James's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 08 Apr 2025 13:58:57 -0700 60 James's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Hour of the Star 762390 The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator--edge of despair to edge of despair--and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction. In her last novel she takes readers close to the true mystery of life, and leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed.]]> 96 Clarice Lispector 0811211908 James 5 4.11 1977 The Hour of the Star
author: Clarice Lispector
name: James
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/08
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]]> Hard Times 277551
Dickens creates the Victorian industrial city of Coketown, in northern England, and its unforgettable citizens, such as the unwavering utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind and the factory owner Josiah Bounderby, and the result is his famous critique of capitalist philosophy, the exploitative force he believed was destroying human creativity and joy. This edition includes new notes to the text.]]> 496 Charles Dickens 0393975606 James 4 3.49 1854 Hard Times
author: Charles Dickens
name: James
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1854
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions]]> 433567 [sic � ed.], a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, where women-thin, straight lines-are the lowliest of shapes, and where men may have any number of sides, depending on their social status.
Through strange occurrences that bring him into contact with a host of geometric forms, Square has adventures in Spaceland (three dimensions), Lineland (one dimension) and Pointland (no dimensions) and ultimately entertains thoughts of visiting a land of four dimensions—a revolutionary idea for which he is returned to his two-dimensional world. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Flatland is not only fascinating reading, it is still a first-rate fictional introduction to the concept of the multiple dimensions of space. "Instructive, entertaining, and stimulating to the imagination." â€� Mathematics Teacher.]]> 96 Edwin A. Abbott 048627263X James 4 3.82 1884 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
author: Edwin A. Abbott
name: James
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The World We Make (Great Cities, #2)]]> 60399181 Four-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts a glorious tale of identity, resistance, magic and myth.

All is not well in the city that never sleeps. Even though the avatars of New York City have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading—and destroying the entire universe in the process—the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside. 

In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.

N.K. Jemisin’s Great Cities Duology, which began with The City We Became and concludes with The World We Make, is a masterpiece of speculative fiction from one of the most important writers of her generation.
]]> 357 N.K. Jemisin 035651269X James 0 to-read 4.05 2022 The World We Make (Great Cities, #2)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: James
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/26
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]]> Gravity’s Rainbow 415 776 Thomas Pynchon 0143039946 James 5 4.01 1973 Gravity’s Rainbow
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: James
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1973
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Modes of Protest And Resistance: Strange Change in Morals Political (Radical Theologies and Philosophies)]]> 202907882 383 Margaret Betz 303147144X James 0 currently-reading 0.0 Modes of Protest And Resistance: Strange Change in Morals Political (Radical Theologies and Philosophies)
author: Margaret Betz
name: James
average rating: 0.0
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date added: 2025/01/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Plotinus, or the Simplicity of Vision]]> 37230
Hadot carefully examines Plotinus's views on the self, existence, love, virtue, gentleness, and solitude. He shows that Plotinus, like other philosophers of his day, believed that Plato and Aristotle had already articulated the essential truths; for him, the purpose of practicing philosophy was not to profess new truths but to engage in spiritual exercises so as to live philosophically. Seen in this light, Plotinus's counsel against fixation on the body and all earthly matters stemmed not from disgust or fear, but rather from his awareness of the negative effect that bodily preoccupation and material concern could have on spiritual exercises.]]> 145 Pierre Hadot 0226311945 James 4 4.29 1963 Plotinus, or the Simplicity of Vision
author: Pierre Hadot
name: James
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead]]> 51648276
A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?

Duration: 11 hours 39 minutes.]]> 274 Olga Tokarczuk James 5 3.93 2009 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: James
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape]]> 125051915 Anti-Oculus is a psychedelic trip through the eyes of power, exploring avenues of escaping systems of control in our cyberpunk reality.

Anti-Oculus is a work of conceptual an assemblage of polemical tracts complete with a gallery of graphic illustrations inspired by postmodern and pulp classics from Anti-Oedipus to Ways of Seeing.
Through the concept of "Ocularity", the Acid Horizon crew trace the political, medical, and historical ways power sees us through its categories of control and counter-insurgency.

