en-US Sat, 01 Feb 2025 04:49:43 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 213263148 London, 1837.
Boston, 2019.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.

One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.

And all of them grow teeth.]]> 544 Victoria E. Schwab 1250320526 tiffany 0 to-read 4.55 2025
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59900654
Tang Yitian has been living in America for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his his father has disappeared from the family’s rural village in China. Though they have been estranged for years, Yitian promises to come home.
��
When Yitian attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate China’s impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider, and his mother’s evasiveness only deepens the mystery. So he seeks out a childhood friend who may be in a position to Tian Hanwen, the only other person who shared Yitian’s desire to pursue a life of knowledge. As a teenager, Hanwen was “sent down�� from Shanghai to Yitian’s village as part of the country’s rustication campaign. Young and in love, they dreamed of attending university in the city together. But when their plans resulted in a terrible tragedy, their paths diverged, and while Yitian ended up a professor in America, Hanwen was left behind, resigned to life as a midlevel bureaucrat’s wealthy housewife.
��
Reuniting for the first time as adults, Yitian and Hanwen embark on the search for Yitian’s father, all the while grappling with the past—who Yitian’s father really was, and what might have been. Spanning the late 1970s to 1990s and moving effortlessly between rural provinces and big cities, A Map for the Missing is a deeply felt examination of family and forgiveness, and the meaning of home.]]> 400 Belinda Huijuan Tang 0593300661 tiffany 4 3.97 2022
author: Belinda Huijuan Tang
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: cultural, family, multiple-povs, contemporary
review:

]]> 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett tiffany 0 to-read 4.47 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 139400713 Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 tiffany 0 to-read 4.22 2024
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199344846
On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.]]> 209 Salman Rushdie 0593730240 tiffany 0 to-read 3.99 2024
author: Salman Rushdie
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203956646 From the New Yorker staff writer and acclaimed author of Future Sex (“introspective and breathtakingly honest”��New York Times Book Review,), a memoir about sex, drugs, and techno in a time of madness

In the summer of 2016, a divisive presidential election was underway, and a new breed of right-wing rage was on the rise. Emily Witt, who would soon publish her first book on sex in the digital age, had recently quit antidepressants for a more expansive world of psychedelic experimentation. From her apartment in Brooklyn, she began to catch glimpses of the clandestine nightlife scene thrumming around her.

In Health and Safety, Witt charts her immersion into New York City’s dance music underground. Emily would come to lead a double life. By day she worked as a journalist, covering gun violence, climate catastrophes, and the rallies of right-wing militias. And by night she pushed the limits of consciousness in hollowed-out office spaces and warehouses to music that sounded like the future. But no counterculture, no matter how utopian, could stave off the squalor of American politics and the cataclysm of 2020.

Affectionate yet never sentimental, Health and Safety is a lament for a broken relationship, for a changed nightlife scene, and for New York City just before the fall. Sparing no one—least of all herself—Witt offers her life as a lens onto an era of American delirium and dissolution.]]> 264 Emily Witt 0593317645 tiffany 1 memoir
the publisher blurb lauds the author for "sparing no one--least of all herself" as she "offers her life as a lens onto an era of American delirium and dissolution." i actually found this to be one of the most fascinatingly off-base characterizations of the book, because i finished it feeling as if she had spared herself most of all in her telling. i wouldn't call it a lens onto anything; it's better characterized as a kaleidoscope of disjointed pieces (music, New York nightlife, drugs, relationships, Trump, BLM, mental illness) that left me wishing i could spin the barrel and rearrange those pieces into something compelling.


]]> 3.50 2024
author: Emily Witt
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: memoir
review:
picked up this book because i'd read an excerpt of this book ('the last rave') in the new yorker a while ago and the piece took such a turn that i still turn it over in my mind and don't know what to think of it even months later. unfortunately this is one of those situations where the content should have stayed a long-form essay and not an entire book. it feels weird to rate a memoir because it feels like assessing someone's life story, but i honestly think it would work better as a piece of autofiction rather than a memoir (or maybe a history book - the most interesting thing i learned from this is that techno originated in the midwest, but alas, this tidbit does not receive further elaboration).

the publisher blurb lauds the author for "sparing no one--least of all herself" as she "offers her life as a lens onto an era of American delirium and dissolution." i actually found this to be one of the most fascinatingly off-base characterizations of the book, because i finished it feeling as if she had spared herself most of all in her telling. i wouldn't call it a lens onto anything; it's better characterized as a kaleidoscope of disjointed pieces (music, New York nightlife, drugs, relationships, Trump, BLM, mental illness) that left me wishing i could spin the barrel and rearrange those pieces into something compelling.



]]> 217163697 #1��New York Times��bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 tiffany 0 to-read 4.59 2025
author: Fredrik Backman
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127488823
The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream.

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much less��return to��the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful��work��of literature by an author��at the peak of his powers.]]> 399 Hisham Matar 081299485X tiffany 5 4.31 2024
author: Hisham Matar
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: contemporary, friendship, literary-fiction
review:
quietly absorbing and brilliant. i love matar's writing style - every sentence felt so carefully constructed and imbued with a deep love and respect for literature. the book is profound without pretension and disarming in its clarity. my favorite aspect of this book is how it manages to cover a litany of complex topics (friendship, family, nationhood, civil war, among others) and to portray the ever-shifting landscape of the narrator's interiority without ever veering into aimlessness.
]]> 43521682 A saga of honor, glory, and warfare, The Bone Ships is the launch of a new fantasy from R.J. Barker.

Two nations at war. A prize beyond compare.

For generations, the Hundred Isles have built their ships from the bones of ancient dragons to fight an endless war.

The dragons disappeared, but the battles for supremacy persisted.

