en-US Mon, 31 Mar 2025 07:58:09 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 176444106 Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.

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

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

Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.]]> 304 Ezra Klein 1668023482 Andy 4 4.11 2025
author: Ezra Klein
name: Andy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 4
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]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Andy 0 to-read 4.37 2021
author: John Green
name: Andy
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 859694 Vathek (1786), originally written in French, remains one of the strangest eighteenth-century novels and one of the most difficult to classify. Perverse and grotesque comedy alternates with scenes of 'oriental' magnificence and evocative beauty in the story of the ruthless Caliph Vathek's journey to superb damnation among the subterranean treasures of Eblis. Underlying the elegant prose is a strong element of self-indulgent personal fantasy on the part of Beckford, youthful millionaire, dreamer, and eventually social outcast. Byron, Poe, Mallarmé, and Swinburne are some of the literary figures who have admired Vathek's imaginative power.]]> 180 William Beckford 0192836560 Andy 0 to-read 3.26 1786
author: William Beckford
name: Andy
average rating: 3.26
book published: 1786
rating: 0
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]]> 30347698
With exhilarating prose and sweeping erudition, Mathias Énard pulls astonishing elements from disparate sources—nineteenth-century composers and esoteric orientalists, Balzac and Agatha Christie—and binds them together in a most magical way.]]> 448 Mathias Énard 081122662X Andy 0 to-read 4.01 2015
author: Mathias Énard
name: Andy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 123263848 736 Alexis Wright 1922725323 Andy 0 to-read 3.78 2023
author: Alexis Wright
name: Andy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 46041168 A New York Times Notable Book (2020)
A Guardian Best Book of 2020
A Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020

The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse—by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals—propels the whole village into an investigation of how and why this murder occurred. Rumors and suspicions spread. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters that most would write off as utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.

Like Roberto Bolano’s 2666Ěýor Faulkner’s greatest novels, Hurricane Season takes place in a world filled with mythology and violence—real violence, the kind that seeps into the soil, poisoning everything around: it’s a world that becomes more terrifying and more terrifyingly real the deeper you explore it.]]> 224 Fernanda Melchor 0811228037 Andy 0 to-read 3.93 2017
author: Fernanda Melchor
name: Andy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/22
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]]> 119512 314 László Krasznahorkai 0811215040 Andy 0 to-read 4.22 1989
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: Andy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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]]> 406373 Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.]]> 503 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0385031149 Andy 4 3.90 1808
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Andy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1808
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/01
date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naĂŻve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

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

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TłÜ°ů˛Ô±đ»ĺ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Andy 0 4.05 1892
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Andy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 0
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]]> 2761 The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.]]> 336 Ernest Becker Andy 0 to-read 4.07 1973
author: Ernest Becker
name: Andy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/24
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]]> 18122
But how can he go looking for Lord Asriel when Lyra is gone? Only with her help can he fathom the myriad plots and intrigues that beset him.

The two great powers of the many worlds are lining up for war, and Will must find Lyra, for together they are on their way to battle, an inevitable journey that will even take them to the world of the dead...]]> 465 Philip Pullman 0440238153 Andy 0 to-read 4.11 2000
author: Philip Pullman
name: Andy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 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 Benjamín 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 Andy 0 to-read 4.10 2020
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: Andy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/08
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]]> 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist � an informational topologist with half his mind gone � as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Andy 5 4.01 2006
author: Peter Watts
name: Andy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 211143806
When, at age forty-six, Nancy Pelosi, mother of five, asked her youngest daughter if she should run for Congress, Alexandra Pelosi answered: ';Mother, get a life!' And so Nancy did, and what a life it has been.

InThe Art of Power, Pelosi describes for the first time what it takes to make history not only as the first woman to ascend to the most powerful legislative role in America, but to pass laws that would save lives and livelihoods, from the emergency rescue of the economy in 2008 to transforming health care. She describes the perseverance, persuasion, and respect for her members that it took to succeed, but also the joy of seeing America change for the better. Among the best-prepared and hardest-working Speakers in history, Pelosi worked to find common ground, or stand her ground, with presidents from Bush to Biden.

She also shares moving moments with soldiers sent to the front lines, women who inspired her, and human rights activists who fought by her side.

Pelosi took positions that established her as a prophetic voice on the major moral issues of the day, warning early about the dangers of the Iraq War and of the Chinese government's long record of misbehaviour. This moral courage prepared her for the arrival of Trump, with whom she famously tangled, becoming a red-coated symbol of resistance to his destructive presidency. Here, she reveals how she went toe-to-toe with Trump, leading up to January 6, 2021, when he unleashed his post-election fury on the Congress.

