calliope's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 06 Apr 2025 06:41:09 -0700 60 calliope's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Witchcraft for Wayward Girls 207611566 There’s power in a book�

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 calliope 0 to-read 4.02 2025 Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
author: Grady Hendrix
name: calliope
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 calliope 5 holy shit. 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: calliope
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:
holy shit.
]]> <![CDATA[Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1)]]> 17333324
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.]]> 386 Ann Leckie calliope 0 to-read 3.98 2013 Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1)
author: Ann Leckie
name: calliope
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over]]> 177148776 128 Anne de Marcken 0811237850 calliope 3 3.70 2024 It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
author: Anne de Marcken
name: calliope
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)]]> 77566 500 Dan Simmons 0553283685 calliope 0 to-read 4.26 1989 Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)
author: Dan Simmons
name: calliope
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Women Who Run With the Wolves 241823
In "Women Who Run With the Wolves," Dr Estes unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairytales and stories, many from her own family, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Dr Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.]]> 537 Clarissa Pinkola Estés 0345409876 calliope 3 4.12 1992 Women Who Run With the Wolves
author: Clarissa Pinkola Estés
name: calliope
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
review:

]]> The Eternal Husband 139421
This remarkably edgy and suspenseful tale shows that, despite being better known for his voluminous and sprawling novels, Fyodor Dostoevsky was a master of the more tightly-focused form of the novella.

The Eternal Husband may, in fact, constitute his most classically-shaped composition, with his most devilish plot: a man answers a late-night knock on the door to find himself in a tense and puzzling confrontation with the husband of a former lover—but it isn’t clear if the husband knows about the affair. What follows is one of the most beautiful and piercing considerations ever written about the dualities of love: a dazzling psychological duel between the two men over knowledge they may or may not share, bringing them both to a shattering conclusion.

The Art of The Novella Series

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature’s greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.]]> 137 Fyodor Dostoevsky 097614073X calliope 4 old man yaoi 3.87 1870 The Eternal Husband
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: calliope
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1870
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:
old man yaoi
]]> Bobok 1462282 22 Fyodor Dostoevsky 141911042X calliope 4 3.36 1873 Bobok
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: calliope
average rating: 3.36
book published: 1873
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> White Nights 1772910 82 Fyodor Dostoevsky calliope 4 4.16 1848 White Nights
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: calliope
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1848
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Madonna in a Fur Coat 27793819 The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time.



'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.'

A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul.



'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian]]> 168 Sabahattin Ali 014198127X calliope 0 to-read 4.19 1943 Madonna in a Fur Coat
author: Sabahattin Ali
name: calliope
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Safekeep 199798201
A house is a precious thing...

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.]]> 272 Yael van der Wouden 1668034344 calliope 0 to-read 4.05 2024 The Safekeep
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: calliope
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Brat: A Ghost Story 198961805 I was in the waiting room. Then I was in the examination room.

Gabriel’s skin is falling off.

His dad is dead.

He owes his editor a novel.

His girlfriend won’t answer his calls.

Tasked by his horribly well-adjusted brother with clearing out the family home for sale, Gabriel’s sanity quickly begins to unravel. His parents� old manuscripts appear to change each time he reads them. A bizarre home video hints at long-buried secrets. And there’s a hideous man in the garden.

From a stunningly original new talent, this is a debut novel unlike anything you have read.]]> 240 Gabriel Smith 1398525324 calliope 0 to-read 3.36 2024 Brat: A Ghost Story
author: Gabriel Smith
name: calliope
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion]]> 43126457 Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.]]> 303 Jia Tolentino 0525510540 calliope 0 to-read 4.04 2019 Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
author: Jia Tolentino
name: calliope
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Short Stay in Hell 13456414
In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.]]> 110 Steven L. Peck 098374842X calliope 5 4.17 2011 A Short Stay in Hell
author: Steven L. Peck
name: calliope
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:
this is the scariest concept of hell.
]]> <![CDATA[Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 calliope 5 3.79 2014 Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: calliope
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler]]> 374233 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration�"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.

The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches—stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition—with explorations of how and why we choose to read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."]]> 260 Italo Calvino calliope 4 4.06 1979 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
author: Italo Calvino
name: calliope
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves:
review:

]]> The Jaunt 52317884
The story takes place early in the 24th century, when the technology for teleportation, referred to as "Jaunting", is commonplace, allowing for instantaneous transportation across enormous distances, even to other planets in the solar system. The government, which learned of the Jaunt through its inventor's use of a computer database in his experiments, soon took control of the project, demoting the scientist to a figurehead in the program. After the introduction of the Jaunt to the public in 1991, the country experienced a strong economic boom, and the price of oil declined to such an extent that OPEC disbanded. Due to environmental pollution, water became a more expensive and profitable commodity than oil by 2006.]]> 25 Stephen King calliope 4 4.19 1981 The Jaunt
author: Stephen King
name: calliope
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves:
review:
stephen king did not mean to play when he said “im gonna write the scariest 20 pages of your life� and add a bit about a girl’s boobs�
]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 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 calliope 0 to-read 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: calliope
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Only One Left 62703226 At seventeen, Lenora Hope
Hung her sister with a rope

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

Stabbed her father with a knife
Took her mother’s happy life

It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer�I want to tell you everything.

“It wasn’t me,� Lenora said
But she’s the only one not dead

As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.]]> 383 Riley Sager 0593183223 calliope 3 i support women’s wrongs 4.12 2023 The Only One Left
author: Riley Sager
name: calliope
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:
i support women’s wrongs
]]> <![CDATA[Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)]]> 52381770
It worries about the fragile human crew who've grown to trust it, but only where no one can see.

It tells itself that they're only a professional obligation, but when they're captured and an old friend from the past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

]]> 350 Martha Wells 1250229863 calliope 5 4.44 2020 Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)
author: Martha Wells
name: calliope
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves:
review:
giggling over an omniscient machine transport and a security murderbot WASN’T PART OF THE PLAN BUT IT SOMEHOW PULLED MY HEARTSTRINGS
]]> <![CDATA[The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3)]]> 561456
But when you're the son of a Greek god, it happens. And now my friend Annabeth is missing, a goddess is in chains and only five half-blood heroes can join the quest to defeat the doomsday monster.

Oh, and guess what? The Oracle has predicted that not all of us will survive...]]> 352 Rick Riordan calliope 3 4.37 2007 The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3)
author: Rick Riordan
name: calliope
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Of Mice and Men 890 “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.�

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. But George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own.

While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful.