Now the first dragon in centuries has been spotted in far-off waters, and both sides see a chance to shift the balance of power in their favour. Because whoever catches it will win not only glory, but the war.]]> 512 R.J. Barker 0316487961 tiffany 0 to-read 3.98 2019
author: R.J. Barker
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52857700
Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she's going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that's no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.

Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he's in the Asteri's dungeons again, stripped of his freedom and without a clue as to Bryce's fate. He's desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri's leash, his hands are quite literally tied.

In this sexy, breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Sarah J. Maas's Crescent City series reaches new heights as Bryce and Hunt's world is brought to the brink of collapse-with its future resting on their shoulders.]]> 835 Sarah J. Maas 1681193094 tiffany 3 romance, fantasy 4.15 2024
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: romance, fantasy
review:

]]> 40132775
The Asteri have kept their word so far, leaving Bryce and Hunt alone. But with the rebels chipping away at the Asteri’s power, the threat the rulers pose is growing. As Bryce, Hunt, and their friends get pulled into the rebels�� plans, the choice becomes clear: stay silent while others are oppressed, or fight for what’s right. And they’ve never been very good at staying silent.

In this sexy, action-packed sequel to the #1 bestseller House of Earth and Blood, Sarah J. Maas weaves a captivating story of a world about to explode―and the people who will do anything to save it.]]> 805 Sarah J. Maas 1408884429 tiffany 4 romance, fantasy 4.41 2022
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: romance, fantasy
review:

]]> 44778083
Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose-to assassinate his boss's enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he's offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.

As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City's underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion-one that could set them both free, if they'd only let it.

With unforgettable characters, sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom-and the power of love.]]> 803 Sarah J. Maas 1635574048 tiffany 4 romance, fantasy 4.43 2020
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: romance, fantasy
review:

]]> 50520939
Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

Most of them.]]> 376 Olivie Blake tiffany 3 fantasy 3.56 2020
author: Olivie Blake
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> 60654349 I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.]]> 329 Emilia Hart 125028080X tiffany 3 magical-realism 4.03 2023
author: Emilia Hart
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: magical-realism
review:

]]> 29751398 The Power the world is a recognizable place: There's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; and a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: They can cause agonizing pain and even death. With this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets.]]> 341 Naomi Alderman 0670919985 tiffany 1 3.75 2016
author: Naomi Alderman
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 52578297
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.

Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?]]> 288 Matt Haig 0525559477 tiffany 1 contemporary, magical-realism 3.96 2020
author: Matt Haig
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2023/07/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: contemporary, magical-realism
review:

]]> 23156040 418 Elena Ferrante tiffany 5 4.38 2013
author: Elena Ferrante
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: coming-of-age, love, women-feminism
review:

]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile�� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 665 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 tiffany 3 fantasy, romance 4.56 2023
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/02
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: fantasy, romance
review:

]]> 50659472 The epic third novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas.

Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin's actions and learn what she can about the invading king threatening to bring her land to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit. One slip could bring doom not only for Feyre, but for everything-and everyone-she holds dear.

As war bears down upon them all, Feyre endeavors to take her place amongst the High Fae of the land, balancing her struggle to master her powers-both magical and political-and her love for her court and family. Amidst these struggles, Feyre and Rhysand must decide whom to trust amongst the cunning and lethal High Lords, and hunt for allies in unexpected places.

In this thrilling third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Sarah J. Maas, the fate of Feyre's world is at stake as armies grapple for power over the one thing that could destroy it.]]> 699 Sarah J. Maas 1635575605 tiffany 3 fantasy, romance 4.47 2017
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: fantasy, romance
review:

]]> 50659468
Feyre has undergone more trials than one human woman can carry in her heart. Though she's now been granted the powers and lifespan of the High Fae, she is haunted by her time Under the Mountain and the terrible deeds she performed to save the lives of Tamlin and his people.

As her marriage to Tamlin approaches, Feyre's hollowness and nightmares consume her. She finds herself split into two different one who upholds her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court, and one who lives out her life in the Spring Court with Tamlin. While Feyre navigates a dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms. She might just be the key to stopping it, but only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future-and the future of a world in turmoil.

Bestselling author Sarah J. Maas's masterful storytelling brings this second book in her dazzling, sexy, action-packed series to new heights.]]> 626 Sarah J. Maas 1635575583 tiffany 4 fantasy, magic, romance 4.65 2016
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/21
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: fantasy, magic, romance
review:

]]> 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

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

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

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

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 tiffany 4 magical-realism, contemporary 4.35 2022
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: magical-realism, contemporary
review:

]]> 50659467
At least, he’s not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.]]> 419 Sarah J. Maas 1635575567 tiffany 3 fantasy, love 4.16 2015
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: fantasy, love
review:

]]> 32234 White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes--each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned--becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.]]> 446 Janet Fitch 0316182540 tiffany 4 coming-of-age 4.00 1999
author: Janet Fitch
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/18
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: coming-of-age
review:

]]> 56988057
January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.

Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

Meanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats�� secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.

June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.]]> 400 Maggie Stiefvater 0593655508 tiffany 0 to-read 4.05 2025
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 tiffany 4 contemporary, ireland, love 3.88 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: contemporary, ireland, love
review:

]]> 45047384
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 394 T.J. Klune tiffany 0 to-read 4.37 2020
author: T.J. Klune
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5592
From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers.

Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.]]> 327 Fred Turner 0226817415 tiffany 0 to-read 3.95 2006
author: Fred Turner
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127227 The Human Condition is a in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then--diminishing human agency and political freedom; the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions—continue to confront us today.]]> 349 Hannah Arendt 0226025985 tiffany 0 to-read 4.22 1958
author: Hannah Arendt
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X tiffany 3 shakespeare, murder-mystery 4.11 2017
author: M.L. Rio
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: shakespeare, murder-mystery
review:
really wanted to like this book but just couldn't get into it - all the characters felt like walking tropes. added a star for creative incorporation of shakespeare lines and a compelling ending though!
]]> 215020997 London, 1837.
Boston, 2019.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.