Pelosi gives us her personal account of that day: the assault not only on the symbol of our democracy but on the men and women who had come to serve the nation, never expecting to hide under desks or flee for their lives and her determined efforts to get the National Guard to the Capitol. Nearly two years later, violence and fury would erupt inside Pelosi's own home when an intruder, demanding to see the Speaker, viciously attacked her beloved husband, Paul. Here, Pelosi shares that horrifying day and the traumatic aftermath for her and her family.]]> 12 Nancy Pelosi 1797178725 Andy 0 to-read 3.98 2024
author: Nancy Pelosi
name: Andy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> 126247765 162 Jem Challender 0646865862 Andy 0 to-read 4.00 2023
author: Jem Challender
name: Andy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/02
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]]> 25451264
Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death's End. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?]]> 604 Liu Cixin 0765377101 Andy 3 4.40 2010
author: Liu Cixin
name: Andy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/02
date added: 2024/08/02
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]]> 174622 308 James Salter 0679740732 Andy 0 to-read 4.07 1975
author: James Salter
name: Andy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/26
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]]> 1036690 220 Andrew C. Isenberg 0521003482 Andy 0 to-read 3.71 2000
author: Andrew C. Isenberg
name: Andy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/21
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]]> 457264 746 Simone de Beauvoir 0679724516 Andy 0 to-read 4.16 1949
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Andy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/21
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]]> 85767 Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.]]> 236 Judith Butler 0415389550 Andy 0 to-read 4.08 1989
author: Judith Butler
name: Andy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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]]> 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Andy 4 3.81 2018
author: Sally Rooney
name: Andy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/11
date added: 2024/07/11
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]]> 55817233 240 Joshua Cohen 1913097609 Andy 4 3.81 2021
author: Joshua Cohen
name: Andy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> 52878453
While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body". Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to area, having moved her from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home.

A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, 'Death in Her Hands' asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both guide us closer to the truth and keep us at bay from it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, only this time the stakes have never been higher.]]> 259 Ottessa Moshfegh 1984879359 Andy 0 to-read 3.25 2020
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Andy
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61354651
A quintessentially American fashion narrative about the rise and fall of the first lifestyle brand, J.Crew, and what the company’s fate means for the shifting landscape of the retail industry.

Once upon a time, a no-frills J.Crew rollneck sweater held an almost mystical power—or at least it felt that way. The story of J.Crew is the story of the original “lifestyle brand,� whose evolution charts a sea change in the way we dress, the way we shop, and who we aspire to be over the past four decades—all told through iconic clothes and the most riveting characters imaginable.

In The Kingdom of Prep, seasoned fashion journalist Maggie Bullock tells J.Crew’s epic story for the first time, bringing to life the deliciously idiosyncratic people who built a beloved brand, unpacking the complex legacy of prep—a subculture born on the 1920s campuses of the Ivy League—and how one brand rose to epitomize “American� style in two very different golden eras, and also eventually embodied the “retail apocalypse� that rocked the global fashion industry and left hollowed-out malls across the country.

In a juicy business narrative rich with humor and insight, Bullock combines the colorful characters of The Devil Wears Prada, the business insight of Deluxe, and the nostalgia factor of True Prep, to chart J.Crew’s origin story, its Obama-era heyday, and its brush-with-death decline through the stories of the mercurial characters who helmed the company. There is founder Arthur Cinader, who set out to sell the Ralph Lauren look for half the price, and his daughter Emily, who turned J.Crew into a new campus uniform, and then a temple to �90s minimalism. Then came ex-Gap CEO Mickey Drexler—the most renowned (and controversial) retailer of his generation—who took J.Crew to a never-before-seen peak, only to contribute to its financial disaster, and the brilliant designer Jenna Lyons, who rose from the anonymous ranks of a catalogue company to become a star in her own right, but burned so bright she left J.Crew in her shadow.

Through extensive interviews with more than 100 J.Crew insiders and top industry experts, Bullock crafts an impossible-to-put-down, neon-glitter-sprinkled tale that traces the trajectory of American style, invites us into the inner sanctum of fashion’s most bold-faced names, and weaves together the threads of style, finance, and culture like no other brand’s story in our lifetime.]]> 368 Maggie Bullock 0063042649 Andy 3 4.00 2023
author: Maggie Bullock
name: Andy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/07/07
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Bold move to try and connect this to BLM in the last chapter
]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Andy 5 4.08 2006
author: Liu Cixin
name: Andy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/07/07
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]]> 66562105
Earth has. Now the predators are coming.

Crossing light years, the Trisolarians will reach Earth in four centuries' time. But the sophons, their extra-dimensional agents and saboteurs, are already here. Only the individual human mind remains immune to their influence.

This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a last-ditch defence that grants four individuals almost absolute power to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from human and alien alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown.]]> 513 Liu Cixin 1784971588 Andy 4 4.50 2008
author: Liu Cixin
name: Andy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/03
date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> 65645376 Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay.

Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge and, with human science advancing and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations can co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But peace has made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the start of the Trisolar Crisis, and her presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?
Praise for The Three-Body Problem :
'Your next favourite sci-fi novel' Wired
'Immense' Barack Obama
'Unique' George R.R. Martin
'SF in the grand style' Guardian
'Mind-altering and immersive' Daily Mail
Winner of the Hugo and Galaxy Awards for Best Novel]]> 605 Cixin Liu Andy 0 to-read 4.46 2010
author: Cixin Liu
name: Andy
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Andy 4 3.69 2023
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Andy
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/25
date added: 2024/06/25
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]]> 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 Andy 3 3.90 2018
author: Ling Ma
name: Andy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/14
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]]> 42201995
Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?

A poignant, heartfelt new novel by the award-nominated author of Together Tea—extolled by the Wall Street Journal as a “moving tale of lost love� and by Shelf Awareness as “a powerful, heartbreaking story”—explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.]]> 312 Marjan Kamali 1982107480 Andy 0 to-read 4.22 2019
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Andy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/21
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]]> 23515727 No Country for Old Men is a triumph.]]> 309 Cormac McCarthy 0375706674 Andy 4 4.25 2005
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Andy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/09
date added: 2024/04/09
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]]> 394535 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy Andy 5 4.18 1985
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Andy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/02/14
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Swing dancing will never be the same
]]> 36885304 Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer.

Here I am --
World in your head --
Your head in the world --
Syndrome --
Cabinet of curiosities --
Seeing is knowing --
Seven years of trips --
Guidance from Cioran --
Kunicki: water (I) --
Benedictus, quivenit]]> 416 Olga Tokarczuk 0525534199 Andy 0 to-read 3.73 2007
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Andy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/02
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]]> 33253215 real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

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

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

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.]]> 582 John Boyne Andy 4 4.51 2017
author: John Boyne
name: Andy
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/19
date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 431044 96 Philip Farkas 0874870216 Andy 0 4.74 1956
author: Philip Farkas
name: Andy
average rating: 4.74
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/15
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]]> 77265004 848 Homer 1324001801 Andy 0 to-read 4.09 -800
author: Homer
name: Andy
average rating: 4.09
book published: -800
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/21
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]]> 15995953
«Nos capítulos iniciais de Anna Karénina, somos conduzidos, uma e outra vez, a um sentido de analogia musical. Há efeitos de contraponto e harmonia no desenvolvimento das principais tramas do “prelúdio Oblonski� (o acidente na estação ferroviária, a zombadora discussão sobre o divórcio entre Vronski e a baronesa Chilton, o deslumbramento do fogo vermelho diante dos olhos de Anna). O método de Tolstoi é polifónico; mas as harmonias principais desen- volvem-se com uma tremenda força e amplitude. As técnicas musicais e linguísticas não podem comparar-se de um modo exato. Mas como poderíamos elucidar de outro modo o sentimento de que as novelas de Tolstoi surgem de um princípio interior de ordem e vitalidade, enquanto as dos escritores menos importantes parecem alinhavadas?»

«Anna Karénina morre no mundo do romance; mas cada vez que lemos o livro ela ressuscita, e mesmo depois de o termos acabado adquire outra vida na nossa recordação. Em cada personagem literária existe algo da Fénix imortal. Através das vidas perduráveis das suas personagens, a própria existência de Tolstoi teve a sua eternidade.» [George Steiner, Tolstoi ou Dostoievski]]]> 1152 Leo Tolstoy Andy 3 4.05 1878
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Andy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1878
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/11
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]]> 6798263 Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color...

A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.]]> 112 Maggie Nelson 1933517409 Andy 0 to-read 4.09 2009
author: Maggie Nelson
name: Andy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/05
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]]> 139871
Frank O’Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in New England; from 1951 he lived and worked in New York, both for Art News and for the Museum of Modern Art, where he was an associate curator. O'Hara’s untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, "the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.� This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara’s conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, "you just go on your nerve.�
]]> 52 Frank O'Hara 0802134521 Andy 0 4.14 1957
author: Frank O'Hara
name: Andy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/23
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]]> 226973
There’s not a whole lot to say story wise. A young man drinks a lot of beer and has strange conversations with a mysterious young lady he just met. So, classic Murakami.]]> 130 Haruki Murakami 4061860267 Andy 0 to-read 3.59 1979
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Andy
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 160374 The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face-to-face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and at times terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]> 113 Leo Tolstoy 0553210351 Andy 0 to-read 4.08 1886
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Andy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1886
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 11987 212 Albert Camus Andy 5 4.23 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Andy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1942
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/08/01
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]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]> 464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 Andy 3 4.36 2014
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: Andy
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/23
date added: 2023/07/23
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]]> 61053829
But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.]]> 438 Rebecca Makkai 0593490142 Andy 3 3.57 2023
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: Andy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/10
date added: 2023/07/10
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]]> 16640 149 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0812969901 Andy 3 3.71 1774
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Andy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1774
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/07/04
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If only they'd invented the gym back then :^(
]]> 57421857
Public debts have exploded to levels unprecedented in modern history as governments responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis. Their dramatic rise has prompted apocalyptic warnings about the dangers of heavy debts―about the drag they will place on economic growth and the burden they represent for future generations. In Defense of Public Debt offers a sharp rejoinder to this view, marshaling the entire history of state-issued public debt to demonstrate its usefulness.