From the thermodynamics of policing in the cyberpunk present, to the psychiatric colonization of the image, to bodies that "go astray" in an increasingly reactionary society; Anti-Oculus maps out the ways we are captured under the eyes of cyber-capital, and provokes us to find each other in pursuit of emancipation, community, and new forms of life.]]> 202 Acid Horizon 1915672104 James 0 to-read 3.72 Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape
author: Acid Horizon
name: James
average rating: 3.72
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Schelling's Mystical Platonism: 1792-1802]]> 203813228 248 Naomi Fisher 0197752888 James 0 to-read 5.00 Schelling's Mystical Platonism: 1792-1802
author: Naomi Fisher
name: James
average rating: 5.00
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]]> The Buried Giant 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

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

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X James 5 3.56 2015 The Buried Giant
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: James
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism]]> 55338982
What makes “cultsâ€� so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .

Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.â€� But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.

Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,â€� revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultishâ€� everywhere.]]> 309 Amanda Montell 0062993151 James 0 to-read 3.83 2021 Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
author: Amanda Montell
name: James
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Into the Wild 60869516 Krakauer’s page-turning bestseller explores a famed missing person mystery while unraveling the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.

"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." —New York Times

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.

Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless.

When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.]]> 217 Jon Krakauer James 0 to-read 4.13 1996 Into the Wild
author: Jon Krakauer
name: James
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> I'm Glad My Mom Died 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,â€� 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?â€� 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!â€�), 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 James 0 to-read 4.45 2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: James
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Bunny (Bunny, #1) 53285047 We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library]]> 305 Mona Awad 0525559752 James 0 to-read 3.43 2019 Bunny (Bunny, #1)
author: Mona Awad
name: James
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> Sea of Tranquility 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 James 0 to-read 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: James
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> I Who Have Never Known Men 43208407 ‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changedâ€�

Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before.

As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.]]> 188 Jacqueline Harpman 152911179X James 0 to-read 4.24 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: James
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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]]> Prophet Song 158875813
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what � or who � is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.]]> 259 Paul Lynch James 0 to-read 4.03 2023 Prophet Song
author: Paul Lynch
name: James
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Dark Matter 27833670 A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.]]> 342 Blake Crouch 1101904224 James 0 to-read 4.13 2016 Dark Matter
author: Blake Crouch
name: James
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)]]> 35068705
When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .

Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.]]> 545 R.F. Kuang 0062662597 James 0 to-read 4.16 2018 The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)
author: R.F. Kuang
name: James
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 James 0 to-read 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: James
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 James 0 to-read 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: James
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> The Song of Achilles 13623848 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]> 408 Madeline Miller James 0 to-read 4.30 2011 The Song of Achilles
author: Madeline Miller
name: James
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 James 0 to-read 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: James
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 James 0 to-read 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: James
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Demon Copperhead 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 James 0 to-read 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: James
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso]]> 6656 This Everyman’s Library edition–containing in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso–includes an introduction by Nobel Prize—winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli’s marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations.

Translated in this edition by Allen Mandelbaum, The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.

Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.]]> 798 Dante Alighieri 0679433139 James 5 4.08 1320 The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso
author: Dante Alighieri
name: James
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1320
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
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]]> Paradise Lost 15997 Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, who are motivated by all too human temptations but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.

Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition, Paradise Lost is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years, it has held generation upon generation of audiences in rapt attention, and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.]]> 453 John Milton 0140424393 James 5 3.83 1667 Paradise Lost
author: John Milton
name: James
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1667
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World]]> 200206308 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593538180

A wide-ranging intellectual history that reveals how important games have been to human progress, and what’s at stake when we forget what games we’re really playing.

We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. Games are an essential aspect of humanity and a powerful tool for modeling reality. They’re also a lot of fun. But games can be dangerous, especially when we mistake the model worlds of games for reality itself and let gamification co-opt human decision making.

Playing with Reality explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, political science, evolutionary biology, the development of computers and AI, cutting-edge neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. Neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows how intertwined games have been with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behavior and brought us to the brink of annihilation—yet still underlies basic assumptions in economics, politics, and technology design. We used games to teach computers how to learn for themselves, and now we are designing games that will determine the shape of society and future of democracy.