A unique perspective on life's hardships, this story has achieved the status of timeless classic due to its remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.]]> 107 John Steinbeck 0142000671 calliope 4 3.88 1937 Of Mice and Men
author: John Steinbeck
name: calliope
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2021/12/03
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Reign & Ruin (Mages of the Wheel, #1)]]> 50607309 “All magic is beautiful,� she said, “and terrible. Do you not see the beauty in yours, or the terror in mine? You can stop a heart, and I can stop your breath.�

She is heir to a Sultanate that once ruled the world. He is an unwanted prince with the power to destroy.

She is order and intellect, a woman fit to rule in a man's place. He is chaos and violence and will stop at nothing to protect his people.

His magic answers hers with shadow for light. They need each other, but the cost of balance may be too high a price. Magic is dying and the only way to save it is to enlist mages who wield the forbidden power of death, mages cast out centuries ago in a brutal and bloody war.

Now, a new war is coming. Science and machines to replace magic and old religion.

They must find a way to save their people from annihilation and balance the sacred Wheel—but first, they will have to balance their own forbidden passion. His peace for her tempest, his restlessness for her calm�

Night and day, dusk and dawn, the end, and the beginning. ]]> 420 J.D. Evans 1951607015 calliope 0 to-read 4.17 2020 Reign & Ruin (Mages of the Wheel, #1)
author: J.D. Evans
name: calliope
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2)]]> 40727118
But things don't stay quiet for long. Percy soon discovers there is trouble at Camp Half-Blood: The magical borders which protect Half-Blood Hill have been poisoned by a mysterious enemy, and the only safe haven for demigods is on the verge of being overrun by mythological monsters. To save the camp, Percy needs the help of his best friend, Grover, who has been taken prisoner by the Cyclops Polyphemus on an island somewhere in the Sea of Monsters--the dangerous waters Greek heroes have sailed for millenia--only today, the Sea of Monsters goes by a new name...the Bermuda Triangle.

Now Percy and his friends--Grover, Annabeth, and Tyson--must retrieve the Golden Fleece from the Island of the Cyclopes by the end of the summer or Camp Half-Blood will be destroyed. But first, Percy will learn a stunning new secret about his family--one that makes him question whether being claimed as Poseidon's son is an honor or simply a cruel joke.]]> 279 Rick Riordan 0120000318 calliope 3 4.24 2006 The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2)
author: Rick Riordan
name: calliope
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
review:
"I've only had Tyson for a day and a half but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself."
]]> <![CDATA[The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)]]> 123675190
Read the book that launched Percy Jackson into the stratosphere before the Disney+ series comes out!

Lately, mythological monsters and the Olympian gods seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy Jackson’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. Zeus's master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect. Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus's stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus.

Whether you are new to Percy or a longtime fan, this tie-in paperback edition with full-color photos from the Disney+ series is a must-have for your library.]]> 416 Rick Riordan 1368098169 calliope 4 4.37 2005 The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)
author: Rick Riordan
name: calliope
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:
is it almost my period or was chapter 21 really fucking heartbreaking coz I HAD NO BUSINESS CRYING ON THE FIRST BOOK!??!?
]]> The Dry Heart 45414967 Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriage

The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: "I shot him between the eyes." As the tale � a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness � proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg's writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?]]> 98 Natalia Ginzburg 0811228797 calliope 0 to-read 3.88 1947 The Dry Heart
author: Natalia Ginzburg
name: calliope
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lolly Willowes 937105
But it’s in the countryside, among nature, where Lolly has her first taste of freedom. Duty-bound to no one except herself, she revels in the solitary life. When her nephew moves there, and Lolly feels once again thrust into her old familial role, she reaches out to the otherworldly, to the darkness, to the unheeded power within the hearts of women to feel at peace once more...]]> 222 Sylvia Townsend Warner 0940322161 calliope 3 3.75 1926 Lolly Willowes
author: Sylvia Townsend Warner
name: calliope
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1926
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
2.5 i really tried to like this. the whimsy and appreciation for the mundane did not fail, but oh my god what was the point of all this? there were many passages caressed with great care and lovely exclamations yet im left with nothing but unsatisfactory relief that its over. there was so much potential to turn the plot better, but it fell so flat and unserious and ridiculous. maybe i’m not a fan of this white feminist product of 1920s, although the idea of making a deal with a devil to become a witch is so compelling, the author managed to make it as dry as biscuits and the monologue was nothing close to empowering. i feel like the author had to wrap up her message coz she wasted 100 pages yapping about dull domesticity to win sympathy over the reader but my god i only cared about witches. wheres the witchy stuff and magical realism?!?!
]]> The Secret Garden 2998
Mary Lennox, a spoiled, ill-tempered, and unhealthy child, comes to live with her reclusive uncle in Misselthwaite Manor on England’s Yorkshire moors after the death of her parents. There she meets a hearty housekeeper and her spirited brother, a dour gardener, a cheerful robin, and her wilful, hysterical, and sickly cousin, Master Colin, whose wails she hears echoing through the house at night.

With the help of the robin, Mary finds the door to a secret garden, neglected and hidden for years. When she decides to restore the garden in secret, the story becomes a charming journey into the places of the heart, where faith restores health, flowers refresh the spirit, and the magic of the garden, coming to life anew, brings health to Colin and happiness to Mary.]]> 331 Frances Hodgson Burnett 0517189607 calliope 4 4.16 1911 The Secret Garden
author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
name: calliope
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1911
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves:
review:

]]> A Botanical Daughter 156415922 Mexican Gothic meets The Lie Tree by way of Oscar Wilde and Mary Shelley in this delightfully witty horror debut. A captivating tale of two Victorian gentlemen hiding their relationship away in a botanical garden who embark on a Frankenstein-style experiment with unexpected consequences.

It is an unusual thing, to live in a botanical garden. But Simon and Gregor are an unusual pair of gentlemen. Hidden away in their glass sanctuary from the disapproving tattle of Victorian London, they are free to follow their own interests without interference. For Simon, this means long hours in the dark basement workshop, working his taxidermical art. Gregor's business is exotic plants � lucrative, but harmless enough. Until his latest acquisition, a strange fungus which shows signs of intellect beyond any plant he's seen, inspires him to attempt a masterwork: true intelligent life from plant matter.

Driven by the glory he'll earn from the Royal Horticultural Society for such an achievement, Gregor ignores the flaws in his plan: that intelligence cannot be controlled; that plants cannot be reasoned with; and that the only way his plant-beast will flourish is if he uses a recently deceased corpse for the substrate.

