and cultures, and linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, medicine and technology to the people at the centre of the human drama.

As spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the story of humankind in all its joy, sorrow, romance, ingenuity and cruelty in a ground-breaking, single narrative that will forever shift the boundaries of what history can achieve.]]> 1344 Simon Sebag Montefiore 0525659536 Adam 0 to-read 3.90 2022
author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
name: Adam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36454667 Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy.

It was not his war.
On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe started down a path that could only end in fire. The galaxy remembers him as a the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives—even the Emperor himself—against Imperial orders.
But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier.
Fleeing his father and a future as a torturer, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a strange, backwater world. Forced to fight as a gladiator and into the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, he will find himself fight a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.]]> 753 Christopher Ruocchio 0756413028 Adam 0 to-read 4.01 2018
author: Christopher Ruocchio
name: Adam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2858266 When We Ruled is by far the best general work on the ancient and medieval history of Black people there has ever been.

This landmark publication, which is superbly illustrated with high quality photographs, maps and drawings, provides an extraordinary and cutting-edge synthesis of the archaeological data, the documentary evidence, and the historical linguistic research. It recounts the fascinating story of the origin and development of indigenous civilisations across the vast panorama of the African continent.

In particular, the author answers the key question in Black history: How much documented history is there beyond the Slave Trade, Mary Seacole, and Malcolm X? In 713 pages that question is answered again and again with a vast array of evidence that explodes the widely held view that Africans were without historical distinctions. In particular, there are ancient and medieval monuments that are still standing all over Africa. In addition, there are Black families and institutions that still possess their medieval manuscripts.

The history of Black people cannot be divorced from the history of peoples on other continents particularly Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Topic areas that have traditionally been ignored, such as Black Women's history, early African science and technology, and the two-way influences between Africa and Europe, are also discussed.

What is remarkable about this work is that for the first time it dares to connect Egypt, and its cultural affinities, with Africa and its chronological timeline within the vast chronology (nearly 90,000 years) of African achievement. It is now untenable for Egyptologists to consider themselves to be experts on Egypt without understanding the African cultural signature embedded within Ancient Egypt and its long history.

Faculty, students and parents interested in a comprehensive, critical and balanced overview of African or Black history will find no better book.]]> 713 Robin Oliver Walker 095510680X Adam 0 to-read 4.38 2006
author: Robin Oliver Walker
name: Adam
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52025940 A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national bestselling author Marc Morris.

Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters.

The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics. It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters - ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being.

Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.]]> 508 Marc Morris 1643133126 Adam 0 to-read 4.29 2021
author: Marc Morris
name: Adam
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40500762 208 Poul Anderson Adam 0 to-read 3.89 1954
author: Poul Anderson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.�� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells Adam 0 4.11 2017
author: Martha Wells
name: Adam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves:
review:

]]> 62315995
In the late 80s and early 90s, Steve Turner��and his friends—Seattle skate punks, hardcore kids, and assorted misfits—started forming bands in each other’s basements and accidentally created��a��unique sound that spread far beyond their��once-sleepy city. Mud Ride ��offers an inside look at the tight-knit grunge scene, the musical influences and experiments that shaped the grunge sound, and the story of Turner's bands, Green River and Mudhoney, which��went from underground flophouse��shows to selling out stadiums with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Including stories about the key moments, musicians, and albums from grunge's��beginnings to its��come-down from the highs of global success and stardom, this is the first account of the musical phenomenon that took over the world from someone��who was there for it all.

Written by Steve Turner, lead guitarist of Mudhoney, a foundational grunge band��that inspired musical icons��from Kurt Cobain to Sonic Youth,�� Mud Ride features a foreword by Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard and never-before-seen��photographs and grunge memorabilia��throughout. Take a seat and ride through the messy and muddy��grunge scene that grew from the��basements of the Northwest and went on to circle the globe.

MUST HAVE FOR For cult fans of Mudhoney and all things Seattle grunge, this is the perfect book to add to your collection. Turner helped put Sub Pop Records on the map, a label that launched bands like Soundgarden and more. Mudhoney was also one of the first American grunge bands to tour Europe and the UK, laying the groundwork for the worldwide explosion of grunge. Learn more about the ins and outs of the birth of grunge and immerse yourself in '80s and '90s Seattle.

A GREAT GIFT FOR MUSIC For the aspiring musician or anyone wanting to learn more about music history, this is an illuminating look into grunge and Seattle bands that have gone on to become world-famous.

AN ESSENTIAL ROCK HISTORY An amazing gift for readers of Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me , John Doe and Tom DeSavia's Under the Big Black Sun , and Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life . Anyone wanting to learn more about the history of grunge will delight in this great tell-all read.

Perfect ]]> 304 Steve Turner 1797217224 Adam 0 3.89
author: Steve Turner
name: Adam
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 1297150 314 Bernard Cornwell 0060888644 Adam 0 4.30 2007
author: Bernard Cornwell
name: Adam
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 10790499 Twenty years after the release of Nirvana’s landmark album��Nevermind comes Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, the definitive word on the grunge era, straight from the mouths of those at the center of it all.
��
In 1986, fledgling Seattle label C/Z Records released Deep Six, a compilation featuring a half-dozen local bands: Soundgarden, Green River, Melvins, Malfunkshun, the U-Men and Skin Yard. Though it sold miserably, the record made music history by documenting a burgeoning regional sound, the raw fusion of heavy metal and punk rock that we now know as grunge. But it wasn’t until five years later, with the seemingly overnight success of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,�� that grunge became a household word and Seattle ground zero for the nineties alternative-rock explosion.

Everybody Loves Our Town��captures the grunge era in the words of the musicians, producers, managers, record executives, video directors, photographers, journalists, publicists, club owners, roadies, scenesters and hangers-on who lived through it. The book tells the whole story: from the founding of the Deep Six bands to the worldwide success of grunge’s big four (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains); from the rise of Seattle’s cash-poor, hype-rich indie label Sub Pop to the major-label feeding frenzy that overtook the Pacific Northwest; from the simple joys of making noise at basement parties and tiny rock clubs to the tragic, lonely deaths of superstars Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley.

Drawn from more than 250 new interviews—with members of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Hole, Melvins, Mudhoney, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog, Mad Season, L7, Babes in Toyland, 7 Year Bitch, TAD, the U-Men, Candlebox and many more �� and featuring previously untold stories and never-before-published photographs, Everybody Loves Our Town is at once a moving, funny, lurid, and hugely insightful portrait of an extraordinary musical era.]]> 592 Mark Yarm 0307464431 Adam 0 to-read 4.26 2011
author: Mark Yarm
name: Adam
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201930181
Caught up in academic intrigue and affairs of the heart, Dafyd Alkhor is pleased just to be an assistant to a brilliant scientist and his celebrated research team. ��Then the Carryx ships descend, decimating the human population and taking the best and brightest of Anjiin society away to serve on the Carryx homeworld, and Dafyd is swept along with them. They are dropped in the middle of a struggle they barely understand, set in a competition against the other captive species with extinction as the price of failure.

Only Dafyd and a handful of his companions see past the Darwinian contest to the deeper game that they must play to learning to understand �� and manipulate �� the Carryx themselves. With a noble but suicidal human rebellion on one hand and strange and murderous enemies on the other, the team pays a terrible price to become the trusted servants of their new rulers. Dafyd Alkhor is a simple man swept up in events that are beyond his control and more vast than his imagination. ��He will become the champion of humanity and its betrayer, the most hated man in history and the guardian of his people. This is where his story begins.]]> 422 James S.A. Corey 031652557X Adam 3 4.11 2024
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Adam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 10411930
Remember When All You Wanted Was Your MTV?