In this revelatory new work, Clancy makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature and our actions.]]> 368 Kelly Clancy James 4 3.75 Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World
author: Kelly Clancy
name: James
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning]]> 17804360
Though we do not face the same dangers that threatened Europe when Camus wrote The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, we confront other alarms. Herein lies Camus' abiding significance. Reading his work, we become more thoughtful observers of our own lives. For Camus, rebellion is an eternal human condition, a timeless struggle against injustice that makes life worth living. But rebellion is also bounded by self-imposed constraints--it is a noble if impossible ideal. Such a contradiction suggests that if there is no reason for hope, there is also no occasion for despair--a sentiment perhaps better suited for the ancient tragedians than modern political theorists but one whose wisdom abides. Yet we must not venerate suffering, Camus cautions: the world's beauty demands our attention no less than life's train of injustices. That recognition permits him to declare: "It was the middle of winter, I finally realized that, within me, summer was inextinguishable."]]> 240 Robert Zaretsky 0674724763 James 4 4.02 2013 A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning
author: Robert Zaretsky
name: James
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
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]]> Gone Girl 19288043 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 415 Gillian Flynn 0307588378 James 4 4.22 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: James
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2014/04/27
date added: 2024/12/08
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]]> Desert Solitaire 214614 Desert Solitaire is one of Edward Abbey’s most critically acclaimed works and marks his first foray into the world of nonfiction writing. Written while Abbey was working as a ranger at Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah, Desert Solitaire is a rare view of one man’s quest to experience nature in its purest form.

Through prose that is by turns passionate and poetic, Abbey reflects on the condition of our remaining wilderness and the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world as well as his own internal struggle with morality. As the world continues its rapid development, Abbey’s cry to maintain the natural beauty of the West remains just as relevant today as when this book was written.]]> 337 Edward Abbey 0345326490 James 4 4.18 1968 Desert Solitaire
author: Edward Abbey
name: James
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Boy Who Followed Ripley (Ripley, #4)]]> 3845354 The Boy Who Followed Ripley, the fourth novel in the Ripley series, is one of Patricia Highsmith's darkest and most twisted creations.

Tom Ripley meets a young American runaway who has a dark secret that he is desperate to hide. Soon this unlikely pair is drawn into the seamy underworld of Berlin and a shocking kidnapping. In this masterful thriller, Highsmith shatters our perceptions of her most famous creation by letting us glimpse a more compassionate side of this amoral charmer.

"Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing."
—Frank Rich, New York Times Magazine]]> 348 Patricia Highsmith 039333211X James 3 3.58 1980 The Boy Who Followed Ripley (Ripley, #4)
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: James
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/12/03
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]]> The Red Book: Liber Novus 6454477 The Red Book, a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. Here he developed his principle theories—of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation—that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for higher development of the personality.

While Jung considered The Red Book to be his most important work, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public. It is an astonishing example of calligraphy and art on a par with The Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. This publication of The Red Book is a watershed that will cast new light on the making of modern psychology.
212 color illustrations.]]> 371 C.G. Jung 0393065677 James 5 4.54 2009 The Red Book: Liber Novus
author: C.G. Jung
name: James
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media]]> 12617
Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthyâ€� versus “unworthyâ€� victims, “legitimizingâ€� and “meaninglessâ€� Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.]]> 412 Edward S. Herman 0375714499 James 0 to-read 4.25 1988 Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
author: Edward S. Herman
name: James
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones]]> 40121378 Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
- Make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
- Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
- Design your environment to make success easier;
- Get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.]]> 319 James Clear James 0 to-read 4.34 2018 Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
author: James Clear
name: James
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism]]> 1237300 The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.]]> 558 Naomi Klein 0805079831 James 0 to-read 4.27 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
author: Naomi Klein
name: James
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/24
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]]> Normal: Book 4 (Normal, #4) 30827567 "A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future--by an iconic visionary writer

Some people call it ""abyss gaze."" Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you.

There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: Foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geoengineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks.

For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the abyss gaze takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest.

When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Adam uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future--and the past, and the now."

]]> 32 Warren Ellis 1466896035 James 3 4.28 2015 Normal: Book 4 (Normal, #4)
author: Warren Ellis
name: James
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/09/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Our Love Will Go The Way of the Salmon]]> 23365162
“Populated by talking fish, polite fish, sad fish, even fish masquerading as women, perhaps the very strangest thing about Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon is its profound human empathy—which glows as only empathy can. From a girl on the run who trades her body for a safe place to sleep, to sisters who hold on for dear life to the memory of that one year everything was good, Cameron Pierce’s characters live in a gutted fairy-tale world, drowning in the darkest water of life. At the heart of this book is a good heart. It may belong to a fish or a human; the beauty is, we never will know.â€�
Kate Bernheimer, author of How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales

“Cameron Pierce leaps Bizarro from the school of worldly fish tales, recalling Grimmsâ€� talking catches, Ueda Akinari’s piscine transformations, and the weird and wonderful angling stories of Richard Brautigan, Robert Jones, and Annie Proulx. But Pierce’s work inhabits a stream of its own. Here are vivid, fantastic, unpredictable and beautifully told stories that swim the seam between achingly believable, heartbreaking human drama and violent bizarre hyper-action and fantasy. Imagine Quentin Tarantino remaking A River Runs Through It. Pierce understands what fascinates, enchants, terrifies and disgusts us about fish, and he brilliantly explores these deep creatures as psychological projections of our best and worst selves.â€� - Henry Hughes, Oregon Book Award-winning author and editor of The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories]]> 163 Cameron Pierce James 3 4.25 2014 Our Love Will Go The Way of the Salmon
author: Cameron Pierce
name: James
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2015/02/19
date added: 2024/09/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School]]> 28439474 “Marvelously entertaining, exciting and informative.â€� —Guardian“An engaging and accessible history.â€� —New York Review of BooksThis group biography is “an exhilarating page-turnerâ€� and “outstanding critical introductionâ€� to the work and legacy of the Frankfurt School, and the great 20th-century thinkers who created it (Washington Post).In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. Not only would they change the way we think, but also the subjects we deem worthy of intellectual investigation. Their lives, like their ideas, profoundly, sometimes tragically, reflected and shaped the shattering events of the twentieth century.Grand Hotel Abyss combines biography, philosophy, and storytelling to reveal how the Frankfurt thinkers gathered in hopes of understanding the politics of culture during the rise of fascism. Some of them, forced to escape the horrors of Nazi Germany, later found exile in the United States. Benjamin, with his last great work—the incomplete Arcades Project—in his suitcase, was arrested in Spain and committed suicide when threatened with deportation to Nazi-occupied France. On the other side of the Atlantic, Adorno failed in his bid to become a Hollywood screenwriter, denounced jazz, and even met Charlie Chaplin in Malibu.After the war, there was a resurgence of interest in the School. From the relative comfort of sun-drenched California, Herbert Marcuse wrote the classic One Dimensional Man, which influenced the 1960s counterculture and thinkers such as Angela Davis; while in a tragic coda, Adorno died from a heart attack following confrontations with student radicals in Berlin.By taking popular culture seriously as an object of study—whether it was film, music, ideas, or consumerism—the Frankfurt School elaborated upon the nature and crisis of our mass-produced, mechanized society. Grand Hotel Abyss shows how much these ideas still tell us about our age of social media and runaway consumption.]]> 448 Stuart Jeffries 1784785717 James 5 4.08 2016 Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School
author: Stuart Jeffries
name: James
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2018/06/18
date added: 2024/09/28
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]]> The Nose 12462790
Dmitri Shostakovich's opera The Nose, first performed in 1930, is based on this story. A short film based on the story was made by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker in 1963 and used pinscreen animation.]]> 45 Nikolai Gogol James 5 3.79 1836 The Nose
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: James
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1836
rating: 5
read at: 2015/07/12
date added: 2024/09/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X James 0 to-read 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: James
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/31
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]]> Against Nature 210255 Against Nature or as Against The Grain, this wildly original fin-de-siĂšcle novel follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes, and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences. The original handbook of decadence, Against Nature exploded like a grenade (in the words of Huysmans) and has enjoyed a cult readership from its publication to the present day.]]> 288 Joris-Karl Huysmans 0140447636 James 3 3.88 1884 Against Nature
author: Joris-Karl Huysmans
name: James
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1884
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction]]> 10521549 The biological features of human beings are now measured, observed, and understood in ways never before thought possible, defining norms, establishing standards, and determining average values of human life. While the notion of biopolitics has been linked to everything from rational decision-making and the democratic organization of social life to eugenics and racism, Thomas Lemke offers the very first systematic overview of the history of the notion of biopolitics, exploring its relevance in contemporary theoretical debates and providing a much needed primer on the topic. Lemke explains that life has become an independent, objective and measurable factor as well as a collective reality that can be separated from concrete living beings and the singularity of individual experience. He shows how our understanding of the processes of life, the organizing of populations and the need to govern individuals and collectives lead to practices of correction, exclusion, normalization, and disciplining. In this lucidly written book, Lemke outlines the stakes and the debates surrounding biopolitics, providing a systematic overview of the history of the notion and making clear its relevance for sociological and contemporary theoretical debates