The experiment � or Chloe, as she is named � outstrips even Gregor's expectations, entangling their strange household. But as Gregor's experiment flourishes, he wilts under the cost of keeping it hidden from jealous eyes. The mycelium grows apace in this sultry greenhouse. But who is cultivating whom?

Told with wit and warmth, this is an extraordinary tale of family, fungus and more than a dash of bloody revenge from an exciting new voice in queer horror.]]> 384 Noah Medlock 1803365927 calliope 0 to-read 3.64 2024 A Botanical Daughter
author: Noah Medlock
name: calliope
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born]]> 264587 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the novel that catapulted Ayi Kwei Armah into the limelight. The novel is generally a satirical attack on the Ghanaian society during Kwame Nkrumah’s regime and the period immediately after independence in the 1960s. It is often claimed to rank with Things Fall Apart as one of the high points of post-colonial African Literature.]]> 183 Ayi Kwei Armah 0435905406 calliope 0 to-read 3.89 1968 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
author: Ayi Kwei Armah
name: calliope
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Great Expectations 2623
Pip must discover his true self, and his own set of values and priorities. Whether such values allow one to prosper in the complex world of early Victorian England is the major question posed by Great Expectations, one of Dickens's most fascinating, and disturbing, novels.

This edition includes the original, discarded ending, Dickens's brief working notes, and the serial instalments and chapter divisions in different editions. It also uses the definitive Clarendon text.]]> 544 Charles Dickens 0192833596 calliope 4 it was great, like i expected 3.78 1861 Great Expectations
author: Charles Dickens
name: calliope
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1861
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
review:
it was great, like i expected
]]> <![CDATA[The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)]]> 46000520
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

Alternate cover edition can be found here .]]> 382 Richard Osman calliope 3 3.87 2020 The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: calliope
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:

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

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

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

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles calliope 4 so bittersweet 4.28 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: calliope
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:
so bittersweet
]]> <![CDATA[System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)]]> 65211701 Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.]]> 245 Martha Wells 1250826977 calliope 4 4.19 2023 System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
author: Martha Wells
name: calliope
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:
is it normal to feel separation anxiety over the last book of the murderbot series?
]]> <![CDATA[Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)]]> 53205854 No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall.

When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people—who knew?)

Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans!

Again!]]> 168 Martha Wells 1250765374 calliope 3 4.25 2021 Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)
author: Martha Wells
name: calliope
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves:
review:
probably the weakest in the series but there were many funny bits, particularly JollyBaby! i need more JollyBaby XD
]]> <![CDATA[Something in the Woods Loves You]]> 204593663 An inspiring blend of nature writing and memoir that explores nature’s crucial role in our emotional and mental health. Bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, and bees can dance maps.When his life took him to a painfully dark place, the poet behind The Cryptonaturalist, Jarod K. Anderson, found comfort and redemption in these facts and the shift in perspective that comes from paying a new kind of attention to nature.Something in the Woods Loves Youtells the story of the darkest stretch of a young person’s life, and how deliberate and meditative encounters with plants and animals helped him see the light at every turn. Ranging from optimistic contemplations of mortality to appreciations of a single mushroom, Anderson has written a lyrical love letter to the natural world and given us the tools to see it all anew.]]> 368 Jarod K. Anderson 1643262297 calliope 0 to-read 4.35 2024 Something in the Woods Loves You
author: Jarod K. Anderson
name: calliope
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)]]> 35519109
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?

And what will become of it when it’s caught?]]> 163 Martha Wells calliope 4 4.38 2018 Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)
author: Martha Wells
name: calliope
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves:
review:
i would do anything ANYTHING to be best friends with Murderbot
]]> <![CDATA[Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)]]> 35519101
And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

]]> 158 Martha Wells 1250191785 calliope 4 MIKI 4.21 2018 Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)
author: Martha Wells
name: calliope
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves:
review:
MIKI
]]> <![CDATA[Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)]]> 36223860 alternate cover for ISBN 9781250186928

It has a dark past � one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A� stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.]]> 158 Martha Wells calliope 4 4.23 2018 Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)
author: Martha Wells
name: calliope
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:
eugh i love murderbot because i also depend on consuming media to fight the horrors and i love ART because i love my friends
]]> <![CDATA[All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

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

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells calliope 4 4.11 2017 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
author: Martha Wells
name: calliope
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:

]]> I Hope This Doesn't Find You 124932739 I Hope This Doesn't Find You is Never Have I Ever meets To All the Boys if Lara Jean wrote hate emails instead of love letters.

Sadie Wen is perfect on paper: school captain, valedictorian, and a "pleasure to have in class." It’s not easy, but she has a trick to keep her model-student smile plastered on her face at all times: she channels all her frustrations into her email drafts. She'd never send them of course -- she'd rather die than hurt anyone's feelings -- but it's a relief to let loose on her power-hungry English teacher or a freeloading classmate taking credit for Sadie's work.

All her most vehemently worded emails are directed at her infuriating cocaptain, Julius Gong, whose arrogance and competitive streak have irked Sadie since they were kids. "You're attention starved and self-obsessed and unbearably vain . . . I really hope your comb breaks and you run out of whatever expensive hair products you've been using to make your hair appear deceptively soft..."

Sadie doesn't have to hold back in her emails, because nobody will ever read them... that is, until they're accidentally sent out.

Overnight, Sadie’s carefully crafted, conflict-free life is turned upside down. It's her worst nightmare -- now everyone at school knows what she really thinks of them, and they're not afraid to tell her what they really think of her either. But amidst the chaos, there's one person growing to appreciate the "real" Sadie -- Julius, the only boy she's sworn to hate...]]> 320 Ann Liang 1338827154 calliope 4 4.17 2024 I Hope This Doesn't Find You
author: Ann Liang
name: calliope
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
review:
the kind of romance you’d want in high school. unfortunately, during high school i was always in the library (because i could not afford lunch jk 1/2)
]]> <![CDATA[If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English]]> 57693584
A dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa. In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to tell about it?]]> 186 Noor Naga 164445081X calliope 0 to-read 3.95 2022 If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English
author: Noor Naga
name: calliope
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch (Eva Evergreen, #1)]]> 51285821 A young witch must pass a coming-of-age quest or risk losing her magic forever.

Sometimes all you need is a pinch of magic...

Eva Evergreen is determined to earn the rank of Novice Witch before her thirteenth birthday. If she doesn't, she'll lose her magic forever. For most young witches and wizards, it's a simple enough test:

One: Help your town, do good all around.
Two: Live there for one moon, don't leave too soon.
Three: Fly home by broomstick, the easiest of tricks.