It was a pretty radical idea-a channel for teenagers, showing nothing but music videos. It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.

I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business.

Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.]]> 608 Craig Marks 0525952306 Adam 0 to-read 3.87 2011
author: Craig Marks
name: Adam
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43305488 Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology, their art and culture. From Björn Ironside, who led an expedition to sack Rome, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most travelled woman in the world, Price shows us the real Vikings, not the caricatures they have become in popular culture and history.]]> 656 Neil Price Adam 0 to-read 4.14 2020
author: Neil Price
name: Adam
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53968530 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Ozzi's reporting is strong, balanced and well told...a worthy successor to its obvious inspiration, Michael Azerrad's 2001 examination of the '80s indie underground, 'Our Band Could Be Your Life.'"--New York Times Book Review

A raucous history of punk, emo, and hardcore’s growing pains during the commercial boom of the early 90s and mid-aughts, following eleven bands as they “sell out�� and find mainstream fame, or break beneath the weight of it all
��
Punk rock found itself at a crossroads in the mid-90’s. After indie favorite Nirvana catapulted into the mainstream with its unexpected phenomenon,��Nevermind, rebellion was suddenly��en vogue. Looking to replicate the band’s success, major record labels set their sights on the underground, and began courting punk’s rising stars. But the DIY punk scene, which had long prided itself on its trademark authenticity and anti-establishment ethos, wasn’t quite ready to let their homegrown acts go without a fight. The result was a schism: those who accepted the cash flow of the majors, and those who defiantly clung to their indie cred.
��
In��Sellout,��seasoned music writer Dan Ozzi chronicles this embattled era in punk. Focusing on eleven prominent bands who made the jump from indie to major,��Sellout��charts the twists and turns of the last “gold rush�� of the music industry, where some groups “sold out�� and rose to surprise super stardom, while others buckled under mounting pressures. Sellout��is both a gripping history of the music industry’s evolution, and a punk rock lover’s guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era, featuring original interviews and personal stories from members of modern punk’s most (in)famous bands:
Green Day
Jawbreaker
Jimmy Eat World
Blink-182
At the Drive-In
The Donnas
Thursday
The Distillers
My Chemical Romance
Rise Against
Against Me!]]> 400 Dan Ozzi 0358244307 Adam 4 4.38 2021
author: Dan Ozzi
name: Adam
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 54606854
The Last Ghetto is the first in-depth analytical history of a prison society during the Holocaust. Rather than depict the prison society which existed within the ghetto as an exceptional one, unique in kind and not understandable by normal analytical methods, Anna Hájková argues that such prison societies that developed during the Holocaust are best understood as simply other instances of the societies human beings create under normal circumstances. Challenging conventional claims of Holocaust exceptionalism, Hájková insists instead that we ought to view the Holocaust with the same analytical tools as other historical events.

The prison society of Terezín produced its own social hierarchies under which seemingly small differences among prisoners (of age, ethnicity, or previous occupation) could determine whether one ultimately lived or died. During the three and a half years of the camp's existence, prisoners created their own culture and habits, bonded, fell in love, and forged new families. Based on extensive archival research in nine languages and on empathetic reading of victim testimonies, The Last Ghetto is a transnational, cultural, social, gender, and organizational history of Terezín, revealing how human society works in extremis and highlighting the key issues of responsibility, agency and its boundaries, and belonging.]]> 374 Anna Hájková 0190051795 Adam 0 4.11
author: Anna Hájková
name: Adam
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 155314 416 Simon Schama 0786866756 Adam 0 4.07 2000
author: Simon Schama
name: Adam
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 18635622 368 George R.R. Martin 0345533488 Adam 0 4.24 2015
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Adam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 34466963 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781501144318.

Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night.]]> 368 Matthew Walker Adam 0 4.37 2017
author: Matthew Walker
name: Adam
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 68526 317 Bernard Cornwell 0060888628 Adam 0 4.34 2007
author: Bernard Cornwell
name: Adam
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/02
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 9477628 The epic story of Jerusalem told through the lives of the men and women who created, ruled and inhabited it.

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence.

How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the ‘centre of the world�� and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem’s biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women �� kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores �� who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem.

Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime’s study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique chronicle of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice �� in heaven and on earth.]]> 752 Simon Sebag Montefiore 0297852655 Adam 5 4.07 2011
author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
name: Adam
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 55278507 The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us an extraordinary space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all.

The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .

Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.

After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared—and Idris and his kind became obsolete.

Now, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It's clearly the work of the Architects—but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.]]> Adrian Tchaikovsky 1549106392 Adam 0 4.09 2021
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Adam
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 52090 The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication.

This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence,

Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling and unsettled issues of the twentieth century that remains hotly debated to this day.]]> 312 Hannah Arendt Adam 0 4.22 1963
author: Hannah Arendt
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 202473205
Populist rage, ideological fracture, economic and technological shocks, war, and an international system studded with catastrophic risk—the early decades of the twenty-first century may be the most revolutionary period in modern history. But it is not the first. Humans have lived, and thrived, through more than one great realignment. What are these revolutions, and how can they help us to understand our fraught world?

In this major work, Fareed Zakaria masterfully investigates the eras and movements that have shaken norms while shaping the modern world. Three such periods hold profound lessons for today. First, in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, a fascinating series of transformations made that tiny land the richest in the world—and created politics as we know it today. Next, the French Revolution, an explosive era that devoured its ideological children and left a bloody legacy that haunts us today. Finally, the mother of all revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, which catapulted Great Britain and the US to global dominance and created the modern world.

Alongside these paradigm-shifting historical events, Zakaria probes four present-day revolutions: globalization, technology, identity, and geopolitics. For all their benefits, the globalization and technology revolutions have produced profound disruptions and pervasive anxiety and our identity. And increasingly, identity is the battlefield on which the twenty-first century’s polarized politics are fought. All this is set against a geopolitical revolution as great as the one that catapulted the United States to world power in the late nineteenth century. Now we are entering a world in which the US is no longer the dominant power. As we find ourselves at the nexus of four seismic revolutions, we can easily imagine a dark future. But Zakaria proves that pessimism is premature. If we act wisely, the liberal international order can be revived and populism relegated to the ash heap of history.

As few public intellectuals can, Zakaria combines intellectual range, deep historical insight, and uncanny prescience to once again reframe and illuminate our turbulent present. His bold, compelling arguments make this book essential reading in our age of revolutions.]]> 400 Fareed Zakaria 0393239233 Adam 4 4.12 2024
author: Fareed Zakaria
name: Adam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/11
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 68528
This is the exciting—yet little known—story of the making of England in the 9th and 10th centuries, the years in which King Alfred the Great, his son and grandson defeated the Danish Vikings who had invaded and occupied three of England’s four kingdoms.

At the end of The Last Kingdom, The Danes had been defeated at Cynuit, but the triumph of the English is not fated to last long. The Danish Vikings quickly invade and occupy three of England’s four kingdoms—and all that remains of the once proud country is a small piece of marshland, where Alfred and his family live with a few soldiers and retainers, including Uhtred, the dispossessed English nobleman who was raised by the Danes. Uhtred has always been a Dane at heart, and has always believed that given the chance, he would fight for the men who raised him and taught him the Viking ways. But when Iseult, a powerful sorceress, enters Uhtred’s life, he is forced to consider feelings he’s never confronted before—and Uhtred discovers, in his moment of greatest peril, a new-found loyalty and love for his native country and ruler.]]> 349 Bernard Cornwell 0061144835 Adam 0 4.30 2006
author: Bernard Cornwell
name: Adam
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 56897579
In one of the most well-known and well-loved fantasy epics of the 20th century, Elric is the brooding, albino emperor of the dying Kingdom of Melnibone. With Melnibone’s years of grandeur and decadence long since passed, Elric’s amoral cousin Yrkoon sets his eyes on the throne. Elric, realizing he is his country’s best hope, must face his nefarious cousin in an epic battle for the right to rule.