One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.

And all of them grow teeth.]]> 560 Victoria E. Schwab 1035064642 tiffany 0 to-read 4.38 2025
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25242224 The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance.

The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women �� the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up �� a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city's obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable.

The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.]]> 473 Elena Ferrante 1609452860 tiffany 5 4.47 2014
author: Elena Ferrante
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: 20th-century, coming-of-age, family, friendship, love, women-feminism
review:

]]> 57004637 A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being

After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world, where "things happen." He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book--a talking thing--who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki--bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.]]> 548 Ruth Ozeki 0399563644 tiffany 0 to-read 4.01 2021
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35036409 My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.]]> 331 Elena Ferrante tiffany 5 4.08 2011
author: Elena Ferrante
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: 20th-century, coming-of-age, family, friendship, love, women-feminism
review:

]]> 17465515 My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name is the second book in this series. With these books, which the New Yorker's James Wood described as "large, captivating, amiably peopled ... a beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal," Ferrante proves herself to be one of Italy's most accomplished storytellers. She writes vividly about a specific neighborhood of Naples from the late-1950s through to the current day and about two remarkable young women who are very much the products of that place and time. Yet in doing so she has created a world in which readers will recognize themselves and has drawn a marvelously nuanced portrait of friendship.

In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life's challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, the acclaimed author of The Days of Abandonment, gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.]]> 471 Elena Ferrante tiffany 5 4.47 2012
author: Elena Ferrante
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: 20th-century, coming-of-age, family, friendship, love, women-feminism
review:

]]> 16884
Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers -- Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and yon Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.

Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention.]]> 886 Richard Rhodes 0684813785 tiffany 0 to-read 4.38 1986
author: Richard Rhodes
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 86512061
Alice Carrière tells the story of her unconventional upbringing in Greenwich Village as the daughter of a remote mother, the renowned artist Jennifer Bartlett, and a charismatic father, European actor Mathieu Carrière. From an early age, Alice is forced to navigate her mother’s recovered memories of ritualized sexual abuse, which she turns into art, and her father’s confusing attentions. Her days are a mixture of privilege, neglect, loneliness, and danger—a child living in an adult’s world, with little-to-no enforcement of boundaries or supervision.

When she enters adolescence, Alice begins to lose her grasp on herself, as a dissociative disorder erases her identity and overzealous doctors medicate her further away from herself. She inhabits various roles: as a patient in expensive psychiatric hospitals, a denizen of the downtown New York music scene, the ingenue in destructive encounters with older men—ricocheting from experience to experience until  a medication-induced psychosis brings these personas crashing down. Eventually, she finds purpose in caring for her Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother as she descends into dementia, in a love affair with a recovering addict who steadies her, in confronting her father, whose words and actions splintered her, and in finding her voice as a writer.

With gallows humor and brutal honesty, Everything/Nothing/Someone explores what it means for our body and mind to belong to us wholly, irrevocably, and on our own terms. In pulsing, energetic prose that is both precise and probing, Alice manages to untangle the stories told to her by her parents, the American psychiatric complex, and her own broken mind to craft a unique and mesmerizing narrative of emergence and, finally, cure.]]> 277 Alice Carrière 1954118295 tiffany 0 to-read 3.98 2023
author: Alice Carrière
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 tiffany 4 classic, women-feminism 4.05 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/09
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves: classic, women-feminism
review:

]]> 180357146 From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 715 Abraham Verghese 0802162177 tiffany 4 4.34 2023
author: Abraham Verghese
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: coming-of-age, family, cultural
review:

]]> 127280850
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.]]> 392 Emilia Hart 1250842727 tiffany 3 4.02 2023
author: Emilia Hart
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/05/19
shelves: magical-realism, multiple-povs, women-feminism
review:
2.5 stars, honestly closer to 2 stars. confused about how it's rated so highly in general!
]]> 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 tiffany 4 3.92 2023
author: Paul Murray
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/03
date added: 2024/05/19
shelves: 20th-century, coming-of-age, ireland, literary-fiction, multiple-povs
review:

]]> 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 tiffany 0 to-read 4.06 2023
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 174147294
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

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

Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.]]> 315 Tommy Orange 0593318250 tiffany 0 to-read 3.83 2024
author: Tommy Orange
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 188958520 Vivian Gordon went out before midnight in a velvet dress and mink coat. Her body turned up the next morning in a desolate Bronx park, a dirty clothesline wrapped around her neck. At her stylish Manhattan apartment, detectives discovered notebooks full of names—businessmen, socialites, gangsters. And something a letter from an anti-corruption commission established by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Led by the imperious Judge Samuel Seabury, the commission had uncovered a police conspiracy to frame women as prostitutes. Had Vivian Gordon been executed to bury her secrets? As FDR pressed the police to solve her murder, Judge Seabury pursued the trail of corruption to the top of Gotham’s powerful political machine—the infamous Tammany Hall.

��]]> 352 Michael Wolraich 1454948027 tiffany 0 to-read 3.69
author: Michael Wolraich
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story��

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 tiffany 0 to-read 3.85 2023
author: Dolly Alderton
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15925874

Drawing on more than three years of fieldwork across three continents, Colin Jerolmack traces our complex and often contradictory relationship with these versatile animals in public spaces such as Venice’s Piazza San Marco and London’s Trafalgar Square and in working-class and immigrant communities of pigeon breeders in New York and Berlin. By exploring what he calls “the social experience of animals,�� Jerolmack shows how our interactions with pigeons offer surprising insights into city life, community, culture, and politics. Theoretically understated and accessible to interested readers of all stripes, The Global Pigeon is one of the best and most original ethnographies to be published in decades.]]> 288 Colin Jerolmack 022600189X tiffany 0 to-read 4.22 2013
author: Colin Jerolmack
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201009490
In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]> 277 Britney Spears tiffany 0 to-read 3.77 2023
author: Britney Spears
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 150247326
Women can be murderers and child abusers. They can commit acts of extreme and sadistic brutality. And those who do, are outcasts from society and from womanhood itself. They are seen as monsters and angels of and must be kept at a safe distance.