Authors Barry Eichengreen, Asmaa El-Ganainy, Rui Esteves, and Kris James Mitchener argue that the ability of governments to issue debt has played a critical role in addressing emergencies―from wars and pandemics to economic and financial crises, as well as in funding essential public goods and services such as transportation, education, and healthcare. In these ways, the capacity to issue debt has been integral to state building and state survival. Transactions in public debt securities have also contributed to the development of private financial markets and, through this channel, to modern economic growth.

None of this is to deny that debt problems, debt crises, and debt defaults occur. But these dramatic events, which attract much attention, are not the entire story. In Defense of Public Debt redresses the balance. The authors develop their arguments historically, recounting two millennia of public debt experience. They deploy a comprehensive database to identify the factors behind rising public debts and the circumstances under which high debts are successfully stabilized and brought down. Finally, they bring the story up to date, describing the role of public debt in managing the Covid-19 pandemic and recession, suggesting a way forward once governments―now more heavily indebted than before―finally emerge from the crisis.]]> 320 Barry Eichengreen 019757789X Andy 0 to-read 3.85 2021
author: Barry Eichengreen
name: Andy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Andy 4 3.94 2013
author: Donna Tartt
name: Andy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/14
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]]> 57981 The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.]]> 464 Francis Fukuyama 0743284550 Andy 0 to-read 3.61 1992
author: Francis Fukuyama
name: Andy
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> 469571 302 Cormac McCarthy 0679744398 Andy 0 to-read 4.04 1992
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Andy
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/13
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]]> 119029466
Susan Taubes’s novella “Lament for Julia� is the story of a young woman coming of age in the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of a sexless spirit who supposes himself to be charged with her oversight.

What is this spirit? An operator from on high (though hardly holy), a narrative I , and a guiding presence that is more than a bit of a voyeur, who remains entirely unknown to Julia herself. About her, the spirit knows both a good deal and very little, since Julia’s emotional and physical and sexual being are all baffling, if also fascinating, to an entity that is pure mind.

The I and Julia are a mismatched couple, set up for failure from the start, it seems, even if they do somehow manage to deal in their different ways with childhood and Mother and Father Klopps and ugly pink outfits and dances and crushes for a while. After which come love and marriage, not necessarily in that order, at which point things really start to go wrong.

Unpublished during Taubes’s lifetime, “Lament for Julia� appears here with a selection of her stories. A brilliant metaphorical exploration of a woman’s double consciousness that is also a masterpiece of the grotesque, it is a novel like no other, a book, as Samuel Beckett wrote to his French publisher, “full of erotic touches of an emphatic sort [and] raw language,� the product of an “authentic talent,� adding, “I shall reread it.”]]> 240 Susan Taubes 1681376946 Andy 0 to-read 3.90 2015
author: Susan Taubes
name: Andy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 61242250
A Penguin Classic

René Girard eludes easy categories, bridging the fields of literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, history, religion and theology. Influencing such writers as J. M. Coetzee and Milan Kundera, his insight into contagious violence looks ever more prophetic and relevant seven years after his death. In many ways he is the thinker for our modern world of social media and herd behavior. In this newly selected collection of writings, Cynthia L. Haven has created an approachable anthology of his work, addressing Girard's thoughts on the nature of desire, human imitation and rivalry, the causes of conflict and violence, the deep structure of religion and cultural subjects like opera and theatre. Girard spoke in language that was engaging, accessible and often controversial. A long-time friend and colleague, Haven shines a spotlight on his role as a public intellectual and profound theorist, inviting a new generation to his corpus.]]> 336 René Girard 0241543231 Andy 0 to-read 3.83 2023
author: René Girard
name: Andy
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
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]]> 30688435
Exit West follows these characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.]]> 231 Mohsin Hamid 0735212171 Andy 3 3.74 2017
author: Mohsin Hamid
name: Andy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 3
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]]> 19089 "People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are"

George Eliot’s most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people".]]> 912 George Eliot 0451529170 Andy 0 to-read 4.00 1872
author: George Eliot
name: Andy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1872
rating: 0
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]]> 79388
Choosing fabrics, cleaning china, keeping the piano in tune, making a good fire, folding a fitted sheet, setting the dining room table, keeping surfaces free of food pathogens, watering plants, removing stains -- Home Comforts addresses the meanings as well as the methods of hands -- on housekeeping to help you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to modern domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home.