Elric of Melnibone is the first in Michael Moorcock’s incredible series, which created fantasy archetypes that have echoed through the genre for generations. The beautiful, vivid illustrations bring new life to the story and are sure to captivate fans, new and old.

Contents:
'One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock', by Neil Gaiman.
Elric of Melniboné.
The Fortress of the Pearl.
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate.
The Weird of the White Wolf.]]> 752 Michael Moorcock 1534445684 Adam 0 to-read 4.04 2021
author: Michael Moorcock
name: Adam
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58989873 ��
But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.
��
As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.
��
In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.]]> 272 David Sedaris 0316392456 Adam 0 4.15 2022
author: David Sedaris
name: Adam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 68527
The story is seen through the eyes of Uhtred, a dispossessed nobleman, who is captured as a child by the Danes and then raised by them so that, by the time the Northmen begin their assault on Wessex (Alfred’s kingdom and the last territory in English hands) Uhtred almost thinks of himself as a Dane. He certainly has no love for Alfred, whom he considers a pious weakling and no match for Viking savagery, yet when Alfred unexpectedly defeats the Danes and the Danes themselves turn on Uhtred, he is finally forced to choose sides. By now he is a young man, in love, trained to fight and ready to take his place in the dreaded shield wall. Above all, though, he wishes to recover his father’s land, the enchanting fort of Bebbanburg by the wild northern sea.

This thrilling adventure—based on existing records of Bernard Cornwell’s ancestors—depicts a time when law and order were ripped violently apart by a pagan assault on Christian England, an assault that came very close to destroying England.]]> 333 Bernard Cornwell 0060887184 Adam 0 4.27 2004
author: Bernard Cornwell
name: Adam
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/02
date added: 2024/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 55252533 One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power--and why we love them so much.

Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech--the urgency with which we say "f&*k!" is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger.

Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.]]> 286 John McWhorter 0593188802 Adam 0 3.95 2021
author: John McWhorter
name: Adam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/29
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 228244 180 Tadeusz Borowski 0140186247 Adam 0 to-read 4.17 1946
author: Tadeusz Borowski
name: Adam
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58082714 The Nineties: a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn't know who it was. By the end, exposing someone's address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn't know who it was. The '90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we're still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.

Beyond epiphenomena like Cop Killer and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a '90s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it.

In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, "The video for 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany" make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.]]> 370 Chuck Klosterman 0735217955 Adam 4 3.86 2022
author: Chuck Klosterman
name: Adam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/01/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 81067992 The long-awaited sequel to A Column of Fire, The Armor of Light, heralds a new dawn for Kingsbridge, England, where progress clashes with tradition, class struggles push into every part of society, and war in Europe engulfs the entire continent and beyond.

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

Over thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, with this electrifying addition to the Kingsbridge series we are plunged into the battlefield between compassion and greed, love and hate, progress and tradition. It is through each character that we are given a new perspective to the seismic shifts that shook the world in nineteenth-century Europe.]]> 737 Ken Follett 0525954996 Adam 0 4.10 2023
author: Ken Follett
name: Adam
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/01/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 78292253 Legendary filmmaker and celebrated author Werner Herzog tells in his inimitable voice the story of his epic artistic career in a long-awaited memoir that is as inventive and daring as anything he has done before

Werner��Herzog��was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the��Second��World��War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids,��Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother��to��a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood��hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there,��as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed. ��

Until age 11,��Herzog��did not even know of the existence of cinema. His interest in films began at age 15, but since no one was willing to finance them, he worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory. He started to travel on foot. He made his first phone call at age 17, and his first film in 1961 at age 19. The wildly��productive working life that followed—spanning the seven continents and encompassing both documentary and fiction—was an adventure as grand and��otherworldly as any depicted in his many classic films.

Every Man for Himself and God Against All is at once a personal record of one of the great and self-invented lives of our time, and a singular literary masterpiece that will enthrall fans old and new alike. In a hypnotic swirl of memory,��Herzog��untangles and relives his most important experiences and inspirations, telling his story for the first and only time.]]> 367 Werner Herzog 0593490290 Adam 0 to-read 4.25 2022
author: Werner Herzog
name: Adam
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Adam 0 4.28 2016
author: Amor Towles
name: Adam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/25
date added: 2023/10/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 20821221 A magnificent new biography that revolutionizes our understanding��of Stalin and his world

It has the quality of myth: A poor cobbler’s son, a seminarian from an oppressed outer province of the Russian empire, reinvents himself as a revolutionary and finds a leadership role within a small group of marginal zealots. When the old world is unexpectedly brought down in a total war, the band seizes control of the country, and the new regime it founds as the vanguard of a new world order is ruthlessly dominated from within by the former seminarian until he stands as the absolute ruler of a vast and terrible state apparatus, with dominion over Eurasia. But the largest country in the world is also a poor and backward one, far behind the great capitalist countries in industrial and military power, encircled on all sides. Shortly after seizing total power, Stalin conceives of the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted: the root-and-branch uprooting and collectivization of agriculture and industry across the entire Soviet Union. To stand up to the capitalists he will force into being an industrialized, militarized, collectivized great power is an act of will. Millions will die, and many more will suffer, but Stalin will push through to the end against all resistance and doubts. Where did such power come from? We think we know the story well. Remarkably, Stephen Kotkin’s epic new biography shows us how much we still have to learn.

The product of a decade of scrupulous and intrepid research, Stalin contains a host of astonishing revelations. Kotkin gives an intimate first-ever view of the Bolshevik regime’s inner geography, bringing to the fore materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police. He details Stalin’s invention of a fabricated trial and mass executions as early as 1918, the technique he would later impose across the whole country. The book places Stalin’s momentous decision for collectivization more deeply than ever in the tragic history of imperial Russia. Above all, Kotkin offers a convincing portrait and explanation of Stalin’s monstrous power and of Russian power in the world. Stalin restores a sense of surprise to the way we think about the former Soviet Union, revolution, dictatorship, the twentieth century, and indeed the art of history itself.
]]> 976 Stephen Kotkin 1594203792 Adam 0 to-read 3.94
author: Stephen Kotkin
name: Adam
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17332243
Hild is the king’s youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the world—of studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen next—that can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She establishes herself as the king’s seer. And she is indispensable—until she should ever lead the king astray. The stakes are life and death: for Hild, her family, her loved ones, and the increasing numbers who seek the protection of the strange girl who can read the world and see the future.

Hild is a young woman at the heart of the violence, subtlety, and mysticism of the early medieval age—all of it brilliantly and accurately evoked by Nicola Griffith’s luminous prose. Recalling such feats of historical fiction as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, Hild brings a beautiful, brutal world—and one of its most fascinating, pivotal figures, the girl who would become St. Hilda of Whitby—to vivid, absorbing life.]]> 546 Nicola Griffith 0374280878 Adam 0 to-read 3.80 2013
author: Nicola Griffith
name: Adam
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123262219
As the front man for the sixties pop-rock-funk band Sly and the Family Stone, a songwriter who created some of the most memorable anthems of the 1960s and 1970s (“Everyday People,�� “Family Affair��), and a performer who electrified audiences at Woodstock and elsewhere, Sly Stone’s influence on modern music and culture is indisputable. But as much as people know the music, the man remains a mystery. After a rapid rise to superstardom, Sly spent decades in the grips of addiction.