The only problem? Eva only has a pinch of magic. She summons heads of cabbage instead of flowers and gets a sunburn instead of calling down rain. And to add insult to injury, whenever she overuses her magic, she falls asleep.

When she lands in the tranquil coastal town of Auteri, the residents expect a powerful witch, not a semi-magical girl. So Eva comes up with a plan: set up a magical repair shop to aid Auteri and prove she's worthy. She may have more blood than magic, but her "semi-magical fixes" repair the lives of the townspeople in ways they never could have imagined. Only, Eva's bit of magic may not be enough when the biggest magical storm in history threatens the town she's grown to love. Eva must conjure up all of the magic, bravery, and cleverness she can muster or Auteri and her dreams of becoming a witch will wash away with the storm.]]> 400 Julie Abe 0316493880 calliope 2 4.12 2020 Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch (Eva Evergreen, #1)
author: Julie Abe
name: calliope
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit]]> 15055
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.

At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.]]> 176 Jeanette Winterson calliope 2 3.76 1985 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: calliope
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 1984 61439040
Alternate cover edition can be found here.]]> 368 George Orwell 0452284236 calliope 5 fucking hell 4.21 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: calliope
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1949
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves:
review:
fucking hell
]]> Misery 10614 #1, #2, #3, #4

Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.]]> 370 Stephen King 0450417395 calliope 4 4.22 1987 Misery
author: Stephen King
name: calliope
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/28
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves:
review:
women in male dominated fields
]]> <![CDATA[Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy]]> 106244

Books like this, that address the sources of creation and the sources of our humanness, come along once in a decade. -Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"This small book is as wise, sensitive, intense, and affecting as anything I have read in recent years." -Doris Grumbach, author of Fifty Days of Solitude

"A gem." -Library Journal

"Mark Doty's prose is insistently exploratory, yet every aside, every detour, turns into pertinence, and it all seems effortless, as though the author were wondering, and marveling, aloud." -Bernard Cooper, author of Truth Serum

"A dazzling accomplishment, its radiance bred of lucid attention and acute insight. The subject is the profoundly personal act of perception translated into description. Doty succeeds in rendering this most contemplative of arts-the still life-into a riveting drama." -Patricia Hampl, author of I Could Tell You Stories]]> 70 Mark Doty 0807066095 calliope 5 4.24 2001 Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy
author: Mark Doty
name: calliope
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves:
review:
this essay is for the girls who are wrecked by the passage of time and are deeply sentimental towards material possessions. this is for girls like me who are maximalists at their core, who feel sorry for inanimate objects that have witnessed how time and experience have changed them.
]]> The Monster of Elendhaven 43263515
These monsters of Elendhaven will have their revenge on everyone who wronged the city, even if they have to burn the world to do it.]]> 160 Jennifer Giesbrecht 125022568X calliope 0 to-read 3.54 2019 The Monster of Elendhaven
author: Jennifer Giesbrecht
name: calliope
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Spellshop 199269577 The Spellshop is Sarah Beth Durst’s romantasy debut–a lush cottagecore tale full of stolen spellbooks, unexpected friendships, sweet jams, and even sweeter love.

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.

When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.

In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.

But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.

Like a Hallmark rom-com full of mythical creatures and fueled by cinnamon rolls and magic, The Spellshop will heal your heart and feed your soul.]]> 384 Sarah Beth Durst calliope 4 4.05 2024 The Spellshop
author: Sarah Beth Durst
name: calliope
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves:
review:
the misandry leaving my body unexpectedly because the romance was great. also a great time to read this during the “books are not political� discourse. i love how the author easily incorporated societal dysfunction at the core of monopolizing and gatekeeping knowledge. that said, books, even the cozy fantasy romance ones that seem far fetched from reality, are inherently political.
]]> ’Salem’s Lot 11590 Librarian's Note: Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0450031063

Thousands of miles away from the small township of 'Salem's Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to 'Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.]]> 483 Stephen King 0450031063 calliope 3 a dracula fanfic 4.06 1975 ’Salem’s Lot
author: Stephen King
name: calliope
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves:
review:
a dracula fanfic
]]> <![CDATA[The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4)]]> 17378527
All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love's death. She doesn't believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.]]> 439 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424984 calliope 4 I AM NOT THE SAME PERSON. 4.26 2016 The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4)
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: calliope
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves:
review:
I AM NOT THE SAME PERSON.
]]> The Doloriad 60522308 Macabre, provocative, depraved, and unforgettable, The Doloriad marks the debut of Missouri Williams, a terrifyingly talented writer

In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch and her brother, and the family descended from their incest, cling to existence on the edges of a ruined city. The Matriarch, ruling with fear and force, dreams of starting humanity over. Her children and the children they have with one another aren’t so sure. Surrounded by the silent forest and dead suburbs, they feel closer to the ruined world than to their parents. Nevertheless, they scavenge supplies, collect fuel, plant seeds, and attempt to cultivate the poisoned earth, brutalizing and caring for one another in equal measure. For entertainment, they watch old VHS tapes of a TV show called Get Aquinas in Here, in which a problem-solving medieval saint faces down a sequence of logical and ethical dilemmas. But as the Matriarch’s fragile order breaks down and her control over the sprawling family weakens, the world of the freewheeling television saint Aquinas and that of the family begin to melt together with terrible consequences.

Told in extraordinary, intricate prose that moves with a life of its own, at times striking with the power of physical force, Missouri Williams’s debut novel is a blazingly original document of depravity and salvation. Gothic and strange, moving and disquieting, and often hilarious, The Doloriad stares down, with narrowed eyes, humanity’s unbreakable commitment to life.]]> 224 Missouri Williams 1911585843 calliope 0 to-read 3.14 2022 The Doloriad
author: Missouri Williams
name: calliope
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bayou 56424673 "Eugene didn’t know if he believed in the devil beyond the wicked things people did of their own accord, but if the devil had a face, it would look like Johnny Walker’s."

Small-town Louisiana, 1935.

When Eugene was twelve, a girl from town disappeared. Everyone said the gators must have got her when she strayed too near the bayou. No foul play, just a terrible accident. But Eugene can't shake the conviction that Mary Beth's death had something to do with the man who used to haunt her—the man no one else could see.

Now, nearly two decades later, there are more dangerous things than gators in Chanlarivyè. People are disappearing again, and this time, no one can find the bodies. As the town's unease grows, charismatic fugitive Johnny Walker arrives on the scene, shedding bullet casings and stolen bank notes in his wake.