Further topics include: Making up a bed with hospital corners, Expert recommendations for safe food storage, Reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), Keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, Home safety and security, A summary of laws applicable to the home, including privacy, accident liability, contracts, and domestic employees and more in this practical, good-humored, historic, philosophical, even romantic, guidebook to the art of household management.]]> 896 Cheryl Mendelson 0743272862 Andy 0 to-read 4.16 1999
author: Cheryl Mendelson
name: Andy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/03
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]]> 10357575 The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for �question mark.� A world that bears a question.� Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s � 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.]]> 944 Haruki Murakami 0307593312 Andy 5 3.94 2009
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Andy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/06/03
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A lot like Snowcrash in its depiction of a fantastical yet plausible world and Also That Other Thing
]]> 186642 The Tale of the Heike is one of the masterworks of Japanese literature, ranking with The Tale of Genji in quality and prestige. This new translation is not only far more readable than earlier ones, it is also much more faithful to the content and style of the original. Intended for the general audience as well as the specialist, this edition is highly annotated.

]]> 489 Anonymous 0804718032 Andy 0 to-read 3.98 1219
author: Anonymous
name: Andy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1219
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/30
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]]> 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 Andy 0 to-read 4.13 1890
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Andy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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]]> 5787 The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.

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.]]> 210 Jorge Luis Borges 0142437883 Andy 0 to-read 4.43 1945
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Andy
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/20
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]]> 59089704 What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?]]> 310 Emma Straub 052553900X Andy 4 3.78 2022
author: Emma Straub
name: Andy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/05/19
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Imagine the midnight library but good
]]> 1440460 I beati anni del castigo in its Italian original won the 1990 Premio Bagutta and the 1990 Premio Speciale Rapallo. In Tim Parks� consummate translation (with its "spare, haunting quality of a prose poem"), Sweet Days of Discipline was selected as one of the London Times Literary Supplement’s Notable Books of 1992: "In a period when novels are generally overblown and scarcely portable, it is good to be able to recommend [one that is] miraculously short and beautifully written."]]> 101 Fleur Jaeggy 0811212351 Andy 0 to-read 3.73 1989
author: Fleur Jaeggy
name: Andy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57693333
Learn the Historically Proven Stitches Every Seamster Needs with Beloved Historical Fashion YouTuber Bernadette Banner

Whether you are just getting started with sustainable fashion and need to alter your new secondhand finds, or you want an introduction to sewing techniques for making your own clothes, Bernadette Banner’s signature voice will guide you through all the traditional stitches and techniques you need to extend the life of your favorite pieces and take fashion into
your own hands!

From tips and tricks on choosing your materials and preparing your fabric for sewing to more complex techniques like mending small holes, adding pockets to garments, making your own buttons and beyond―this book has everything you need. Complete with step-by-step photos and insight into what alterations each sewing technique is best suited for, Bernadette walks you through every step of your sewing journey. For added inspiration, this book also includes profiles on exciting voices in the historic sewing community and their perspectives on how taking fashion into their own hands has changed their lives for the better. Make, Sew and Mend is the perfect foundation for beginner sewers to start making their fashion their own.]]> 200 Bernadette Banner 164567486X Andy 0 to-read 4.48 2022
author: Bernadette Banner
name: Andy
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/19
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]]> 12158480 Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?

Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.

Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including:

   - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West?
   - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority?
   - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More
philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions?

Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.]]> 529 Daron Acemoğlu 0307719219 Andy 0 to-read 4.06 2012
author: Daron AcemoÄźlu
name: Andy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/18
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]]> 13488069 215 Magda SzabĂł Andy 0 to-read 4.01 1959
author: Magda SzabĂł
name: Andy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> 42614095
Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like 'guilt, and guilt, and guilt': these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom.

'But what is the ninth kingdom?' she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. 'It is the kingdom of the frozen will,' comes the reply. 'There is no going back.'

Sylvia Plath's strange, dark tale of independence over infanticide, written not long after she herself left home, grapples with mortality in motion.

Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.]]> 40 Sylvia Plath 0571351735 Andy 0 to-read 3.97 2019
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Andy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/18
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]]> 46195087 Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.

A chance encounter leads a man to spend the afternoon with an older woman, now a widow, who escaped him fifteen years earlier. Neither of them doubts that the day will end in disgust, but for one intimate moment each finds a way to overcome mortality.

Written in 1969, before Milan Kundera was known to English-speaking readers, this story renders male and female characters painful equals, and prompted Philip Roth to admire its 'detached Chekhovian tenderness'.

Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.]]> 48 Milan Kundera 0571356907 Andy 4 3.65 1963
author: Milan Kundera
name: Andy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1963
rating: 4
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]]> 368916
[text from the back cover of the book]]]> 106 Helene Hanff Andy 4 4.17 1970
author: Helene Hanff
name: Andy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1970
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/05/14
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]]> 49090884
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.� Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.]]> 209 Agustina Bazterrica 1982150920 Andy 0 to-read 3.75 2017
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Andy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57876868
What have you done today to deserve your eyes?]]> 120 Eric LaRocca 1951658132 Andy 3 2.93 2021
author: Eric LaRocca
name: Andy
average rating: 2.93
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/14
date added: 2023/05/14
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]]> 57925999 CJ Hauser expands on her viral essay sensation, "The Crane Wife," in a brilliant collection of essays that echo the work of Cheryl Strayed in their revelatory observations of romantic love.

CJ Hauser uses her now-beloved title essay as an anchor around which to explore, through excavation of both her own personal and larger familial hope chest of "love stories," the narratives of romantic love we are taught and which we tell ourselves, and the need to often rewrite those narratives to find an accurate version of ourselves in them. Covering ground ranging from her and her relatives' own romantic pasts to the much wider natural, supernatural, and cultural worlds, CJ relates the family legacies and lessons she imbibed in her youth, and the relationships formed in echo of those lessons, which helped to shape her early understanding of love and life.

Emerging from the rigorous honesty and radical empathy of these twenty pieces, CJ relinquishes the idea of a single, permanent love story--in favor of the metaphor of a happy haunted house as a space that contains many stories, many pasts, and multiple histories. These are hopeful pieces, which address the pain and complication of living in the present while being informed by things that have happened in one's past, and the kind of energy and spirit necessary to attempt love, again and again.]]> 320 C.J. Hauser 0385547072 Andy 2 4.06 2022
author: C.J. Hauser
name: Andy
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/05/14
date added: 2023/05/14
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Sometimes you read a book where you are absolutely not the Intended Audience and it helps you better empathize with and understand how others feel.
]]> 11623
A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time.

Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.]]> 732 Sylvia Plath 0385720254 Andy 0 currently-reading 4.27 2000
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Andy
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/26
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 56279741 358 Isabella M. Weber 0429953968 Andy 0 to-read 4.38
author: Isabella M. Weber
name: Andy
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/26
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]]> 18210768
As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and beautifully. In The Lost Art of Dress , historian and dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals that this wasn't always true.
In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women -- the so-called Dress Doctors -- taught American women that knowledge, not money, was key to a beautiful wardrobe. They empowered women to design, make, and choose clothing for both the workplace and the home. Armed with the Dress Doctors' simple design principles -- harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, emphasis -- modern American women from all classes learned to dress for all occasions in ways that made them confident, engaged members of society.

A captivating and beautifully illustrated look at the world of the Dress Doctors, The Lost Art of Dress introduces a new audience to their timeless rules of fashion and beauty -- rules which, with a little help, we can certainly learn again.]]> 347 Linda Przybyszewski 0465036716 Andy 0 to-read 3.87 2014
author: Linda Przybyszewski
name: Andy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/23
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]]> 59900070 New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.

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

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

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends--his memories--Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.]]> 208 Hua Hsu 0385547773 Andy 0 currently-reading 4.00 2022
author: Hua Hsu
name: Andy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/19
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 58999220 Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis.


In “The Changeling,� two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In “Endangered Animals,� Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In “Take Only What Belongs to You,� a queer woman struggles with the personal history of an author she idolized, while in “Fiddler, Fool, Pair,� an anthropologist is drawn into a magical—and dangerous—gamble. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes’s body—until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home.


Audacious, striking, and wholly original, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction.]]> 256 Kathryn Harlan 1324021225 Andy 3 4.16 2022
author: Kathryn Harlan
name: Andy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/19
date added: 2023/03/19
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]]> 59811915
Institutions matter for economic development. Yet despite this accepted wisdom, new institutional economics (NIE) has yet to provide a comprehensive look at what constitutes the institutional foundation of economic development (IFED). Bringing together findings from a range a fields, from development economics and development studies to political science and sociology, The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development explores the precise mechanisms through which institutions affect growth.

Shiping Tang contends that institutions shape economic development through four “Big Things�: possibility, incentive, capability, and opportunity. From this perspective, IFED has six major political hierarchy, property rights, social mobility, redistribution, innovation protection, and equal opportunity. Tang further argues that IFED is only one pillar within the New Development Triangle (NDT): sustained economic development also requires strong state capacity and sound socioeconomic policies.