Anna Motz is a renowned clinical and forensic psychologist in London and New York. Writing with candor, compassion, and a clear-eyed perspective, she explores in depth the shockingly underexamined psychological underpinnings of female violence. Far from the heartless and inhuman monsters we might believe them to be, these women are often victims of a culture of violence and emotional trauma.

Already hailed as a landmark, Motz's daring book, bursting with humanity, makes clear that women’s violence is more widespread than most realize, that these acts of violence expose deeply held, centuries-old beliefs about women and their value, and that these acts demand to be taken more seriously as a distinctive societal taboo that can—and must—be brought into the light.]]> 272 Anna Motz 0593534158 tiffany 0 to-read 3.84
author: Anna Motz
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 tiffany 4 sci-fi, fantasy 4.04 2022
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: sci-fi, fantasy
review:
a lovely (and quick) read! time travel novels usually make my head spin trying to think through the logic of it all, but i really enjoyed that this one spins out its characters and worlds in ways that don't rely on it being a Time Travel Novel TM.
]]> 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X tiffany 3 satire, cultural, writing
however, the book suffers from lackadaisical characterization -- it feels less incisive because the characters don't really feel like real people. each character serves as a screen onto which the author's commentary is projected. then again, maybe satire doesn't need to have characters that feel real because the broader purpose is its commentary...but those always feel less compelling to me as a reader.]]> 3.69 2023
author: R.F. Kuang
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: satire, cultural, writing
review:
3.5 stars because this was so readable - i read this on a flight and couldn't put it down (made my flight go by so fast!). the book makes a lot of Commentary about the publishing industry and writers: the industry's tokenization of minority authors, race and literary authority, the brutal competitiveness it engenders between authors, the self-serving viciousness of online book communities, the weaponization of identity, the ethics of writing about the trauma of others...the list goes on. i admire the author's capacity for diving into all of these topics (each of which could take up a whole book's worth of space by itself), especially as she writes as an acclaimed author who no doubt has a unique and intimate perspective of the publishing industry and literary stardom.

however, the book suffers from lackadaisical characterization -- it feels less incisive because the characters don't really feel like real people. each character serves as a screen onto which the author's commentary is projected. then again, maybe satire doesn't need to have characters that feel real because the broader purpose is its commentary...but those always feel less compelling to me as a reader.
]]> 35959632 New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams, an exploration of addiction, and the stories we tell about it, that reinvents the traditional recovery memoir.

With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and journalistic reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction--both her own and others'--and examines what we want these stories to do, and what happens when they fail us.

All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Raymond Carver, Billie Holiday, David Foster Wallace, and Denis Johnson, as well as brilliant figures lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here.

For the power of her striking language and the sharpness of her piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. Yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.]]> 534 Leslie Jamison 0316259616 tiffany 4 memoir 3.99 2018
author: Leslie Jamison
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: memoir
review:
gorgeous writing; i really enjoyed how jamison positions her story within the broader history and politics of addiction, as well as in relation to other writers for whom alcoholism shaped the production and reception of their art.
]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar tiffany 3 3.87 2019
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/01/16
shelves:
review:
hmm…have wanted to read this for years but it just didn’t quite do it for me.
]]> 45754981 From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events–a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients�� accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.]]> 307 Emily St. John Mandel 0525521143 tiffany 4 3.66 2020
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2024/01/15
shelves: contemporary, magical-realism, multiple-povs
review:
3.5 stars. much of the book remains unexplained / unresolved, but in a mysteriously compelling way as opposed to a lazy or unfinished ending (which speaks to st. john mandel's talent as a writer)!
]]> 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X tiffany 2 family, love 3.92 2023
author: Ann Patchett
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/12
date added: 2024/01/12
shelves: family, love
review:
everything felt so....flat. it feels like you could just skip a few pages here and there and pick the story right back up, and there'd be no difference at all in your understanding of the characters and their inner worlds and the things that happened to them.
]]> 51575008 A comprehensive introduction to modern applied statistical genetic data analysis, accessible to those without a background in molecular biology or genetics.Human genetic research is now relevant beyond biology, epidemiology, and the medical sciences, with applications in such fields as psychology, psychiatry, statistics, demography, sociology, and economics. With advances in computing power, the availability of data, and new techniques, it is now possible to integrate large-scale molecular genetic information into research across a broad range of topics. This book offers the first comprehensive introduction to modern applied statistical genetic data analysis that covers theory, data preparation, and analysis of molecular genetic data, with hands-on computer exercises. It is accessible to students and researchers in any empirically oriented medical, biological, or social science discipline; a background in molecular biology or genetics is not required.

The book first provides foundations for statistical genetic data analysis, including a survey of fundamental concepts, primers on statistics and human evolution, and an introduction to polygenic scores. It then covers the practicalities of working with genetic data, discussing such topics as analytical challenges and data management. Finally, the book presents applications and advanced topics, including polygenic score and gene-environment interaction applications, Mendelian Randomization and instrumental variables, and ethical issues. The software and data used in the book are freely available and can be found on the book's website.]]> 432 Melinda Mills 0262538385 tiffany 0 4.67
author: Melinda Mills
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/12
date added: 2024/01/12
shelves: textbook, sociology, science, biology
review:

]]> 58696 882 Charles Dickens tiffany 0 to-read 4.02 1850
author: Charles Dickens
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1850
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

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

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 tiffany 5 4.46 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/08
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: favorites, coming-of-age, literary-fiction
review:
stunning. this is one of those books that reminds you all over again how literature has a power that nothing else -- not scientific articles, not news reports, not films -- can replicate. the only negative thing i have to say about the book is that i wish i hadn't read it at the start of a new year because i think i've found my favorite book of the year and it's only been a week!
]]> 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 tiffany 0 to-read 4.10 1998
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127280062 Torn apart by war. Reunited by love?