He tangles himself up in Eugene's life and awakens memories Eugene thought he had laid to rest years ago. Memories of the mysterious man who followed Eugene into his dreams, and memories of the bayou�

And of the horrifying entity that lurks beneath the water's surface, slowly seeping into the town like a stain.]]> 149 Arden Powell calliope 0 to-read 3.99 2021 The Bayou
author: Arden Powell
name: calliope
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3)]]> 17378508
Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel.]]> 391 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424968 calliope 4 4.26 2014 Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3)
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: calliope
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)]]> 17347389 439 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424941 calliope 4 4.22 2013 The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: calliope
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1)]]> 17675462 “There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,� Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.�

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.]]> 409 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424925 calliope 4 4.05 2012 The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1)
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: calliope
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Dreams Lie Beneath 54557816 Perfect for readers of The Hazel Wood and The Night Circus, this lush and layered story about magic and the captivating power of dreams is delivered with acclaimed author Rebecca Ross’s signature exquisite style.

A curse plagues the realm of Azenor—during each new moon, magic flows from the nearby mountain and brings nightmares to life. Only magicians, who serve as territory wardens, stand between people and their worst dreams.

Clementine Madigan is ready to take over as the warden of her small town, but when two magicians challenge her, she is unwittingly drawn into a century-old conflict. She seeks revenge, but as she secretly gets closer to Phelan, one of the handsome young magicians, secrets begin to rise. Clementine must unite with her rival to fight the realm’s curse, which seems to be haunting her every turn.]]> 496 Rebecca Ross 0063015951 calliope 4 4.08 2021 Dreams Lie Beneath
author: Rebecca Ross
name: calliope
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:
almost 5 stars ??? this is so good?
]]> To the Lighthouse 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 calliope 3 the ultimate thought daughter 3.81 1927 To the Lighthouse
author: Virginia Woolf
name: calliope
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:
the ultimate thought daughter
]]> Tess of the D’Urbervilles 32261 here and here.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her ‘cousin� Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.]]> 518 Thomas Hardy calliope 4 Thomas Hardy: "Yes."]]> 3.83 1891 Tess of the D’Urbervilles
author: Thomas Hardy
name: calliope
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1891
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/06
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves:
review:
"How much suffering do you want to write in this book?"
Thomas Hardy: "Yes."
]]> My Darling Dreadful Thing 193544852
Spirits are drawn to salt, be it blood or tears.

Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the light of Roos' life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos' backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.

Soon, Roos is whisked away to the crumbling estate Agnes inherited upon the death of her husband, where an ill woman haunts the halls, strange smells drift through the air, and mysterious stone statues reside in the family chapel. Something dreadful festers in the manor, but still, the attraction between Roos and Agnes is undeniable.

Then, someone is murdered.

Poor, alone, and with a history of 'hysterics', Roos is the obvious culprit. With her sanity and innocence in question, she'll have to prove who—or what—is at fault or lose everything she holds dear.

"A Sapphic seance of preternatural proportions, My Darling Dreadful Thing summons a stunning new literary voice to be reckoned with. Johanna van Veen reaches beyond the veil to conjure up a gothic shocker like no other."—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters

©2024 Johanna van Veen (P)2024 Tantor]]> 375 Johanna van Veen 1728281547 calliope 0 to-read 3.85 2024 My Darling Dreadful Thing
author: Johanna van Veen
name: calliope
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Route of Ice and Salt 56357561 It's an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews.
He dreams familiar to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he's done before, it's routine, a constant, like the tides.
Yet there's something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air, something in the night, someone stalking the ship.
The cult vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate is available for the first time in English. Translated by David Bowles and with an accompanying essay by noted horror author Poppy Z. Brite, it reveals an unknown corner of Latin American literature.]]> 196 José Luis Zárate 1927990297 calliope 4 3.60 1998 The Route of Ice and Salt
author: José Luis Zárate
name: calliope
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:
this was a different level of fanfiction wow
]]> Our Wives Under the Sea 58659343
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.]]> 240 Julia Armfield 152901722X calliope 5 3.75 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: calliope
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/26
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

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

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

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 calliope 0 to-read 3.66 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: calliope
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking]]> 54369251
But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…]]> 306 T. Kingfisher 1614505241 calliope 3 bob. 4.03 2020 A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
author: T. Kingfisher
name: calliope
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves:
review:
bob.
]]> <![CDATA[Garden Spells (Waverley Family, #1)]]> 1158967 In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.�

The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.

A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants—from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. They are the last of the Waverleys—except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before.

When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down—along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy—if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom—or with each other.

Enchanting and heartfelt, this captivating novel is sure to cast a spell with a style all its own�.]]> 304 Sarah Addison Allen 0553805487 calliope 0 to-read 4.07 2007 Garden Spells (Waverley Family, #1)
author: Sarah Addison Allen
name: calliope
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pride and Prejudice 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 calliope 3 4.28 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: calliope
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/12
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Eileen 23453099 So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back.

This is the story of how I disappeared.

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys� prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.

Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature. Ottessa Moshfegh is also the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Homesick for Another World: Stories, and McGlue.]]> 260 Ottessa Moshfegh 1594206627 calliope 4 3.57 2015 Eileen
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: calliope
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1)]]> 1099301 Warning: this description has not been authorized by Pseudonymous Bosch.
As much as he'd love to sing the praises of his book (he is very vain), he wouldn't want you to hear about his brave 11-year old heroes, Cass and Max-Ernest. Or about how a mysterious box of vials, the Symphony of Smells, sends them on the trail of a magician who has vanished under strange (and stinky) circumstances. And he certainly wouldn't want you to know about the hair-raising adventures that follow and the nefarious villains they face. You see, not only is the name of this book secret, the story inside is, too. For it concerns a secret. A Big Secret.]]> 364 Pseudonymous Bosch 0316113662 calliope 3 4.07 2007 The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1)
author: Pseudonymous Bosch
name: calliope
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/26
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)]]> 853510
One of the passengers is none other than detective Hercule Poirot. On vacation.

Isolated and with a killer on board, Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again.]]> 274 Agatha Christie 0007119313 calliope 3 4.22 1934 Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)
author: Agatha Christie
name: calliope
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Legendary (Caraval, #2) 36329818
After being swept up in the magical world of Caraval, Donatella Dragna has finally escaped her father and saved her sister, Scarlett, from a disastrous arranged marriage. The girls should be celebrating, but Tella isn’t yet free. She made a desperate bargain with a mysterious criminal, and what Tella owes him no one has ever been able to deliver: Caraval Master Legend’s true name.