Arguing for an evolutionary approach tied to a country’s stage of development, The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development advances an understanding of institutions and economic development through a holistic, interdisciplinary lens.]]> 328 Shiping Tang 0691235562 Andy 0 to-read 3.50
author: Shiping Tang
name: Andy
average rating: 3.50
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rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/18
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]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Andy 5 I hate it here 4.12 1984
author: Milan Kundera
name: Andy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/02
date added: 2023/03/02
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I hate it here
]]> 106392 Poetry 110 Dorothy Parker Andy 2 4.17 1926
author: Dorothy Parker
name: Andy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1926
rating: 2
read at: 2023/03/02
date added: 2023/03/02
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]]> 30141085 131 Hermann Hesse Andy 0 to-read 4.13 1922
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Andy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1922
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 15682 A Happy Death is a fascinating first sketch for The Outsider, but it can also be seen as a candid self-portrait, drawing on Camus's memories of his youth, travels, and early relationships. It is infused with lyrical descriptions of the sun-drenched Algiers of his childhood - the place where, eventually, Mersault is able to find peace and die 'without anger, without hatred, without regret'.]]> 144 Albert Camus Andy 0 to-read 3.89 1971
author: Albert Camus
name: Andy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
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]]> 96259 Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness� of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”]]> 80 Richard Siken 0300107897 Andy 0 to-read 4.34 2005
author: Richard Siken
name: Andy
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54776198 A stunning reinvention of the myth of Narcissus as a modern novel of manners, about two young, well-heeled couples whose parallel lives intertwine over the course of a summer, by a sharp new voice in fiction.

Wes and Diana are the kind of privileged, well-educated, self-involved New Yorkers you may not want to like but can't help wanting to like you. With his boyish good looks, blue-blood pedigree, and the recent tidy valuation of his tech startup, Wes would have made any woman weak in the knees—any woman, that is, except perhaps his wife. Brilliant to the point of cunning, Diana possesses her own arsenal of charms, handily deployed against Wes in their constant wars of will and rhetorical sparring.

Vivien and Dale live in Philadelphia, but with ties to the same prep schools and management consulting firms as Wes and Diana, they’re of the same ilk. With a wedding date on the horizon and carefully curated life of coupledom, Vivien and Dale make a picture-perfect pair on Instagram. But when Vivien becomes a visiting curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art just as Diana is starting a new consulting project in Philadelphia, the two couples� lives cross and tangle. It’s the summer of 2015 and they’re all enraptured by one another and too engulfed in desire to know what they want—despite knowing just how to act.

In this wickedly fun debut, A. Natasha Joukovsky crafts an absorbing portrait of modern romance, rousing real sympathy for these flawed characters even as she skewers them. Shrewdly observed, whip-smart, and shot through with wit and good humor, The Portrait of a Mirror is a piercing exploration of narcissism, desire, self-delusion, and the great mythology of love.]]> 320 A. Natasha Joukovsky 1419752162 Andy 0 to-read 3.60 2021
author: A. Natasha Joukovsky
name: Andy
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/13
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]]> 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X Andy 4 4.11 2017
author: M.L. Rio
name: Andy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/13
date added: 2023/02/13
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]]> 7863 A magisterial, kaleidoscopic, riveting history of Los Angeles in the Sixties

Histories of the US Sixties invariably focus on New York City, but Los Angeles was an epicenter of that decade's political and social earthquake. LA was a launchpad for Black Power--where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation--and home to the Chicano walkouts and Moratorium, as well as birthplace of "Asian America" as a political identity, base of the antiwar movement, and of course, center of California counterculture.

Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive history of LA in the Sixties, drawing on extensive archival research, scores of interviews with principal figures of the 1960s movements, and personal histories (both Davis and Wiener are native Los Angelenos). Following on from Davis's award-winning LA history, City of Quartz, and picking up where the celebrated California historian Kevin Starr left off (his eight-volume history of California ends in 1963), Set the Night on Fire is a fascinating historical corrective, delivered in scintillating and fiercely elegant prose.]]> 800 Mike Davis 0805075704 Andy 0 to-read 4.41 2020
author: Mike Davis
name: Andy
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/11
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]]> 70401 307 Jack Kerouac 0140042598 Andy 0 to-read 3.63 1957
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Andy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 36739320 A linguistically informed look at how our digital world is transforming the English language.

Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.

Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.