Two weeks have passed since Iris returned home bruised and heartbroken from the front, but the war is far from over.

Roman is missing, lost behind enemy lines, with no memory of his past, or Iris. Hoping his memories return, he begins to write again �� but this time for the enemy.

When a strange letter arrives through his wardrobe door, he strikes up a correspondence with a penpal who seems at once mysterious�� and strangely familiar.

As their connection deepens, the two of them will risk their very hearts and futures to change the tides of the war.]]> 420 Rebecca Ross 1250857457 tiffany 3 3.99 2023
author: Rebecca Ross
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/04
date added: 2024/01/05
shelves: young-adult, romance, love, magic, fantasy
review:
i can see why so many people love this book -- the relationships between the core cast of characters is compelling and there's something so nostalgic about the process of letter writing and the idea of the small magic that sends those letters to the right person. but i found myself continually taken out of the story by insufficient world building, random plot devices that led to heightened stakes and more ~drama~ for the love story but didn't really make sense, and an ending that felt half completed.
]]> 30009097
For a century, social scientists have avoided genetics like the plague. But the nature-nurture wars are over. In the past decade, a small but intrepid group of economists, political scientists, and sociologists have harnessed the genomics revolution to paint a more complete picture of human social life than ever before. The Genome Factor describes the latest astonishing discoveries being made at the scientific frontier where genomics and the social sciences intersect.

The Genome Factor reveals that there are real genetic differences by racial ancestry―but ones that don't conform to what we call black, white, or Latino. Genes explain a significant share of who gets ahead in society and who does not, but instead of giving rise to a genotocracy, genes often act as engines of mobility that counter social disadvantage. An increasing number of us are marrying partners with similar education levels as ourselves, but genetically speaking, humans are mixing it up more than ever before with respect to mating and reproduction. These are just a few of the many findings presented in this illuminating and entertaining book, which also tackles controversial topics such as genetically personalized education and the future of reproduction in a world where more and more of us are taking advantage of cheap genotyping services like 23andMe to find out what our genes may hold in store for ourselves and our children.

The Genome Factor shows how genomics is transforming the social sciences―and how social scientists are integrating both nature and nurture into a unified, comprehensive understanding of human behavior at both the individual and society-wide levels.]]> 296 Dalton Conley 0691164746 tiffany 0 sociology, biology 3.89
author: Dalton Conley
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2024/01/03
shelves: sociology, biology
review:

]]> 6402564 320 Ethan Watters 141658708X tiffany 5 4.08 2009
author: Ethan Watters
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/04
date added: 2024/01/03
shelves: sociology, nonfiction, science, anthropology, history, health
review:

]]> 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,�� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?�� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!��), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy tiffany 4 4.45 2022
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/16
date added: 2023/12/24
shelves: memoir, coming-of-age, women-feminism
review:

]]> 60784546 After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again��

All eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow wants to do is hold her family together. With a brother on the frontline forced to fight on behalf of the Gods now missing from the frontline and a mother drowning her sorrows, Iris’s best bet is winning the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.

But when Iris’s letters to her brother fall into the wrong hands �� that of the handsome but cold Roman Kitt, her rival at the paper �� an unlikely magical connection forms.

Expelled into the middle of a mystical war, magical typewriters in tow, can their bond withstand the fight for the fate of mankind and, most importantly, love?

An epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.]]> 357 Rebecca Ross 1250857430 tiffany 4 4.14 2023
author: Rebecca Ross
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/24
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: love, magic, romance, young-adult, mythology, fantasy
review:

]]> 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters�� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano tiffany 4 4.14 2023
author: Ann Napolitano
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: coming-of-age, family, love, multiple-povs, women-feminism, romance
review:

]]> 154985845
Six magicians were presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.
Five are now members of the Society.
Two paths lay before them.

All must pick a side.

Alliances will be tested, hearts will be broken, and The Society of Alexandrians will be revealed for what it a secret society with raw, world-changing power, headed by a man whose plans to change life as we know it are already under way.

" The Atlas Six introduced six of the most devious, talented, and flawed characters to ever find themselves in a magical library, and then sets them against one another in a series of stunning betrayals and reversals. As much a delicious contest of wit, will, and passion as it is of magic...half mystery, half puzzle, and wholly a delight."―Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Night

Also by Olivie Blake
Alone With You in the Ether
One For My Enemy
Masters of Death]]> 432 Olivie Blake 1250855101 tiffany 0 to-read 3.48 2022
author: Olivie Blake
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 133286777 From the New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent, and creator of the Grishaverse series comes a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.]]> 387 Leigh Bardugo 125088425X tiffany 0 to-read 3.74 2024
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 27362503
Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up �� she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating�� rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan �� her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.]]> 386 Colleen Hoover 1668021048 tiffany 4 love, romance 4.11 2016
author: Colleen Hoover
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/26
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: love, romance
review:

]]> 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 tiffany 3 3.77 2022
author: Hernan Diaz
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/23
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: 20th-century, literary-fiction
review:

]]> 61358638 Reimagining the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.]]> 304 Matthew Desmond 0593239911 tiffany 4 sociology, nonfiction 4.27 2023
author: Matthew Desmond
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/17
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: sociology, nonfiction
review:

]]> 59133541
In Homelessness Is a Housing Problem , Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city—including mental illness, drug use, poverty, weather, generosity of public assistance, and low-income mobility—and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country. Instead, housing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a far more convincing account. With rigor and clarity, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem explores U.S. cities' diverse experiences with housing precarity and offers policy solutions for unique regional contexts.]]> 284 Gregg Colburn 0520383761 tiffany 4 sociology, nonfiction 4.22 2022
author: Gregg Colburn
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/10
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: sociology, nonfiction
review:

]]> 24612118
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.]]> 390 Lauren Groff 1594634475 tiffany 3 3.55 2015
author: Lauren Groff
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/23
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: romance, women-feminism, literary-fiction
review:

]]> 33253215 real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from �� and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.]]> 582 John Boyne tiffany 5 4.51 2017
author: John Boyne
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/28
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: coming-of-age, 20th-century, ireland, romance, literary-fiction, friendship, family
review:
i rarely enjoy books that span the entire lifetime of one person - it's so hard to get the pacing right, to keep the reader invested without resorting to convoluted plotlines or constant shock value. but this book captures the enormity contained within the life of one ordinary man, cyril avery, in a way that blew all my expectations out of the water.
]]> 59808605 Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel―until it no longer does.

Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.]]> 288 Rachel Aviv 0374600848 tiffany 5 4.10 2022
author: Rachel Aviv
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/15
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: multiple-povs, nonfiction, science
review:

]]> 59900070 New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken--with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity--is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends--his memories--Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.]]> 208 Hua Hsu 0385547773 tiffany 4 4.01 2022
author: Hua Hsu
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: memoir, coming-of-age, friendship
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 tiffany 0 to-read 4.22 1963
author: Hannah Arendt
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/11
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]]> 53487237 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?�� He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.]]> 403 George Saunders 1984856049 tiffany 0 to-read 4.55 2021
author: George Saunders
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/03
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]]> 60456894 Malibu 1983. Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of one night, each of their lives will be changed forever in this propulsive novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six .

Malibu is buzzing with anticipation for Nina Riva's annual party. Everyone wants to be in the company of the famous Rivas: Nina, the surfer and model; her brothers, Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other his renowned photographer; and Kit, the adored baby of the family. As if that picture-perfect family isn't enough, their father is Mick Riva, the legendary singer.

By morning, the Riva mansion will have burned to the ground. And no one will know how the fire started. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play and the loves and secret yearnings that shaped this family across generations will all come bubbling to the surface to make for a night no one will ever forget.

This is a story about family: about what you choose to keep from the people who made you, and what you must leave behind.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798673 tiffany 3 4.06 2021
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 3
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]]> 30852 204 Maxine Hong Kingston 0679721886 tiffany 3 3.74 1976
author: Maxine Hong Kingston
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1976
rating: 3
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]]> 52831200 A Maiden��

Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers.

A Duty��

The entire kingdom’s future rests on Poppy’s shoulders, something she’s not even quite sure she wants for herself. Because a Maiden has a heart. And a soul. And longing. And when Hawke, a golden-eyed guard honor bound to ensure her Ascension, enters her life, destiny and duty become tangled with desire and need. He incites her anger, makes her question everything she believes in, and tempts her with the forbidden.

A Kingdom��

Forsaken by the gods and feared by mortals, a fallen kingdom is rising once more, determined to take back what they believe is theirs through violence and vengeance. And as the shadow of those cursed draws closer, the line between what is forbidden and what is right becomes blurred. Poppy is not only on the verge of losing her heart and being found unworthy by the gods, but also her life when every blood-soaked thread that holds her world together begins to unravel.]]> 622 Jennifer L. Armentrout 1952457017 tiffany 3 4.19 2020
author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2020
rating: 3
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]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 tiffany 4 4.16 2020
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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]]> 4948826 Sum is a dazzling exploration of unexpected afterlives—each presented as a vignette that offers a stunning lens through which to see ourselves in the here and now. In one afterlife, you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. In another version, you work as a background character in other people’s dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple, or that the universe is running backward, or that you are forced to live out your afterlife with annoying versions of who you could have been. With a probing imagination and deep understanding of the human condition, acclaimed neuroscientist David Eagleman offers wonderfully imagined tales that shine a brilliant light on the here and now.]]> 110 David Eagleman 0307377342 tiffany 3 4.13 2009
author: David Eagleman
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/12/01
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]]> 51475322
Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation.��

Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonizing Hesperians, and all who threaten the shamanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it?��

The exciting end to The Poppy War trilogy, R. F. Kuang’s acclaimed, award-winning epic fantasy that combines the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating, enthralling effect.]]> 654 R.F. Kuang 0062662627 tiffany 5 4.30 2020
author: R.F. Kuang
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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]]> 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 tiffany 3 3.85 2005
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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]]> 20821614
There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance�� meeting.

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.

A terrifying exploration of how vulnerable we all are to stalking and manipulation.]]> 424 Caroline Kepnes 1476785597 tiffany 3 3.86 2014
author: Caroline Kepnes
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 3
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]]> 31443394
A victory would send star player Kevin onto a brilliant professional future in the NHL. It would mean everything to Amat, a scrawny fifteen-year-old treated like an outcast everywhere but on the ice. And it would justify the choice that Peter, the team's general manager, and his wife, Kira, made to return to his hometown and raise their children in this beautiful but isolated place.

Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semifinal match is the catalyst for a violent act that leaves a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Hers is a story no one wants to believe since the truth would mean the end of the dream. Accusations are made, and like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.]]> 418 Fredrik Backman 1501160761 tiffany 5 4.26 2016
author: Fredrik Backman
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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]]> 55298364 A Children’s Bible follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their parents, the children decide to run away when a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, embarking on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. Lydia Millet’s prophetic and heartbreaking story of generational divide offers a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation.]]> 224 Lydia Millet 0393867382 tiffany 3 3.70 2020
author: Lydia Millet
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
rating: 3
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]]> 75816949 352 Kathryn J. Edin 0063239493 tiffany 4 sociology 4.15 2023
author: Kathryn J. Edin
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/11
date added: 2023/11/23
shelves: sociology
review:

]]> 394535 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy tiffany 4 4.18 1985
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/03
date added: 2023/11/23
shelves: 20th-century, historical-fiction
review:

]]> 124948662 A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.