The only chance of uncovering Legend’s identity is to win Caraval, so Tella throws herself into the legendary competition once more—and into the path of the murderous heir to the throne, a doomed love story, and a web of secrets…including her sister's. Caraval has always demanded bravery, cunning, and sacrifice, but now the game is asking for more. If Tella can’t fulfill her bargain and deliver Legend’s name, she’ll lose everything she cares about—maybe even her life. But if she wins, Legend and Caraval will be destroyed forever...

Welcome, welcome to Caraval . . . the games have only just begun.]]> 451 Stephanie Garber 125009531X calliope 2 4.12 2018 Legendary (Caraval, #2)
author: Stephanie Garber
name: calliope
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/29
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves:
review:

]]> A Month of Sundays 199797487
Bestselling poet and author of the acclaimed Pillow Thoughts series, Courtney Peppernell returns with a story of uncovering the light that resides deep within us all, should we only be brave enough to search the darkness to find it. A Month of Sundays is a tribute to surviving a long winter and a promise that, despite the darkness, the light will undoubtedly return.]]> 256 Courtney Peppernell 1524886742 calliope 0 to-read 3.75 A Month of Sundays
author: Courtney Peppernell
name: calliope
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Spear Cuts Through Water 55868456 Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this new epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.

The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.

But that god cannot be contained forever.

With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever. The journey ahead will be more dangerous than any of them could have imagined.

Both a sweeping adventure story and an intimate exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ambitious and profound saga that will transport and transform you—and is like nothing you’ve ever read before.
]]> 525 Simon Jimenez 0593156595 calliope 0 to-read 4.17 2022 The Spear Cuts Through Water
author: Simon Jimenez
name: calliope
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Heart of Stone 54770099
The man is quite unlike any secretary - or any man, for that matter - that Henry has ever met.

---

'Heart of Stone' is a slowly unfolding period romance between a vampire and his inimitably devoted clerk: lushly depicted in flowing, lovingly appended prose, we follow the slow understanding these two men grasp of one another, and the cross of their two worlds into each other's.

Henry Coffey, immortal and ever-oscillating between periods of delighted focus upon his current passion project, is charming, witty, and seems utterly incapable of closing his mouth for more than a few moments; in contrast, Theophilus Essex is quiet and keenly focused, adopting an ever-flat affect, but as time goes on, he relaxes in his employer's presence.

Craving resounding intimacy but with an ever aware of the polite boundaries for their situation, Coffey and Essex perform a slow dance as they grow closer to one another, and find themselves entangled.]]> 296 Johannes T. Evans calliope 0 to-read 4.16 2020 Heart of Stone
author: Johannes T. Evans
name: calliope
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Lady's Formula for Love (The Secret Scientists of London, #1)]]> 54246977 What is a Victorian lady's formula for love? Mix one brilliant noblewoman and her enigmatic protection officer. Add in a measure of danger and attraction. Heat over the warmth of humor and friendship, and the result is more than simple chemistry—it's elemental.

Lady Violet Hughes is keeping secrets. First, she founded a clandestine sanctuary for England's most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a confidential mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland.

Solitary and reserved, Arthur learned the hard way to put duty first. But the more time he spends in the company of Violet and the eccentric club members, the more his best intentions go up in flames. Literally.

When a shadowy threat infiltrates Violet's laboratories, endangering her life and her work, scientist and bodyguard will find all their theories put to the test—and learn that the most important discoveries are those of the heart.]]> 322 Elizabeth Everett 0593200624 calliope 2 3.35 2021 A Lady's Formula for Love (The Secret Scientists of London, #1)
author: Elizabeth Everett
name: calliope
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/14
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Beartown (Beartown, #1) 33413128
People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.

Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.]]> 432 Fredrik Backman calliope 4 4.27 2016 Beartown (Beartown, #1)
author: Fredrik Backman
name: calliope
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/10
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Lolita 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 calliope 4 3.87 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: calliope
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kit & Basie (Tales from Long Lily, #1)]]> 141325717 Immortality is a dangerous affair when it isn’t done right.

Basie Yeats knows he’s doing immortality all wrong, spending endless days in the same place, but he doesn’t see a reason to leave the home he loves in Long Lily, Pennsylvania. Once the impossible death of his mother leaves him the only immortal person he knows, Basie decides that the only thing he wants to do is get out of Long Lily and start doing immortality the right way—alone.

Kit Elliot has wandered the world looking for the right place to call home, so when a church-turned-cottage suddenly goes up for sale in a quaint Pennsylvania town, it feels like it was meant to be. It takes only a few days at Wellhead Cottage for Kit to decide that the man who sold it to him is frustrating, awkward, and terribly handsome. He offers to help Basie find a new home away from Long Lily—but as days turn to months, Kit finds himself wishing he could make Basie stay.

Trigger Warnings:

Graphic: Panic attacks
Moderate: Suicide (euthanasia), death of parent, grief
Minor: Pregnancy (healthy)]]> 268 Tess Carletta calliope 4 4.41 2023 Kit & Basie (Tales from Long Lily, #1)
author: Tess Carletta
name: calliope
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves:
review:
reading this while listening to romantic classical music makes it to my top 5 best life experiences ever
]]> <![CDATA[Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales, #1)]]> 60717747 It's difficult to find a husband in Regency England when you're a young lady with only half a soul.

Ever since she was cursed by a faerie, Theodora Ettings has had no sense of fear or embarrassment - a condition which makes her prone to accidental scandal. Dora hopes to be a quiet, sensible wallflower during the London Season - but when the strange, handsome and utterly uncouth Lord Sorcier discovers her condition, she is instead drawn into dangerous and peculiar faerie affairs.

If Dora's reputation can survive both her curse and her sudden connection with the least-liked man in all of high society, then she may yet reclaim her normal place in the world. . . but the longer Dora spends with Elias Wilder, the more she begins to suspect that one may indeed fall in love, even with only half a soul.

Bridgerton meets Howl's Moving Castle in this enchanting historical fantasy, where the only thing more meddlesome than faeries is a marriage-minded mother.

Pick up HALF A SOUL, and be stolen away into Olivia Atwater's charming, magical version of Regency England!]]> 304 Olivia Atwater calliope 4 4.04 2020 Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales, #1)
author: Olivia Atwater
name: calliope
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves:
review:
shout out to cozy fantasies. gotta be one of my favorite genders.
]]> <![CDATA[Love & Luck (Love & Gelato, #2)]]> 32333026 "I wanted this to be real life, not a detour...."