]]> 162 Thomas Lemke 0814752993 James 4 3.67 2011 Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction
author: Thomas Lemke
name: James
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/18
date added: 2024/08/13
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]]> I Am Not I 25982542 In this “strikingâ€� meditation on the relationship between the adult self and the inner child, Jacob Needleman presents excitingly “original positionsâ€� on age old spiritual and philosophical questions—Ken WilburSeeking to reconcile the split between our inner child and our adult self, eminent philosopher and religious scholar Jacob Needleman evokes the ancient spiritual tradition of a deep dialogue between a guiding wisdom figure and a seeker. The elder offers an initiation to a younger self, an initiation the author feels is missing from our culture. Rendered as a stage play, the conversation between the 80-year-old author and his younger selves unfolds, and an ambiguity emerges as to whether this is strictly the author’s internal dialogue or whether the younger self may be nurturing a rebirth of the author.  On one level, I Am Not I brings younger readers (teenagers and young adults) face to face with powerful spiritual and philosophical ideas. But as the book progresses, the dialogue delves into questions and insights that carry astonishing new hope and vision for every man and woman, challenging our culture’s accepted—and often toxic—ideas about humanity’s place in a living universe.]]> 141 Jacob Needleman 162317015X James 5 3.45 2016 I Am Not I
author: Jacob Needleman
name: James
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2016/01/01
date added: 2024/08/05
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]]> Dream Story 157409 Like his Viennese contemporary Sigmund Freud, the doctor and dramatist Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was a bold pioneer in exploring the dark tangled roots of human sexuality.

Arthur Schnitzler is probably most famous for La Ronde, a play too scandalous to publish or perform in his own lifetime but whose daisy-chain of couplings inspired both Max Ophuls's classic film and David Hare's modernized version, The Blue Room, which played to sell-out audiences in the West End and on Broadway. Dream Story is an equally erotic work, in which a married couple are first traumatized and then achieve a new depth of understanding by confessing to each other their sexual fantasies, dream-like adventures and might-have-beens . . .

Taking us on a guided tour of Vienna's seedy cafés, red-light district, decadent villas, hospitals and morgue, Schnitzler brilliantly uncovers the violence and depravity lurking beneath the surface of civilized society.

Dream Story is the inspiration for Eyes Wide Shut, co-written by Stanley Kubrick and Frederic Raphael.]]> 117 Arthur Schnitzler 0141182245 James 5 3.86 1926 Dream Story
author: Arthur Schnitzler
name: James
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1926
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/02
date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> Heart of Darkness 4900
A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is considered one of the most influential works ever written.]]> 188 Joseph Conrad 1892295490 James 4 3.43 1899 Heart of Darkness
author: Joseph Conrad
name: James
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1899
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/28
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]]> Babel-17 35422580 The new weapon of the Invaders was Babel-17, a menacing hum clogging up Alliance space communications. Rydra had to decipher the communications power of Babel-17 before it could lead to intergalactic defeat. And to do that, she would have to be the target of the next outer-space attack.]]> 249 Samuel R. Delany James 0 to-read 3.73 1966 Babel-17
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: James
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Complete Persepolis 991197
Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming—both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.

Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom�Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.]]> 341 Marjane Satrapi 0375714839 James 4 4.38 2007 The Complete Persepolis
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: James
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism]]> 138378661
Contemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation. Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the economic imperative to intensify circulation when production stagnates. "Flow" is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword, but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub. And the bad news is that political turmoil and social challenges require more mediation. Collective will, inspiring ideas, and deliberate construction are the only way out, but our dominant style forgoes them. Considering original streaming TV, popular literature, artworld trends, and academic theories, Immediacy explains the recent obsession with immersion and today’s intolerance of representation, and points to alternative forms in photography, TV, novels, and constructive theory that prioritize distance, impersonality, and big ideas instead.]]> 240 Anna Kornbluh 180429134X James 0 to-read 3.95 Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism
author: Anna Kornbluh
name: James
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/19
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]]> The Sea, the Sea 11229
In exposing the jumble of motivations that drive Arrowby and the other characters, Iris Murdoch lays bare "the truth of untruth"--the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Charles's confrontation with the tidal rips of love and forgiveness is one of Murdoch's most moving and powerful novels.]]> 528 Iris Murdoch 014118616X James 5 3.95 1978 The Sea, the Sea
author: Iris Murdoch
name: James
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/19
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]]> House of Leaves 24800
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.]]> 710 Mark Z. Danielewski James 4 4.11 2000 House of Leaves
author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: James
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/11
date added: 2024/05/11
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)]]> 2459785
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspense.]]> 448 Tana French James 4 3.83 2007 In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)
author: Tana French
name: James
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/20
date added: 2024/04/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome]]> 37811 The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti presents us with a story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. As he carefully weighs the evidence concerning the murder of Caesar, Parenti sketches in the background to the crime with fascinating detail about wider Roman society. The result is an entirely new perspective on a much-studied era.]]> 276 Michael Parenti 1565849426 James 5 4.29 2003 The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome
author: Michael Parenti
name: James
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/15
date added: 2024/04/15
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]]> Poor Things 72355 Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter - a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.