At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thuột and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICA��. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SàiGòn Mới, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening,

Profound in its emotions and brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the promises America so readily makes and breaks, and the exceptional life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.]]> 400 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802160506 tiffany 0 to-read 4.33 2023
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
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]]> 61111034
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?

Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,�� says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”]]> 588 Mariana Enríquez 0451495144 tiffany 0 to-read 4.07 2019
author: Mariana Enríquez
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/15
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]]> 60199834
“Engrossing and insightful . . . rich with details that paint a full portrait of contemporary child-corporate relations.�� —Zephyr Teachout, The New York Times Book Review

Even before COVID-19, digital technologies had become deeply embedded in children’s lives, despite a growing body of research detailing the harms of excessive immersion in the unregulated, powerfully seductive world of the “kid-tech�� industry. In the “must read�� ( Library Journal , starred review) Who’s Raising the Kids? , Susan Linn—one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of Big Tech and big business on children—weaves an “eye-opening and disturbing exploration of how marketing tech to children is creating a passive, dysfunctional generation�� ( Kirkus Reviews , starred review). From birth, kids have become lucrative fodder for tech, media, and toy companies, from producers of exploitative games and social media platforms to “educational�� technology and branded school curricula of dubious efficacy. Written with humor and compassion, Who’s Raising the Kids? is a unique and highly readable social critique and guide to protecting kids from exploitation by the tech, toy, and entertainment industries. Two hopeful chapters—“Resistance Parenting�� and “Making a Difference for Everybody’s Kids”—chart a path to allowing kids to be the children they need to be.]]> 320 Susan Linn 1620972271 tiffany 0 to-read 3.97 2022
author: Susan Linn
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
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date added: 2023/09/15
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]]> 63133205 The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]> 288 Britney Spears 1668009048 tiffany 0 to-read 3.83 2023
author: Britney Spears
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/01
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]]> 61885057 From award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger, a searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness, as well as an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them.

Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger’s family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard.

But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding—a heavily medicated mother hospitalized for anxiety and depression, a manic father prone to violence, and children in the throes of bipolar disorder and depression, two of whom would take their own lives. Through it all, the Kissingers faced the world with their signature dark humor and the unspoken family rule: never talk about it.

While You Were Out begins as the personal story of one family’s struggles then opens outward, as Kissinger details how childhood tragedy catalyzed a journalism career focused on exposing our country’s flawed mental health care. Combining the intimacy of memoir with the rigor of investigative reporting, the book explores the consequences of shame, the havoc of botched public policy, and the hope offered by new treatment strategies.

Powerful, candid and filled with surprising humor, this is the story of one family’s love and resilience in face of great loss.]]> 320 Meg Kissinger 1250793777 tiffany 0 to-read 4.26 2023
author: Meg Kissinger
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2023
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]]> 111673828 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and set in the world of A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab opens a new door into perilous adventure and tangled schemes with The Fragile Threads of Power.

Once, there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power, and connected by a single city: London. Until the magic grew too fast, and forced the worlds to seal the doors between them in a desperate gamble to protect their own. The few magicians who could still open the doors grew more rare as time passed and now, only three Antari are known in recent memory―Kell Maresh of Red London, Delilah Bard of Grey London, and Holland Vosijk, of White London.

But barely a glimpse of them have been seen in the last seven years―and a new Antari named Kosika has appeared in White London, taking the throne in Holland's absence. The young queen is willing to feed her city with blood, including her own―but her growing religious fervor has the potential to drown them instead.

And back in Red London, King Rhy Maresh is threatened by a rising rebellion, one determined to correct the balance of power by razing the throne entirely.

Amidst this tapestry of old friends and new enemies, a girl with an unusual magical ability comes into possession of a device that could change the fate of all four worlds.

Her name is Tes, and she's the only one who can bring them together―or unravel it all.]]> 648 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387492 tiffany 0 to-read 4.26 2023
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/01
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]]> 87556695
“‘Let us descend,�� the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’�� �� Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.]]> 305 Jesmyn Ward 198210449X tiffany 0 to-read 3.68 2023
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
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]]> 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

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

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

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

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

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

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith tiffany 0 to-read 3.25 2023
author: Zadie Smith
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
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]]> 40147915
"Li has converted the messy and devastating stuff of life into a remarkable work of art.”�� The��Wall Street Journal

WINNER OF THE PEN/JEAN STEIN AWARD �� LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD �� NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Seghal, The New York Times �� NPR �� The Guardian �� The Paris Review

The narrator of Where Reasons End writes, �� I had but one delusion, which I held on to with all my We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time by words .��

Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, Where Reasons End trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship.

Written with originality, precision, and poise, Where Reasons End is suffused with intimacy, inescapable pain, and fierce love.]]> 170 Yiyun Li 198481737X tiffany 0 to-read 3.77 2019
author: Yiyun Li
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/01
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]]> 120734280
Alice Carrière tells the story of her unconventional upbringing in Greenwich Village as the daughter of a remote mother, the renowned artist Jennifer Bartlett, and a charismatic father, European actor Mathieu Carrière. From an early age, Alice is forced to navigate her mother’s recovered memories of ritualized sexual abuse, which she turns into art, and her father’s confusing attentions. Her days are a mixture of privilege, neglect, loneliness, and danger—a child living in an adult’s world, with little-to-no enforcement of boundaries or supervision.