Now he is ready to relate the ups and downs and ins and outs of his amazing life in his memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) . The book moves from Sly’s early career as a radio DJ and record producer through the dizzying heights of the San Francisco music scene in the late 1960s and into the darker, denser life (and music) of 1970s and 1980s Los Angeles. Set on stages and in mansions, in the company of family and of other celebrities, it’s a story about flawed humanity and flawless artistry.

Written with Ben Greenman, who has also worked on memoirs with George Clinton and Brian Wilson, and in collaboration with Arlene Hirschkowitz, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is a vivid, gripping, sometimes terrifying, and ultimately affirming tour through Sly’s life and career. Like Sly, it’s honest and playful, sharp and blunt, emotional and analytical, always moving and never standing still.]]> 320 Sly Stone 0374606978 Adam 0 to-read 3.51 2023
author: Sly Stone
name: Adam
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60531406 #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson expands his Cosmere universe shared by The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn with a new standalone novel for everyone who loved The Princess Bride.

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?]]> 443 Brandon Sanderson Adam 0 4.35 2023
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 124456529
This entertaining book charts the journey of the cassette from its invention in the early 1960s to its Walkman-led domination in the 1980s to decline at the birth of compact discs to resurgence among independent music makers. Scorned by the record industry for "killing music," the cassette tape rippled through scenes corporations couldn't control. For so many, tapes meant freedom—to create, to invent, to connect.

Marc Masters introduces readers to the tape artists who thrive underground; concert tapers who trade bootlegs; mixtape makers who send messages with cassettes; tape hunters who rescue forgotten sounds; and today's labels, which reject streaming and sell music on cassette. Their stories celebrate the cassette tape as dangerous, vital, and radical.]]> 224 Marc Masters 1469675986 Adam 0 to-read 3.95 2023
author: Marc Masters
name: Adam
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7810361 354 Eric Davidson 0879309725 Adam 0 3.78 2010
author: Eric Davidson
name: Adam
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2010/12/25
date added: 2023/08/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 18775383
Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.]]> 245 William Deresiewicz 1476702713 Adam 0 to-read 3.85 2014
author: William Deresiewicz
name: Adam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 112286
The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust—an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him.

Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time.

***
Depuis qu’il est enfant, Daniel Mendelsohn sait que son grand-oncle Shmiel, sa femme et leurs quatre filles ont été tués, quelque part dans l’est de la Pologne, en 1941. Comment, quand, où exactement ? Nul ne peut lui en dire plus. Et puis il découvre ces lettres désespérées écrites en 1939 par Shmiel à son frère, installé en Amérique, des lettres pressant sa famille de les aider à partir, des lettres demeurées sans réponse... Parce qu’il a voulu savoir ce qui s’est passé, parce qu’il a voulu donner un visage à ces six disparus, Daniel Mendelsohn est parti sur leurs traces, rencontrant, année après année, des témoins épars dans une douzaine de pays. Cette quête, il en a fait un livre, puzzle vertigineux, roman policier haletant, plongée dans l’Histoire et l’oubli �� un chef-d’œuvre.

« Daniel Mendelsohn a écrit une œuvre puissamment émouvante sur le passé " ; perdu " ; d’une famille, qui rappelle à la fois l’opulence des œuvres en prose de Proust et les textes elliptiques de W.G. Sebald. Une réussite exceptionnelle. » Joyce Carol Oates
« Les Disparus est une bouleversante enquête de détective à part entière, doublée d’un questionnement sur les interventions énigmatiques de Dieu dans les affaires humaines, et approfondie par une réflexion sur la part d’inéluctable et d’incompréhensible que le hasard introduit dans l’Histoire. » John Maxwell Cœtzee
« Entre épopée et intimité, méditation et suspense, tragédie et hilarité, Les Disparus est un livre merveilleux. » Jonathan Safran Fœr « Mendelsohn réussit à assembler un tableau immensément humain dans lequel chaque témoin a un visage et chaque visage une histoire et un destin. » Elie Wiesel]]> 512 Daniel Mendelsohn 0060542977 Adam 5 4.02 2006
author: Daniel Mendelsohn
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/09
date added: 2023/07/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 33571713 As Europe erupts, can one young spy protect his queen? Ken Follett takes us deep into the treacherous world of powerful monarchs, intrigue, murder, and treason with his magnificent epic, A Column of Fire—the chronological latest in the Kingsbridge series, following The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, and the prequel, The Evening and the Morning.

In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love.

Ned Willard wants nothing more than to marry Margery Fitzgerald. But when the lovers find themselves on opposing sides of the religious conflict dividing the country, Ned goes to work for Princess Elizabeth. When she becomes queen, all Europe turns against England. The shrewd, determined young monarch sets up the country’s first secret service to give her early warning of assassination plots, rebellions, and invasion plans. Over a turbulent half century, the love between Ned and Margery seems doomed as extremism sparks violence from Edinburgh to Geneva. Elizabeth clings to her throne and her principles, protected by a small, dedicated group of resourceful spies and courageous secret agents.

The real enemies, then as now, are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else—no matter what the cost.

Exciting and ambitious, and set during one of the most turbulent and revolutionary times in history, A Column of Fire will delight longtime fans of the Kingsbridge series and serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Ken Follett.]]> 916 Ken Follett 052595497X Adam 0 4.16 2017
author: Ken Follett
name: Adam
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/02
date added: 2023/07/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 465848
" . . . some of the most gripping chapters I have ever read. . . . the authentic, exhaustive, definitive account of the least known death camps of the Nazi era." ―Raul Hilberg

Arad, historian and principal prosecution witness at the Israeli trial of John Demjanjuk (accused of being Treblinka's infamous "Ivan the Terrible"), uses primary materials to reveal the complete story of these Nazi death camps.]]> 448 Yitzhak Arad 0253213053 Adam 0 to-read 4.28 1987
author: Yitzhak Arad
name: Adam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 255161 ����������������������������������������������������
A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany.
����������������������������������������������������
What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?
����������������������������������������������������
This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities.
����������������������������������������������������
Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end."���� When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life of����tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."]]> 544 Victor Klemperer 0375753788 Adam 0 4.25 1995
author: Victor Klemperer
name: Adam
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/16
date added: 2023/04/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 40376072
Long ago, Earth's terraforming program sent ships out to build new homes for humanity among the stars and made an unexpected discovery: a planet with life. But the scientists were unaware that the alien ecosystem was more developed than the primitive life forms originally discovered.

Now, thousands of years later, the Portiids and their humans have sent an exploration vessel following fragmentary radio signals. They discover a system in crisis, warring factions trying to recover from an apocalyptic catastrophe arising from what the early terraformers awoke all those years before.]]> 597 Adrian Tchaikovsky Adam 0 to-read 4.02 2019
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Adam
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25499718
WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?]]> 608 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1447273281 Adam 4 4.29 2015
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Adam
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/12
date added: 2023/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 60929
The Oankali survive by genetically merging with primitive civilizations—whether their new hosts like it or not. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be inhabited. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to survive the planet’s untamed wilderness. But their children will not be human. Not exactly.]]> 248 Octavia E. Butler 0446603775 Adam 0 to-read 4.15 1987
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Adam
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52676109
Alongside the very ambiguous relationship of the Vichy Regime and the collaboration of many French professionals with the occupiers, this immense program of wine collection was a drama that many would prefer to forget. Now, more than seventy years after the end of the conflict, the time has come to tell the story of what really happened.