The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished authors.]]> 318 Alasdair Gray 0747562288 James 5 3.92 1992 Poor Things
author: Alasdair Gray
name: James
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/28
date added: 2024/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn James 5 3.98 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: James
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2013/12/06
date added: 2024/03/15
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]]> Ripley's Game (Ripley, #3) 3425503 The Talented Mr. Ripley. Having accrued considerable wealth through a long career of crime—forgery, extortion, serial murder—Ripley still finds his appetite unquenched and longs to get back in the game.


In Ripley's Game, first published in 1974, Patricia Highsmith's classic chameleon relishes the opportunity to simultaneously repay an insult and help a friend commit a crime—and escape the doldrums of his idyllic retirement. This third novel in Highsmith's series is one of her most psychologically nuanced—particularly memorable for its dark, absurd humor—and was hailed by critics for its ability to manipulate the tropes of the genre. With the creation of Ripley, one of literature's most seductive sociopaths, Highsmith anticipated the likes of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter years before their appearance.]]> 288 Patricia Highsmith 0393332128 James 5 3.83 1974 Ripley's Game (Ripley, #3)
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: James
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/11
date added: 2024/02/10
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]]> <![CDATA[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]> 7588 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to blossom fully into themselves.]]> 329 James Joyce 0142437344 James 5 3.64 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
author: James Joyce
name: James
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1916
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/01/14
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]]> Oblomov 254308 586 Ivan Goncharov 1933480092 James 0 to-read 4.09 1859 Oblomov
author: Ivan Goncharov
name: James
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1859
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do]]> 8288287 A renowned Harvard professor's brilliant, sweeping, inspiring account of the role of justice in our society--and of the moral dilemmas we face as citizens What are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is killing sometimes morally required? Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Do individual rights and the common good conflict? Michael J. Sandel's "Justice" course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard. Up to a thousand students pack the campus theater to hear Sandel relate the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and this fall, public television will air a series based on the course. Justice offers readers the same exhilarating journey that captivates Harvard students. This book is a searching, lyrical exploration of the meaning of justice, one that invites readers of all political persuasions to consider familiar controversies in fresh and illuminating ways. Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, patriotism and dissent, the moral limits of markets—Sandel dramatizes the challenge of thinking through these con?icts, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well. Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise—an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.]]> 322 Michael J. Sandel 1429952687 James 0 currently-reading 4.34 2007 Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do
author: Michael J. Sandel
name: James
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/03
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Lady Chatterley's Lover 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X James 0 to-read 3.48 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: James
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[When We Cease to Understand the World]]> 62069739
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. 

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives BenjamĂ­n Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.]]> 193 BenjamĂ­n Labatut James 5 4.10 2020 When We Cease to Understand the World
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: James
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/22
date added: 2023/10/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth]]> 6493321 This graphic novel recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell. In his agonized search for absolute truth, he crosses paths with thinkers like Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert & Kurt Gödel, & finds a passionate student in Ludwig Wittgenstein. But his most ambitious goal—to establish unshakable logical foundations of mathematics—continues to loom before him. Thru love & hate, peace & war, he persists in the mission threatening to claim both his career & happiness, finally driving him to the brink of insanity.
This story is at the same time a historical novel & an accessible explication of some of the biggest ideas of mathematics & modern philosophy. With rich characterizations & atmospheric artwork, it spins the pursuit of such ideas into a satisfying tale.
 Probing, layered, the book throws light on Russell’s inner struggles while setting them in the context of the timeless questions he tried to answer. At its heart, Logicomix is a story about the conflict between ideal rationality & the flawed fabric of reality.]]> 347 Apostolos Doxiadis 1596914521 James 4 4.05 2009 Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
author: Apostolos Doxiadis
name: James
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/18
date added: 2023/09/17
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]]> Don Quixote 3836
With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as the first modern novel. The book has been enormously influential on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible."]]> 1023 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra James 5 3.86 1615 Don Quixote
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: James
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1615
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/28
date added: 2023/08/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Blessing Way (Leaphorn & Chee, #1)]]> 867387 Alternate cover edition can be found here.

Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high lonely place, a corpse with a mouth full of sand, abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer. There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn's pursuit of a Wolf-Witch is leading him where even the bravest men fear, on a chilling trail that winds perilously between mysticism and murder.]]> 306 Tony Hillerman 0061000019 James 4 3.99 1970 The Blessing Way (Leaphorn & Chee, #1)
author: Tony Hillerman
name: James
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/18
date added: 2023/08/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Desert Fathers: Saint Anthony and the Beginnings of Monasticism]]> 12736998 - Peter Görg]]> 145 Peter H. Gorg 1586174452 James 4 3.78 2011 The Desert Fathers: Saint Anthony and the Beginnings of Monasticism
author: Peter H. Gorg
name: James
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/14
date added: 2023/08/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Ripley Under Ground (Ripley, #2)]]> 21051388
Ripley needs the perfect solution to keep his role in the fraud a secret and his reputation clean, but not everyone's nerves are as steady as his. Especially when it comes to murder.

Ripley Under Ground is an ingenious novel of masks and identity, illusion and reality, and is followed by Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water.

'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times]]> 288 Patricia Highsmith James 4 3.76 1970 Ripley Under Ground (Ripley, #2)
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: James
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/31
date added: 2023/07/30
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]]> The Fat Years 11448281 320 Chan Koonchung 1409044114 James 4 3.37 2009 The Fat Years
author: Chan Koonchung
name: James
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/14
date added: 2023/07/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Seventh Function of Language]]> 36031246 359 Laurent Binet 1250181682 James 5 3.78 2015 The Seventh Function of Language
author: Laurent Binet
name: James
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/24
date added: 2023/07/23
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]]> Stand on Zanzibar 41069 U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering. Though written in 1968, it speaks of 2010, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful.

This edition comes with a tipped in collectors' note and an introduction by David Brin.]]> 672 John Brunner 1857988361 James 0 to-read 3.95 1968 Stand on Zanzibar
author: John Brunner
name: James
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Man Without Qualities 527756 1774 Robert Musil 0330349422 James 0 to-read 4.20 1930 The Man Without Qualities
author: Robert Musil
name: James
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1930
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table]]> 672875 512 Thomas Malory 0451528166 James 0 to-read 3.94 1485 Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table
author: Thomas Malory
name: James
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1485
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Trout Fishing in America 63913
This new edition includes an introduction by the poet Billy Collins, who first encountered Brautigan's work as a student in California.]]> 112 Richard Brautigan James 0 to-read 3.83 1967 Trout Fishing in America
author: Richard Brautigan
name: James
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Waves 46114 The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing them through their thoughts and interior soliloquies. As their understanding of nature’s trials grows, the chorus of narrative voices blends together in miraculous harmony, remarking not only on the inevitable death of individuals but on the eternal connection of everyone. The novel that most epitomizes Virginia Woolf’s theories of fiction in the working form, The Waves is an amazing book very much ahead of its time. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental, and thrilling.]]> 297 Virginia Woolf 0156949601 James 0 to-read 4.17 1931 The Waves
author: Virginia Woolf
name: James
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1931
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 James 0 to-read 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: James
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> Brideshead Revisited 30933 Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.]]> 351 Evelyn Waugh 0316926345 James 0 to-read 4.01 1945 Brideshead Revisited
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: James
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Glass Bead Game 16634 The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature.

Set in the twenty-third century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).]]> 558 Hermann Hesse 0312278497 James 0 to-read 4.12 1943 The Glass Bead Game
author: Hermann Hesse
name: James
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]]> 767171 No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.

The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading

]]> 1147 William L. Shirer 0671728687 James 0 to-read 4.20 1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
author: William L. Shirer
name: James
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> Dead Souls 28381 Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