When she enters adolescence, Alice begins to lose her grasp on herself, as a dissociative disorder erases her identity and overzealous doctors medicate her further away from herself. She inhabits various roles: as a patient in expensive psychiatric hospitals, a denizen of the downtown New York music scene, the ingenue in destructive encounters with older men—ricocheting from experience to experience until  a medication-induced psychosis brings these personas crashing down. Eventually, she finds purpose in caring for her Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother as she descends into dementia, in a love affair with a recovering addict who steadies her, in confronting her father, whose words and actions splintered her, and in finding her voice as a writer.

With gallows humor and brutal honesty, Everything/Nothing/Someone explores what it means for our body and mind to belong to us wholly, irrevocably, and on our own terms. In pulsing, energetic prose that is both precise and probing, Alice manages to untangle the stories told to her by her parents, the American psychiatric complex, and her own broken mind to craft a unique and mesmerizing narrative of emergence and, finally, cure.]]> 298 Alice Carrière 1954118309 tiffany 0 to-read 4.20 2023
author: Alice Carrière
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 80571
J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.

When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s. They declared that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America’s nuclear secrets.

In this magisterial biography twenty-five years in the making, which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for biography, the authors capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War.]]> 721 Kai Bird tiffany 0 to-read 4.27 2005
author: Kai Bird
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 51704136 Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned--from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren--an enigmatic artist and single mother--who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town--and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood--and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, ŷ������, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more...

Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more. ]]> 368 Celeste Ng 0143135163 tiffany 5 adult, contemporary, family
I've had this book on my Want to Read shelf for over 2 years, but I didn't really pick it it up until now because part of me was worried that I wouldn't really connect with the major theme of motherhood -- I'm a college student and motherhood is about the furthest thing from my mind right now.

But I found that a lot of this book centers around identity, the choices that we make and cannot unmake, and how we rebuild and reforge our paths when tragedy comes.

I was entranced by the family dynamics in this story: the perfectly-manicured, meticulous, All-American Richardson family, who follow the rules of suburbia and small towns, and the enigmatic mother-daughter pair, Mia and Pearl, who become the Richardsons' tenants. These two families intersect in devastating ways, each family simultaneously drawn into and repelled by the other. Ng artfully weaves together their storylines, both past and present, with a wonderful mix of lighthearted teen shenanigans (pranks, first loves, etc.) and heavier, extraordinarily complex topics. My favorite character by far was Izzy, the youngest Richardson daughter, who has a spark of defiance and subversion that Mrs. Richardson has tried to quell for her entire life. I found myself both rooting so much for Izzy and simultaneously fearing for her, especially because even at the very beginning, Ng makes it clear that Izzy burns her house down.

I also loved the addition of cultural identity, especially in the context of adoption: how important is a child's birth identity and culture? In the context of a white couple adopting a Chinese baby, is the love of the adoptive parents enough, or will something vital always be missing?

Overall, a pretty quick read that leaves a lasting imprint on the reader.

“Like after a prairie fire. I saw one, years ago, when we were in Nebraska. It seems like the end of the world. The earth is all scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow.��

“People are like that, too, you know. They start over. They find a way.�� ]]> 4.06 2017
author: Celeste Ng
name: tiffany
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2020/03/18
date added: 2023/05/17
shelves: adult, contemporary, family
review:
4.5 stars. Wow -- this book is engrossing. I stayed up till 3 am devouring these pages because I just had to finish it in one sitting.

I've had this book on my Want to Read shelf for over 2 years, but I didn't really pick it it up until now because part of me was worried that I wouldn't really connect with the major theme of motherhood -- I'm a college student and motherhood is about the furthest thing from my mind right now.

But I found that a lot of this book centers around identity, the choices that we make and cannot unmake, and how we rebuild and reforge our paths when tragedy comes.

I was entranced by the family dynamics in this story: the perfectly-manicured, meticulous, All-American Richardson family, who follow the rules of suburbia and small towns, and the enigmatic mother-daughter pair, Mia and Pearl, who become the Richardsons' tenants. These two families intersect in devastating ways, each family simultaneously drawn into and repelled by the other. Ng artfully weaves together their storylines, both past and present, with a wonderful mix of lighthearted teen shenanigans (pranks, first loves, etc.) and heavier, extraordinarily complex topics. My favorite character by far was Izzy, the youngest Richardson daughter, who has a spark of defiance and subversion that Mrs. Richardson has tried to quell for her entire life. I found myself both rooting so much for Izzy and simultaneously fearing for her, especially because even at the very beginning, Ng makes it clear that Izzy burns her house down.

I also loved the addition of cultural identity, especially in the context of adoption: how important is a child's birth identity and culture? In the context of a white couple adopting a Chinese baby, is the love of the adoptive parents enough, or will something vital always be missing?

Overall, a pretty quick read that leaves a lasting imprint on the reader.

“Like after a prairie fire. I saw one, years ago, when we were in Nebraska. It seems like the end of the world. The earth is all scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow.��

“People are like that, too, you know. They start over. They find a way.��
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The bride �� The plus one �� The best man �� The wedding planner �� The bridesmaid �� The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 319 Lucy Foley tiffany 3
this book is perfect for those who want a quick, engaging read, where you're constantly trying to guess what's going on, and the characters are all more interconnected than you'd think. i also appreciated the way that the murder mystery draws on very salient critiques of the 'boys will be boys' culture, power, and privilege.]]> 3.82 2020
author: Lucy Foley
name: tiffany
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/03/14
shelves:
review:
pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a 'whodunnit' thriller: it's got the dead body, it's got the plot twists and shocker reveals, it's got the isolated setting, and of course, it's got a seemingly-perfect wedding as the backdrop to all the drama.

this book is perfect for those who want a quick, engaging read, where you're constantly trying to guess what's going on, and the characters are all more interconnected than you'd think. i also appreciated the way that the murder mystery draws on very salient critiques of the 'boys will be boys' culture, power, and privilege.
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