Following a meticulous investigation and relying exclusively on previously unpublished sources, Christophe Lucand reveals the history of the world of French wine that was subjected to the tests of war, occupation and of all the compromises this entails.]]> 240 Christophe Lucand 1526750716 Adam 0 to-read 4.00
author: Christophe Lucand
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1268479
Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren's capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.]]> 688 Brandon Sanderson Adam 4 4.29 2009
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/26
date added: 2022/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 16003595
And a great story unfolds. Not - as often imagined - of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians. Which makes the story of the Jews everyone's story, too.]]> 496 Simon Schama 1847921329 Adam 0 to-read 3.92 2013
author: Simon Schama
name: Adam
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 419940 280 Doris L. Bergen 0847696316 Adam 0 to-read 4.22 2002
author: Doris L. Bergen
name: Adam
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30036
The youthful Elric is a cynical and melancholy king, heir to a nation whose 100,000-year rule of the world ended less than 500 years hence. More interested in brooding contemplation than holding the throne, Elric is a reluctant ruler, but he also realizes that no other worthy successor exists and the survival of his once-powerful, decadent nation depends on him alone. Elric's nefarious, brutish cousin Yrkoon has no patience for his physically weak kinsman, and he plots constantly to seize Elric's throne, usually over his dead body. Elric of Melniboné follows Yrkoon's scheming, reaching its climax in a battle between Elric and Yrkoon with the demonic runeblades Stormbringer and Mournblade. In this battle, Elric gains control of the soul-stealing Stormbringer, an event that proves pivotal to the Elric saga. --Paul Hughes]]> 181 Michael Moorcock 0441203981 Adam 0 to-read 3.90 1972
author: Michael Moorcock
name: Adam
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36130437
Contents:

Drive (2012)
The Butcher of Anderson Station (2011)
The Churn (2014)
Gods of Risk (2012)
The Vital Abyss (2015)
Strange Dogs (2017)
Auberon (2019)
The Sins of our Fathers (2022)

*does not include The Last Flight of the Cassandra]]> 423 James S.A. Corey Adam 0 to-read 4.33 2022
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Adam
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 49239093
It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns.

In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder's life is turned upside down when his home is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in. . . . A Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband's homeland are shockingly different, and it soon becomes clear to her that a single misstep could be catastrophic. . . . A monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each in turn comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power.

Thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, Follett's masterful new prequel The Evening and the Morning takes us on an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate, that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.]]> 913 Ken Follett 0525954988 Adam 0 4.32 2020
author: Ken Follett
name: Adam
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/06/30
date added: 2022/06/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 59576066 The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II

In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda's long war.

At the end of 1944, on Lubang Island in the Philippines, with Japanese troops about to withdraw, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was given orders by his superior officer: Hold the island until the Imperial army's return. You are to defend its territory by guerrilla tactics, at all costs. . . . There is only one rule. You are forbidden to die by your own hand. In the event of your capture by the enemy, you are to give them all the misleading information you can. So began Onoda's long campaign, during which he became fluent in the hidden language of the jungle. Soon weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into decades--until eventually time itself seemed to melt away. All the while Onoda continued to fight his fictitious war, at once surreal and tragic, at first with other soldiers, and then, finally, alone, a character in a novel of his own making.

In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda's years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style--part documentary, part poem, and part dream--that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.]]> 144 Werner Herzog 0593490266 Adam 0 to-read 3.85 2021
author: Werner Herzog
name: Adam
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57505823
Greg Ginn started SST Records in the sleepy beach town of Hermosa Beach, CA, to supply ham radio enthusiasts with tuners and transmitters. But when Ginn wanted to launch his band, Black Flag, no one was willing to take them on. Determined to bring his music to the masses, Ginn turned SST into a record label. On the back of Black Flag’s relentless touring, guerilla marketing, and refusal to back down, SST became the sound of the underground.

In�� Corporate Rock Sucks, music journalist Jim Ruland relays the unvarnished story of SST Records, from its remarkable rise in notoriety to its infamous downfall. With records by��Black Flag,��Minutemen, Hüsker Dü , Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, and scores of obscure yet influential bands, SST was the most popular indie label by the mid-80s--until a tsunami of legal jeopardy, financial peril, and dysfunctional management brought the empire tumbling down. Throughout this investigative deep-dive, Ruland leads readers through SST’s tumultuous history and epic catalog.

Featuring never-before-seen interviews with the label's former employees, as well as musicians, managers, producers, photographers, video directors, and label heads,�� Corporate Rock Sucks�� presents a definitive narrative history of the ��80s punk and alternative rock scenes, and shows how the music industry was changed forever.]]> Jim Ruland Adam 0 to-read 3.96
author: Jim Ruland
name: Adam
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 946222 352 Edward Tabor Linenthal 0231124074 Adam 0 4.01 1995
author: Edward Tabor Linenthal
name: Adam
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2022/05/03
date added: 2022/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 5064 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads of new ideas—about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race—the Black Death.]]> 1237 Ken Follett Adam 4 4.30 2007
author: Ken Follett
name: Adam
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/27
date added: 2022/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 199447 136 Nicholas Rombes 0826416713 Adam 1 3.50 2005
author: Nicholas Rombes
name: Adam
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2005
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2022/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 40603587
But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good... and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ASIN B0010SIPT4]]> 400 Andrzej Sapkowski Adam 0 4.12 1993
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Adam
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at: 2022/03/06
date added: 2022/03/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 57341456 From the author of the definitive New York Times bestselling history of the Beatles comes the authoritative account of the group many call the greatest rock band of all time, arguably the most successful, and certainly one of the most notorious

Rock star. Whatever that term means to you, chances are it owes a debt to Led Zeppelin. No one before or since has lived the dream quite like Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. In Led Zeppelin, Bob Spitz takes their full measure, separating the myth from the reality with his trademark connoisseurship and storytelling flair.

From the opening notes of their first album, the band announced itself as something different, a collision of grand artistic ambition and brute primal force, of English folk music and African American blues. That record sold over 10 million copies, and it was just the beginning; Led Zeppelin's albums have sold over 300 million certified copies worldwide, and the dust has never settled.

The band is notoriously guarded, and previous books provided more heat than light. But Spitz's authority is undeniable and irresistible. His feel for the atmosphere, the context--the music, the business, the recording studios, the touring life, the whole ecosystem of popular music--is unparalleled. His account of the melding of Page and Jones, the virtuosic London sophisticates, with Plant and Bonham, the wild men from the Midlands, in a scene dominated by the Beatles and the Stones but changing fast, is in itself a revelation. Spitz takes the music seriously and brings the band's artistic journey to full and vivid life.

The music, however, is only part of the legend: Led Zeppelin is also the story of how the sixties became the seventies, of how playing clubs became playing stadiums, of how innocence became decadence. Led Zeppelin wasn't the first rock band to let loose on the road, but as with everything else, they took it to an entirely new level. Not all the legends are true, but in Spitz's careful accounting, what is true is astonishing and sometimes disturbing.

Led Zeppelin gave no quarter, and neither has Bob Spitz. Led Zeppelin is the full and honest reckoning the band has long awaited, and richly deserves.]]> 688 Bob Spitz 0399562427 Adam 5 4.03 2021
author: Bob Spitz
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/08
date added: 2022/02/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 6572270
Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

From Booklist
If there is an explanation for the political killing perpetrated in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, historian Snyder roots it in agriculture. Stalin wanted to collectivize farmers; Hitler wanted to eliminate them so Germans could colonize the land. The dictators wielded frightening power to advance such fantasies toward reality, and the despots toted up about 14 million corpses between them, so stupefying a figure that Snyder sets himself three goals here: to break down the number into the various actions of murder that comprise it, from liquidation of the kulaks to the final solution; to restore humanity to the victims via surviving testimony to their fates; and to deny Hitler and Stalin any historical justification for their policies, which at the time had legions of supporters and have some even today. Such scope may render Snyder’s project too imposing to casual readers, but it would engage those exposed to the period’s chronology and major interpretive issues, such as the extent to which the Nazi and Soviet systems may be compared. Solid and judicious scholarship for large WWII collections.]]> 524 Timothy Snyder 0465002390 Adam 0 to-read 4.37 2010
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Adam
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 89159
The Paris Tasting of 1976 will forever be remembered as the landmark event that transformed the wine industry. At this legendary contest—a blind tasting—a panel of top French wine experts shocked the industry by choosing unknown California wines over France’s best.