In his introduction to this new translation, Robert A. Maguire discusses Gogol's life and literary career, his depiction of Russian society, and the language and narrative techniques employed in Dead Souls. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading, appendices, a glossary, map and notes.]]> 464 Nikolai Gogol 0140448071 James 0 to-read 4.00 1842 Dead Souls
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: James
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1842
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> Their Eyes Were Watching God 37415 238 Zora Neale Hurston 0061120065 James 0 to-read 3.98 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God
author: Zora Neale Hurston
name: James
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1937
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman]]> 76527
Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first 'postmodern' novel. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters, including Dr Slop, Corporal Trim and the parson Yorick. A joyful celebration of the endless possibilities of the art of fiction, Tristram Shandy is also a wry demonstration of its limitations. The text and notes of this volume are based on the acclaimed Florida Edition, with a critical introduction by Melvyn New and Christopher Ricks's introductory essay from the first Penguin Classics edition.]]> 735 Laurence Sterne 0141439777 James 0 to-read 3.72 1767 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
author: Laurence Sterne
name: James
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1767
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> Shƍgun (Asian Saga, #1) 402093
Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, Shƍgun is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but also one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, Shƍgun is, as the New York Times put it, "...not only something you read--you live it." Provocative, absorbing, and endlessly fascinating, there is only one: Shƍgun.]]> 1152 James Clavell James 0 to-read 4.38 1975 Shƍgun (Asian Saga, #1)
author: James Clavell
name: James
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> The Tale of Genji 7042 1182 Murasaki Shikibu 014243714X James 0 to-read 3.72 1000 The Tale of Genji
author: Murasaki Shikibu
name: James
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1000
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[All Quiet on the Western Front]]> 355697
In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious warâ€�. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldierâ€� experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.]]> 296 Erich Maria Remarque 0449213943 James 0 to-read 4.04 1928 All Quiet on the Western Front
author: Erich Maria Remarque
name: James
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> <![CDATA[History of the Peloponnesian War]]> 261243 648 Thucydides 0140440399 James 0 to-read 3.90 -411 History of the Peloponnesian War
author: Thucydides
name: James
average rating: 3.90
book published: -411
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> Native Son 15622 Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.]]> 504 Richard Wright James 0 to-read 4.03 1940 Native Son
author: Richard Wright
name: James
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> Orlando 18839 Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.]]> 336 Virginia Woolf 0141184272 James 0 to-read 3.88 1928 Orlando
author: Virginia Woolf
name: James
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> The World According to Garp 7069 610 John Irving 0345915593 James 5 4.11 1978 The World According to Garp
author: John Irving
name: James
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1978
rating: 5
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]]> My Name Is Red 2517 My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers.

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery–or crime? –lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power.]]> 417 Orhan Pamuk James 0 currently-reading 3.87 1998 My Name Is Red
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: James
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> The Idiot 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 James 0 to-read 4.22 1869 The Idiot
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: James
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Gulag Archipelago 1918â€�1956 (Abridged)]]> 70561 The Gulag Archipelago 1918â€�1956—a grisly indictment of a regime, fashioned here into a veritable literary miracle—has now been updated with a new introduction that includes the fall of the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn's move back to Russia.]]> 512 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0060007761 James 0 to-read 4.31 1973 The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: James
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde James 0 to-read 4.13 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: James
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present]]> 2767 Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those
whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”]]> 729 Howard Zinn 0060838655 James 0 to-read 4.07 1980 A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present
author: Howard Zinn
name: James
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> Absalom, Absalom! 373755 316 William Faulkner 0679732187 James 0 to-read 3.97 1936 Absalom, Absalom!
author: William Faulkner
name: James
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1936
rating: 0
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]]> Tess of the D’Urbervilles 32261 here and here.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her ‘cousinâ€� Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.]]> 518 Thomas Hardy James 0 to-read 3.83 1891 Tess of the D’Urbervilles
author: Thomas Hardy
name: James
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1891
rating: 0
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]]> The Once and Future King 43545 639 T.H. White 0441627404 James 0 to-read 4.07 1958 The Once and Future King
author: T.H. White
name: James
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius]]> 4953 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read for decades to come.]]> 530 Dave Eggers 0375725784 James 0 to-read 3.70 2000 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
author: Dave Eggers
name: James
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> Gulliver’s Travels 7733 A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins. Gulliver's final voyage takes him to the land of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses whom he quickly comes to admire - in contrast to the Yahoos, filthy bestial creatures who bear a disturbing resemblance to humans. This text, based on the first edition of 1726, reproduces all the original illustrations and includes an introduction by Robert Demaria, Jr, which discusses the ways Gulliver's Travels has been interpreted since its first publication. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 306 Jonathan Swift 0141439491 James 0 to-read 3.59 1726 Gulliver’s Travels
author: Jonathan Swift
name: James
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1726
rating: 0
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]]> Midnight’s Children 14836 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,â€� all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnightâ€� s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.]]> 647 Salman Rushdie 0099578514 James 0 to-read 3.98 1981 Midnight’s Children
author: Salman Rushdie
name: James
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/16
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