Addie is visiting Ireland for her aunt’s over-the-top destination wedding and hoping she can stop thinking about the one horrible thing that left her miserable and heartbroken—and threatens her future. But her brother, Ian, isn’t about to let her forget, and his constant needling leads to arguments and even a fistfight between the two once-inseparable siblings.

But when Addie discovers an unusual guidebook, Ireland for the Heartbroken, hidden in the dusty shelves of the hotel library, she’s finally able to escape her anxious mind—and Ian’s criticism.

And then their travel plans change. Suddenly Addie finds herself on a whirlwind tour of the Emerald Isle, trapped in the world’s smallest vehicle with Ian and his admittedly cute Irish-accented friend Rowan. As the trio journeys over breathtaking green hills, past countless castles, and through a number of fairy-tale forests, Addie hopes her guidebook will heal not only her broken heart, but also her shattered relationship with her brother.

That is, if they don’t get completely lost along the way.]]> 303 Jenna Evans Welch calliope 3 3.61 2018 Love & Luck (Love & Gelato, #2)
author: Jenna Evans Welch
name: calliope
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves:
review:

]]> Just After Sunset 2906039
A blind intruder visits a dying man - and saves his life, with a kiss.

A woman receives a phone call from her husband. Her LATE husband.

In the emotional aftermath of her baby's sudden death, Emily starts running. And running. Her curiosity leads her right into the hands of a murderer... and soon her legs are her only hope for survival.

Enter a world of masterful suspense, dark comedy and thrilling twists which will keep you riveted from the fist page.]]> 367 Stephen King 1416584080 calliope 2 3.89 2008 Just After Sunset
author: Stephen King
name: calliope
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves:
review:
the story about the hell cat should be banned
]]> Happy Place 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends� hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week� in front of those who know you best?

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 calliope 4 3.95 2023 Happy Place
author: Emily Henry
name: calliope
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/25
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves:
review:
emily henry has not failed me yet
]]> Piranesi 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X calliope 5 4.22 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: calliope
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves:
review:

]]> North Woods 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire.A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 calliope 0 to-read 4.12 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: calliope
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dracula 17245 You can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN here and here.

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival.

In Dracula, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.

This Norton Critical Edition includes a rich selection of background and source materials in three areas: Contexts includes probable inspirations for Dracula in the earlier works of James Malcolm Rymer and Emily Gerard. Also included are a discussion of Stoker's working notes for the novel and "Dracula's Guest," the original opening chapter to Dracula. Reviews and Reactions reprints five early reviews of the novel. "Dramatic and Film Variations" focuses on theater and film adaptations of Dracula, two indications of the novel's unwavering appeal. David J. Skal, Gregory A. Waller, and Nina Auerbach offer their varied perspectives. Checklists of both dramatic and film adaptations are included.

Criticism collects seven theoretical interpretations of Dracula by Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer.

A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included.]]> 488 Bram Stoker 0393970124 calliope 2 4.02 1897 Dracula
author: Bram Stoker
name: calliope
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1897
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
review:
me and bois pulling up at the graveyard
]]> <![CDATA[Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory]]> 25189315
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters and unforgettable scenes. Caring for dead bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, Caitlin soon becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. She describes how she swept ashes from the machines (and sometimes onto her clothes) and reveals the strange history of cremation and undertaking, marveling at bizarre and wonderful funeral practices from different cultures.

Her eye-opening, candid, and often hilarious story is like going on a journey with your bravest friend to the cemetery at midnight. She demystifies death, leading us behind the black curtain of her unique profession. And she answers questions you didn’t know you had: Can you catch a disease from a corpse? How many dead bodies can you fit in a Dodge van? What exactly does a flaming skull look like?

Honest and heartfelt, self-deprecating and ironic, Caitlin's engaging style makes this otherwise taboo topic both approachable and engrossing. Now a licensed mortician with an alternative funeral practice, Caitlin argues that our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead).]]> 254 Caitlin Doughty 0393351904 calliope 0 to-read 4.25 2014 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory
author: Caitlin Doughty
name: calliope
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life]]> 50887097 A wondrous debut from an extraordinary new voice in nonfiction, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder.

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—which sent more than a thousand of his discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered.

Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world.

When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool�a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.

Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist reads like a fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.]]> 225 Lulu Miller calliope 5 favorites oh my gosh. 4.15 2020 Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
author: Lulu Miller
name: calliope
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves: favorites
review:
oh my gosh.
]]> Romeo and Juliet 18135 Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud.

In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers� final union in death seems almost inevitable. And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.]]> 281 William Shakespeare 0743477111 calliope 3 that one toxic situationship 3.74 1597 Romeo and Juliet
author: William Shakespeare
name: calliope
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1597
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/22
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves:
review:
that one toxic situationship
]]> <![CDATA[The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On]]> 60147181 From acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds--past, present, and future. Choi's third book features poems about historical and impending apocalypses, alongside musings on our responsibilities to each other and visions for our collective survival.

Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples and calls us to imagine what will persist in the aftermaths.

With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time. They look into the collective psyche of our years in the pandemic and in the throes of anti-racist uprisings, while imagining other vectors, directions, and futures. Stories of survival collide across space and time--from Korean comfort women during World War II to children wandering a museum in the future. These poems explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. Throughout, Choi grapples with where the individual fits within the strange landscapes of this apocalyptic world, with its violent and many-layered histories. In the process, she imagines what togetherness--between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest--could look like. Bringing together Choi's signature speculative imagination with even greater musicality than her previous work, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On ultimately charts new paths toward hope.]]> 144 Franny Choi 0063240084 calliope 0 to-read 3.98 2022 The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
author: Franny Choi
name: calliope
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Anthem 667 Anthem is Ayn Rand's classic tale of a dystopian future of the great "We"—a world that deprives individuals of a name or independence—that anticipates her later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

They existed only to serve the state. They were conceived in controlled Palaces of Mating. They died in the Home of the Useless. From cradle to grave, the crowd was one—the great WE.

In all that was left of humanity, there was only one man who dared to think, seek, and love. He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world, he dared to love the woman of his choice. In an age that had lost all trace of science and civilization, he had the courage to seek and find knowledge. But these were not the crimes for which he would be hunted. He was marked for death because he had committed the unpardonable sin: He had stood forth from the mindless human herd. He was a man alone. He had rediscovered the lost and holy word—I.