George M. Taber, the only reporter present, recounts this seminal contest and its far-reaching effects, focusing on three gifted unknowns behind the winning a college lecturer, a real estate lawyer, and a Yugoslavian immigrant. With unique access to the main players and a contagious passion for his subject, Taber renders this historic event and its tremendous aftershocks—repositioning the industry and sparking a golden age for viticulture across the globe. With an eclectic cast of characters and magnificent settings, Judgment of Paris is an illuminating tale and a story of the entrepreneurial spirit of the new world conquering the old.]]> 350 George M. Taber 0743297326 Adam 0 to-read 3.96 2005
author: George M. Taber
name: Adam
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 44525992
For all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the fact that they are only part of―and indeed reactions to―the central event of that emancipation. In this book, David Sorkin seeks to reorient Jewish history by offering the first comprehensive account in any language of the process by which Jews became citizens with civil and political rights in the modern world. Ranging from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, Jewish Emancipation tells the ongoing story of how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel.

Emancipation, Sorkin shows, was not a one-time or linear event that began with the Enlightenment or French Revolution and culminated with Jews' acquisition of rights in Central Europe in 1867��71 or Russia in 1917. Rather, emancipation was and is a complex, multidirectional, and ambiguous process characterized by deflections and reversals, defeats and successes, triumphs and tragedies. For example, American Jews mobilized twice for in the nineteenth century for political rights, and in the twentieth for lost civil rights. Similarly, Israel itself has struggled from the start to institute equality among its heterogeneous citizens.

By telling the story of this foundational but neglected event, Jewish Emancipation reveals the lost contours of Jewish history over the past half millennium.]]> 528 David Sorkin 0691164940 Adam 0 to-read 4.12
author: David Sorkin
name: Adam
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28335699
In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte’s missing daughter. . . and the shattered emperor himself. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before.

As nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilization free from wars, factions, lies, and secrets if they win.

But the price of victory may be worse than the cost of defeat.]]> 528 James S.A. Corey 0356510395 Adam 0 4.48 2021
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Adam
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2022/01/06
date added: 2022/01/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 40915200 The powerfully told story of a group of German Jews desperately seeking American visas to escape Nazi Germany, and an illuminating account of America's response to the refugee crisis of the 1930's and 40's. This book complements the exhibition The Americans and the Holocaust that is now on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC

In October 1940 the Gestapo expelled 6,504 Jews from southwest Germany, creating the first official "Jewish free zone" in the Third Reich. Interned in concentration camps in Vichy France, the deportees set out on a multi-year quest to acquire American visas. One in four eventually managed to gain entry to the U.S. or to other foreign countries; the remainder perished in French camps or, later, in Auschwitz.
Among these "unwanted" refugees were Jews from the village of Kippenheim, whose stories are at the heart of this book. Drawing on previously unpublished letters, diaries, and visa records, Michael Dobbs provides a vivid picture of what it was like to live among increasingly hostile neighbors, waiting for "the piece of paper with a stamp" that meant the difference between life and death. And he recounts the debates over the fate of these refugees occurring simultaneously at the highest levels of the American government at a time when the public was deeply isolationist, xenophobic and antisemitic. Here is the riveting narrative of a small community struggling to survive amid tumultuous events and reach a safe haven despite the odds stacked against them.]]> 368 Michael Dobbs 1524733199 Adam 4 4.19 2019
author: Michael Dobbs
name: Adam
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/04
date added: 2022/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 356296 An alternate cover edition of this ISBN can be found here.

The remarkable untold story of France's courageous, clever vintners who protected and rescued the country's most treasured commodity from German plunder during World War II.

"To be a Frenchman means to fight for your country and its wine."
-Claude Terrail, owner, Restaurant La Tour d'Argent

In 1940, France fell to the Nazis and almost immediately the German army began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, winemakers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their extraordinary efforts has remained largely unknown-until now. This is the thrilling and harrowing story of the French wine producers who undertook ingenious, daring measures to save their cherished crops and bottles as the Germans closed in on them. Wine and War illuminates a compelling, little-known chapter of history, and stands as a tribute to extraordinary individuals who waged a battle that, in a very real way, saved the spirit of France.]]> 290 Don Kladstrup 0767904486 Adam 0 to-read 4.00 2001
author: Don Kladstrup
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55360284
Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them.

Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia, falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.

Written with Stanley's signature wry humour and nostalgia, Taste is a heartwarming read that will be irresistible for anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.]]> 291 Stanley Tucci 1982168013 Adam 4 4.19 2021
author: Stanley Tucci
name: Adam
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/30
date added: 2021/11/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 20819685
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.]]> 624 David Mitchell 1400065674 Adam 3 3.82 2014
author: David Mitchell
name: Adam
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2021/11/12
date added: 2021/11/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 22886612
A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle.

Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees. The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price.

And as a new human order is struggling to be born in blood and fire, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante must struggle to survive and get back to the only home they have left.]]> 536 James S.A. Corey 031621759X Adam 0 4.44 2015
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Adam
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/10/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 50997608 “Melissa Maerz’s brilliant oral history is the definitive account of a cult-classic movie that took a slow ride into the Seventies and defined the Nineties.�� –Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone

The definitive oral history of the cult classic�� Dazed and Confused , featuring behind-the-scenes stories from the cast, crew, and Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater.

Dazed and Confused not only heralded the arrival of filmmaker Richard Linklater, it introduced a cast of unknowns who would become the next generation of movie stars. Embraced as a cultural touchstone, the 1993 film would also make Matthew McConaughey’s famous phrase��alright, alright, alright—ubiquitous. But it started with a simple idea: Linklater thought people might like to watch a movie about high school kids just hanging out and listening to music on the last day of school in 1976. ������

To some, that might not even sound like a movie. But to a few studio executives, it sounded enough like the next American Graffiti to justify the risk. Dazed and Confused underperformed��at the box office and seemed destined to disappear. Then something weird happened: Linklater turned out to be right. This wasn’t the kind of movie everybody liked, but it was the kind of movie certain people loved, with an intensity that felt personal. No matter what their high school experience was like, they thought Dazed and Confused was about them.

Alright, Alright, Alright is the story of how this iconic film came together and why it worked. Combining behind-the-scenes photos and insights from nearly the entire cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and many others, and with full access to Linklater’s Dazed archives, it offers an inside look at how a budding filmmaker and a cast of newcomers made a period piece that would feel timeless for decades to come.]]> 441 Melissa Maerz 0062908502 Adam 5 4.39 2020
author: Melissa Maerz
name: Adam
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/27
date added: 2021/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 23995415 A brilliant, haunting, and profoundly original portrait of the defining tragedy of our time.

In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.

The Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler's mind, with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately needed.��Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed other states, so Hitler's aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died.��A few people, the righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions.��Much of the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these extraordinary individuals.��The almost insurmountable difficulties they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and ecological panic.��These men and women should be emulated, but in similar circumstances few of us would do so.��

By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future.��The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order.��Our world is closer to Hitler's than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was -- and ourselves as we are.�� Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning.]]> 462 Timothy Snyder 1101903457 Adam 0 4.28 2015
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Adam
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2021/09/27
date added: 2021/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 5043 Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape.

Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.

The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.

For the TV tie-in edition with the same ISBN go to this Alternate Cover Edition
]]> 976 Ken Follett 045122213X Adam 4 4.34 1989
author: Ken Follett
name: Adam
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/18
date added: 2021/08/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 54776142 From the comedian, television writer, and host of the Best Show, a revealing and powerful memoir exploring a life of struggle and reinvention

"Tom Scharpling possesses more than merely a generation-defining comedic mind. He has a heart as big as New Jersey, an eye as keen as a crow's, and a voice as powerful, pained, and righteous as a wounded god. I AM NOT BEING HYPERBOLIC." --John Hodgman, New York Times bestselling author of Vacationland

Tom Scharpling is good at being funny, which is a miracle, considering what he's survived. Like hitting a deer and narrowly escaping with his life on the night of the 2016 election. But that's nothing compared to the struggles he had earlier in his life.

It Never Ends is his memoir of a life writing comedy amidst a lifelong struggle with mental illness, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his intense coming-of-age, and the lengths he's undertaken to pull away from the brink of self-destruction. Scharpling brought himself back to life first with punk zines and NBA coverage, then through the world of comedy, writing and executive producing Monk, and creating one of the most beloved, longest running comedy radio broadcasts/podcasts, The Best Show. Of course, there are also the tangents into auditioning for The New Monkees, why Billy Joel sucks, the siren call of the Sex and the City slot machines, and how he made a fool of himself in an elevator with Patti Smith.

Tom is the quintessential underdog, and he wears that status on his sleeve as a badge of honor. With this memoir, he lifts the curtain to let the light in on the turmoil that still follows him, even as he racks up accolades and achievements. But most importantly, he reminds us that while many of us carry trauma and shame, we are not alone. It Never Ends is about rising above whatever circumstance you find yourself in and getting the most out of your life, while steamrolling the chumps along the way.]]> 288 Tom Scharpling 1419747924 Adam 0 to-read 4.24 2021
author: Tom Scharpling
name: Adam
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55922484
RICK DALTON �� Once he had his own TV series, but now Rick’s a washed-up villain-of-the week drowning his sorrows in whiskey sours. Will a phone call from Rome save his fate or seal it?

CLIFF BOOTH �� Rick’s stunt double, and the most infamous man on any movie set because he’s the only one there who might have gotten away with murder. . . .

SHARON TATE �� She left Texas to chase a movie-star dream, and found it. Sharon’s salad days are now spent on Cielo Drive, high in the Hollywood Hills.

CHARLES MANSON �� The ex-con’s got a bunch of zonked-out hippies thinking he’s their spiritual leader, but he’d trade it all to be a rock ‘n�� roll star.

HOLLYWOOD 1969 �� YOU SHOULDA BEEN THERE]]> 400 Quentin Tarantino 0063112523 Adam 0 to-read 3.86 2021
author: Quentin Tarantino
name: Adam
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 48931090
In 2009, the acclaimed author of Hitler’s Furies was shown a photograph just brought to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The documentation of the Holocaust is vast, but there are virtually no images of a Jewish family at the actual moment of murder, in this case by German officials and Ukrainian collaborators. A Ukrainian shooter’s rifle is inches from a woman's head, obscured in a cloud of smoke. She is bending forward, holding the hand of a barefooted little boy. And �� only one of the shocking revelations of Wendy Lower’s brilliant ten-year investigation of this image �� the shins of another child, slipping from the woman’s lap.

Wendy Lower’s forensic and archival detective work �� in Ukraine, Germany, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States �� recovers astonishing layers of detail concerning the open-air massacres in Ukraine. The identities of mother and children, of the killers—and, remarkably, of the Slovakian photographer who openly took the image, as a secret act of resistance �� are dramatically uncovered. Finally, in the hands of this brilliant exceptional scholar, a single image unlocks a new understanding of the place of the family unit in the ideology of Nazi genocide.]]> 272 Wendy Lower 0544828690 Adam 4 4.11 2021
author: Wendy Lower
name: Adam
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/06/17
date added: 2021/06/17
shelves:
review:

]]> 8200580 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award
One of the��New York Times'��Ten Best Books of the Year
Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy.]]> 952 Tony Judt 1440624763 Adam 0 to-read 4.40 2005
author: Tony Judt
name: Adam
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1634386 THE MURDERERS AMONG US is the terrifying story of this man, and of how and why he earned the label, "The world's most relentless Nazi-Hunter!"
"Reads like a fascinating detective thriller.. .You just can't lay the book down."
-SATURDAY REVIEW

"AN ABSORBING NIGHTMARE TALE...IT IS ALL TRUE, BUT THE READER MUST PINCH HIMSELF TO BELIEVE IT."
-MIAMI HERALD]]> 368 Simon Wiesenthal 0330300539 Adam 0 to-read 4.03 1967
author: Simon Wiesenthal
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53138020
From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-Platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's "Nothin' But a Good Time" captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and hangers-on who lived it.]]> 535 Tom Beaujour 1250195756 Adam 4 4.06 2021
author: Tom Beaujour
name: Adam
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/06/02
date added: 2021/06/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 57730842


���Ա��������



Do you want to become the most knowledgeable person in your social group about wine? Do you want to uncork a bottle of whoop-ass on every winedouche and uppity sommelier? Do you want attractive people to hurl themselves at you?



And are you too lazy to spend any time whatsoever learning things?This might be your jam. The Greatest Wine Book Ever �� written by the World’s Leading Wine Influencer.



Adapted from the hugely popular Drinking & Knowing Things blog, this book provides fifty-two specific wine recommendations. All you gotta do is spend five minutes each week reading the weekly wine recommendation, and then go out and drink a bottle of it. Within three months you’ll be wine conversant. Within six months you’ll become the de facto sommelier of your social group. And by the end of the year, you’ll be taking somms to the mat and doing James Bond level wine sh*t.



Legal Michael Amon is in no way responsible for any maniacal wine passion you develop by going down this rabbit hole or any sultry situations you may find yourself in. He is also not responsible for your feelings. If you’re timid or easily offended it’s probably better if you opt out now.



If you’re still reading, buckle up. Sh*t’s about to get real��.]]> 218 Michael Amon Adam 0 to-read 4.52
author: Michael Amon
name: Adam
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 49021976 The eagerly awaited sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling Oathbringer, from epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson

After forming a coalition of human resistance against the enemy invasion, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant have spent a year fighting a protracted, brutal war. Neither side has gained an advantage, and the threat of a betrayal by Dalinar's crafty ally Taravangian looms over every strategic move.

Now, as new technological discoveries by Navani Kholin's scholars begin to change the face of the war, the enemy prepares a bold and dangerous operation. The arms race that follows will challenge the very core of the Radiant ideals, and potentially reveal the secrets of the ancient tower that was once the heart of their strength.

At the same time that Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with his changing role within the Knights Radiant, his Windrunners face their own problem: As more and more deadly enemy Fused awaken to wage war, no more honorspren are willing to bond with humans to increase the number of Radiants. Adolin and Shallan must lead the coalition’s envoy to the honorspren stronghold of Lasting Integrity and either convince the spren to join the cause against the evil god Odium, or personally face the storm of failure.]]> 1232 Brandon Sanderson 0765326388 Adam 4 4.58 2020
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Adam
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/05/04
date added: 2021/05/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 944073
Nobleman Captain Jezal dan Luthar, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.

Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glokta a whole lot more difficult.

Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.