Because Internet is essential reading for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.]]> 327 Gretchen McCulloch 0735210934 Andy 4 4.03 2019
author: Gretchen McCulloch
name: Andy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/31
date added: 2023/01/31
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]]> 38458438 122 Amparo Dávila 0811228215 Andy 0 to-read 3.58 2018
author: Amparo Dávila
name: Andy
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 5144807 342 Arthur Henderson Smith 1891936263 Andy 0 These criticisms are not to say the book is without any truth. Many of the observed behaviors could be described as "trashy", like if a Chinese writer based their thoughts on Western romance off Love Island or the Bachelor.
Best section was the intro.]]> 4.03 1894
author: Arthur Henderson Smith
name: Andy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1894
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/07
date added: 2023/01/07
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Loose thoughts: It's very hard to rate a book like this given that it's a 19th century mix of race science and early sociology. Much of the "characteristics" described are more attributable to rural/non-industrial society than any particularity of Chinese culture. As the author himself notes, his observations are also very heavily colored by the fact that he is a colonizer in a foreign land. While this second point is acknowledged the first never really is. In the intro the author notes that his work is full of contradictions. At once Chinese people are claimed to be downtrodden and joyous, scheming and content, spiritual and atheistic. These observations may very well be true but and are no doubt partially due to Chinese culture but are also inevitable in any population in the hundreds of millions. What's incredibly frustrating is that the author acknowledges all this but then does no further analysis. There is no question as to why there are so many contradictions and only a passing interrogation of how his status as a foreign power colors his views. I'm not sure what the author's prior background in Chinese history was but his work would have greatly benefited from a deeper connection to Chinese political history, especially legalist thinking. Currently there is a large focus on religion and spirituality alone. In fact the prescription given for fixing Chinese culture is Christianity.
These criticisms are not to say the book is without any truth. Many of the observed behaviors could be described as "trashy", like if a Chinese writer based their thoughts on Western romance off Love Island or the Bachelor.
Best section was the intro.
]]> 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf Andy 0 to-read 3.81 1927
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Andy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 21532793 49 Richard Siken 1556594771 Andy 0 to-read 4.15 2015
author: Richard Siken
name: Andy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> 13514452 Warning: The next attack on American soil will come from within.

From coast to coast, our nation is witnessing a new wave of terror. Suicide bombers incite blind panic and paralyzing fear. A flight attendant tries to crash an airliner. A police officer opens fire on fans in a stadium. And at CIA headquarters, a Deputy Director goes on a murderous rampage. The perpetrators appear to be American--but they are covert agents in a vast network of terror, selected and trained for one purpose only: the complete annihilation of America.

Special Agent Jericho Quinn has seen the warning signs. As a classified "instrument" of the CIA reporting directly to the President, Quinn knows that these random acts of violence pose a clear and present danger. But Quinn may not be able to stop it. The search for terrorists has escalated into an all-out witch hunt. And somehow, Quinn's name is on the list. . .

Praise for National Security

"Fascinating characters with action off-the-charts. Masterful." --Steve Berry

"One of the hottest new authors in the thriller genre." --Brad Thor]]> 456 Marc Cameron 078602495X Andy 0 4.09 2012
author: Marc Cameron
name: Andy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> 17250
Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, "Political opposition... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."

WIth an introduction by Christopher Bigsby.
(back cover)]]> 143 Arthur Miller 0142437336 Andy 0 3.60 1953
author: Arthur Miller
name: Andy
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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]]> 228630 Black Boy is a classic of American autobiography, a subtly crafted narrative of Richard Wright's journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. An enduring story of one young man's coming of age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America.]]> 419 Richard Wright 0060929782 Andy 0 4.09 1945
author: Richard Wright
name: Andy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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]]> 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 Andy 0 4.03 1940
author: Richard Wright
name: Andy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/01
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]]> 2213661
There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.

A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean.]]> 312 Neil Gaiman 0060530928 Andy 0 4.15 2008
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Andy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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]]> 307791
But when two children, Lina and Doon, discover fragments of an ancient parchment, they begin to wonder if there could be a way out of Ember. Can they decipher the words from long ago and find a new future for everyone? Will the people of Ember listen to them?]]> 270 Jeanne DuPrau 0375822747 Andy 0 3.89 2003
author: Jeanne DuPrau
name: Andy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/01
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]]> 9777
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy 0679457313 Andy 0 3.97 1997
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Andy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> 231804 The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.

Librarian note: This record is for one of the three editions published with different covers and with ISBN 0-140-38572-X / 978-0-14-038572-4. The records are for the 1988 cover (this record), the 1995 cover, and the 2008 cover which is also the current in-print cover.]]> 208 S.E. Hinton 0670532576 Andy 0 4.13 1967
author: S.E. Hinton
name: Andy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> 1381 Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey.

If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation.

This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.

--

Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning new modern-verse translation.]]> 541 Homer 0143039954 Andy 0 3.79 -700
author: Homer
name: Andy
average rating: 3.79
book published: -700
rating: 0
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]]> 4667024
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

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

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

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.


Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here]]> 464 Kathryn Stockett 0399155341 Andy 0 4.46 2009
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Andy
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
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The universe is a dangerous place for humanity—and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF’s biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did.

Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers -- a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared’s brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades.

At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin’s memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason’s for Boutin’s betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity’s mere military defeat…]]> 343 John Scalzi 0765354063 Andy 0 4.10 2006
author: John Scalzi
name: Andy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2006
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