"I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities."
 —Ayn Rand]]> 105 Ayn Rand 0452281253 calliope 4 thought daughter 3.59 1938 Anthem
author: Ayn Rand
name: calliope
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/04
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves:
review:
thought daughter
]]> <![CDATA[Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter, #1)]]> 28877 454 Thomas Harris calliope 4 i don't know happiness. 4.07 1981 Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter, #1)
author: Thomas Harris
name: calliope
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/08
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves:
review:
i don't know happiness.
]]> The Grace of Wild Things 61150756
Grace has never been good at anything except magic—not that anyone believes her. While other children are adopted from the orphanage, nobody wants Grace. So she decides to make a home for herself by running away and offering herself as an apprentice to the witch in the nearby woods. After all, who better to teach Grace to use her magic? Surely the witch can’t be that bad.

But the witch is that bad—she steals souls for spells and gobbles up hearts. So Grace offers a deal: If she can learn all 100½ spells in the witch’s grimoire, the witch will make Grace her apprentice. But if Grace fails, the witch can take her magic. The witch agrees, and soon an unexpected bond develops between them. But the spells are much harder than Grace expected, and when a monster from the witch’s past threatens the home Grace has built, she may have to sacrifice more than her magic to save it.

Inspired by Anne of Green Gables, this is a magical story of found family, loss, and the power of a girl’s imagination.]]> 368 Heather Fawcett 0063142627 calliope 5 favorites 4.10 2023 The Grace of Wild Things
author: Heather Fawcett
name: calliope
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/03
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves: favorites
review:
it's like i've been impaled by spring, winter, and melancholy.
]]> Garlic and the Witch 59811239 Bree Paulsen's brave little protagonist, Garlic, is back in this charmingly illustrated standalone companion to Garlic and the Vampire, serving up another tale of friendship, magic, and self-discovery. Give both books to readers who fell in love with Tidesong or Witch Boy!

Garlic loves spending time with Witch Agnes, Carrot, and her new friend, the Count, who has proven to be a delightful neighbor to the village of vegetable people rather than a scary vampire. But despite Agnes's best attempts to home-brew a vegetarian blood substitute for Count, the ingredient she needs most can only be found at the Magic Market, far from the valley.

Before she knows it, with a broomstick in hand, Garlic is nervously preparing for a journey.

But Garlic is experiencing another change too--finger by finger, she appears to be turning human. Witch Agnes assures her that this is normal for her garden magic, but Garlic isn't so sure that she's ready for such a big change. After all, changes are scary...and what if she doesn't want to be human after all?]]> 160 Bree Paulsen 006299512X calliope 4 4.34 2022 Garlic and the Witch
author: Bree Paulsen
name: calliope
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2024/04/09
shelves:
review:
i cant believe i could relate to a garlic on existential crisis, jesus.
]]> <![CDATA[Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head]]> 55835966 Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire.

Mama, I made it
out of your home,
alive, raised by the
voices in my head.

With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own stumbling way towards womanhood. Drawing from her own life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women, and teenage girls. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life: full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life: full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life: full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl.

The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed.]]> 86 Warsan Shire 0593134354 calliope 4 4.21 2022 Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
author: Warsan Shire
name: calliope
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/09
date added: 2024/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> A Thousand Mornings: Poems 13588404 A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life’s work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. In these pages, Oliver shares the wonder of dawn, the grace of animals, and the transformative power of attention. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her adored dog, Percy, she is ever patient in her observations and open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments.

Our most precious chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver opens our eyes to the nature within, to its wild and its quiet. With startling clarity, humor, and kindness, AThousand Mornings explores the mysteries of our daily experience.]]> 82 Mary Oliver 1594204772 calliope 3 4.20 2012 A Thousand Mornings: Poems
author: Mary Oliver
name: calliope
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/09
date added: 2024/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Pumpkin Spice Café (Dream Harbor, #1)]]> 139391940 A spicy small-town romance and TikTok phenomenon, perfect for fans of Hannah Grace and Stephanie Archer.

When Jeanie's aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job.

Logan is a local farmer who avoids Dream Harbor's gossip at all costs. But Jeanie's arrival disrupts Logan's routine and he wants nothing to do with the irritatingly upbeat new girl, except that he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.

Will Jeanie's happy-go-lucky attitude win over the grumpy-but-gorgeous Logan, or has this city girl found the one person in town who won't fall for her charm, or her pumpkin spice lattes�

The Pumpkin Spice Café is a cozy romantic mystery for fans of Gilmore Girls, with a grumpy x sunshine dynamic, a small-town setting and a HEA guaranteed!

Tropes:

� grumpy x sunshine
� small town
� found family
� spicy]]> 373 Laurie Gilmore 0008610665 calliope 0 3.36 2023 The Pumpkin Spice Café (Dream Harbor, #1)
author: Laurie Gilmore
name: calliope
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/09
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Small Things Like These 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 calliope 3 4.14 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: calliope
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/07
date added: 2024/04/06
shelves:
review:
today years old when i learned about the magdalene laundries. i am mortified.
]]> Book Lovers 58690308 One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

Nora Stephens� life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters� trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.]]> 377 Emily Henry 0593334833 calliope 4 4.09 2022 Book Lovers
author: Emily Henry
name: calliope
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/05
date added: 2024/04/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Finale (Caraval, #3) 40381392 A love worth fighting for. A dream worth dying for. An ending worth waiting for.

It’s been two months since the Fates were freed from a deck of cards, two months since Legend claimed the throne for his own, and two months since Tella discovered the boy she fell in love with doesn’t really exist.

With lives, empires, and hearts hanging in the balance, Tella must decide if she’s going to trust Legend or a former enemy. After uncovering a secret that upends her life, Scarlett will need to do the impossible. And Legend has a choice to make that will forever change and define him.

Caraval is over, but perhaps the greatest game of all has begun. There are no spectators this time—only those who will win, and those who will lose everything.

Welcome, welcome to Finale . . . all games must come to an end.]]> 478 Stephanie Garber 1250157668 calliope 2 4.14 2019 Finale (Caraval, #3)
author: Stephanie Garber
name: calliope
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/29
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves:
review:

]]> Caraval (Caraval, #1) 27883214 A legendary competition.
A mesmerizing romance.
An unbreakable bond
between two sisters.

Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over.

But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.

Welcome, welcome to Caraval . . . beware of getting swept too far away.]]> 407 Stephanie Garber 1250095255 calliope 4 i am tella coded 3.97 2016 Caraval (Caraval, #1)
author: Stephanie Garber
name: calliope
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/23
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves:
review:
i am tella coded
]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

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

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

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

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 calliope 3 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: calliope
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/03/17
shelves:
review:
am i crying over an octopus? yes. yes i am.
]]>