]]> 515 Joe Abercrombie 0575079797 Adam 0 to-read 4.21 2006
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Adam
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32335827
Left unchecked, the Jews' well-honed ability to absorb from surrounding cultures might have led to their disappearance. And yet, the route toward full and unbridled assimilation was checked by the nearly constant presence of hatred toward the Jew. Anti-Jewish expression and actions have regularly accompanied Jews throughout history. Part of the ironic success of antisemitism is its malleability, its talent in assuming new forms and portraying the Jew in diverse and often contradictory images--for example, at once the arch-capitalist and revolutionary Communist. Antisemitism not only served to blunt further assimilation, but, in a paradoxical twist, affirmed the Jew's sense of difference from the host society. And thus together assimilation and antisemitism (at least up to a certain limit) contribute to the survival of the Jews as a highly adaptable and yet distinct group.
]]> 168 David N. Myers 0199730989 Adam 0 3.68 2017
author: David N. Myers
name: Adam
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/17
shelves:
review:

]]> 20646678
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization, and the government is involved in sending secret missions to explore Area X. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

Annihilation opens with the twelfth expedition. The group is composed of four women, including our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all of their observations, scientific and otherwise; and, above all, to avoid succumbing to the unpredictable effects of Area X itself.

What they discover shocks them: first, a massive topographic anomaly that does not appear on any map; and second, life forms beyond anything they’re equipped to understand. But it’s the surprises that came across the border with them that change everything—the secrets of the expedition members themselves, including our narrator. What do they really know about Area X—and each other?]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 1443428396 Adam 0 3.71 2014
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Adam
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2021/03/17
date added: 2021/03/17
shelves:
review:

]]> 41940427 As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the pastIn the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories.Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.]]> 434 Susan Neiman 0374715521 Adam 4 4.23 2019
author: Susan Neiman
name: Adam
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/02/23
date added: 2021/02/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 627360
Richard English's brilliant book offers a detailed history of the IRA, providing invaluable historical depth to our understanding of the modern-day Provisionals, the more militant wing formed in 1969 dedicated to the removal of the British Government from Northern Ireland and the reunification of Ireland.

English examines the dramatic events of the Easter Rising in 1916 and the bitter guerrilla war of 1919-21, the partitioning of Ireland in the 1920s, and the Irish Civil War of 1922-23. Here, too, are the IRA campaigns in Northern Ireland and Britain from the 1930s through the 1960s. He shows how the Provisionals were born out of the turbulence generated by the 1960s civil rights movement, and examines the escalating violence that introduced British troops to the streets of Northern Ireland.

He also examines the split in the IRA that produced the Provisionals, the introduction of internment in 1971, and the tragedy of Bloody Sunday in 1972. He then discusses the struggle over political status, culminating in the Hunger Strikes of the early 1980s and describes the Provisionals' emergence as a more committed political force throughout that decade, a politicization that made possible the peace process that has developed over the last decade.

English offers a dazzling synthesis of the motives, actions and consequences of the IRA. Neither romanticizing the IRA nor condemning them outright, this is a balanced, definitive treatment of one of the world's leading revolutionary movements.]]> 492 Richard English 0195177533 Adam 0 to-read 4.00 2003
author: Richard English
name: Adam
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43501294 A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE WORK OF NON-FICTION A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR'Meticulous, clinical and sobering, a shockingly important and incisive book' David OlusogaVast and revelatory, Dan Gretton's I You We Them is an unprecedented study of the perpetrators of crimes against the 'desk killers' who ordered and directed some of the worst atrocities of the modern era. From Albert Speer's complicity in Nazi barbarism to cases of ecocide and the deaths of activists, Gretton shines a light on the figures 'who, by giving orders, use paper or a phone or a computer to kill, instead of a gun.' Over the past twenty years, Gretton has interviewed survivors and perpetrators, and pored over archives and thousands of pages of testimony. His remarkable insight into the psychology of the desk killers is deepened by the intimate journey he travels with his readers.]]> 1069 Dan Gretton Adam 0 to-read 3.75 2019
author: Dan Gretton
name: Adam
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 48613493 The legendary frontman of Judas Priest, one of the most successful heavy metal bands of all time, celebrates five decades of heavy metal in this tell-all memoir.


Most priests hear confessions. This one is making his.

Rob Halford, front man of global iconic metal band Judas Priest, is a true "Metal God." Raised in Britain's hard-working, heavy industrial heartland, he and his music were forged in the Black Country. Confess, his full autobiography, is an unforgettable rock 'n' roll story-a journey from a Walsall council estate to musical fame via alcoholism, addiction, police cells, ill-fated sexual trysts, and bleak personal tragedy, through to rehab, coming out, redemption . . . and finding love.


Now, he is telling his gospel truth.

Told with Halford's trademark self-deprecating, deadpan Black Country humor, Confess is the story of an extraordinary five decades in the music industry. It is also the tale of unlikely encounters with everybody from Superman to Andy Warhol, Madonna, Jack Nicholson, and the Queen. More than anything else, it's a celebration of the fire and power of heavy metal.


Rob Halford has decided to Confess. Because it's good for the soul.]]> 355 Rob Halford 0306874946 Adam 0 to-read 4.39 2020
author: Rob Halford
name: Adam
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 45894079

Smith’s dramatic narrative begins with the earliest glimmers of a nation in the 1500s, when visionary mapmakers and adventuresome travelers struggled to delineate and define this embryonic nation. Contrary to widespread perception, the people who first described Germany were pacific in temperament, and the pernicious ideology of German nationalism would only enter into the nation’s history centuries later. Tracing the significant tension between the idea of the nation and the ideology of its nationalism, Smith shows a nation constantly reinventing itself and explains how radical nationalism ultimately turned Germany into a genocidal nation.


Smith’s aim, then, is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of Germany: Is it essentially a bellicose nation that murdered over six million people? Or a pacific, twenty-first-century model of tolerant democracy? And was it inevitable that the land that produced Goethe and Schiller, Heinrich Heine and Käthe Kollwitz, would also carry out genocide on an unprecedented scale?


Combining poignant prose with an historian’s rigor, Smith recreates the national euphoria that accompanied the beginning of World War I, followed by the existential despair caused by Germany’s shattering defeat. This psychic devastation would simultaneously produce both the modernist glories of the Bauhaus and the meteoric rise of the Nazi party.


Nowhere is Smith’s mastery on greater display than in his chapter on the Holocaust, which looks at the killing not only through the tragedies of Western Europe but, significantly, also through the lens of the rural hamlets and ghettos of Poland and Eastern Europe, where more than 80% of all the Jews murdered originated. He thus broadens the extent of culpability well beyond the high echelons of Hitler’s circle all the way to the local level. Throughout its pages, Germany also examines the indispensable yet overlooked role played by German women throughout the nation’s history, highlighting great artists and revolutionaries, and the horrific, rarely acknowledged violence that war wrought on women.


Richly illustrated, with original maps created by the author, Germany: A Nation in Its Time is a sweeping account that does nothing less than redefine our understanding of Germany for the twenty-first century.]]> 608 Helmut Walser Smith 0871404664 Adam 0 to-read 3.98 2020
author: Helmut Walser Smith
name: Adam
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 38746140
But as these young kids tried to form bands and became more visible, security forces—including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi—targeted them. They were spied on by friends and even members of their own families; they were expelled from schools and fired from jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned. Instead of conforming, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movements that helped bring down the Berlin Wall.

This secret history of East German punk rock is not just about the music; it is a story of extraordinary bravery in the face of one of the most oppressive regimes in history. Rollicking, cinematic, deeply researched, highly readable, and thrillingly topical, BurningDown the Haus brings to life the young men and women who successfully fought authoritarianism three chords at a time—and is a fiery testament to the irrepressible spirit of revolution.]]> 384 Tim Mohr 1616208430 Adam 0 to-read 4.03 2017
author: Tim Mohr
name: Adam
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>