Liz's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 23 Mar 2025 09:01:13 -0700 60 Liz's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Act of God 22543706 It’s the summer of 2015, Brooklyn. The city is sweltering from another record-breaking heat wave, this one accompanied by biblical rains. Edith, a recently retired legal librarian, and her identical twin sister, Kat, a feckless romantic who’s mistaken her own eccentricity for originality, discover something ominous in their hall closet: it seems to be phosphorescent; it’s a mushroom…and it’s sprouting from their wall.
Upstairs, their landlady, Vida Cebu, a Shakespearian actress far more famous for her TV commercials for Ziberax (the first female sexual enhancement pill) than for her stage work, discovers that a petite Russian girl, a runaway au pair, has been secretly living in her guest room closet. When the police arrest the intruder, they find a second mushroom, also glowing, under the intruder’s bedding. Soon the HAZMAT squad arrives and the four women are forced to evacuate the contaminated row house with only the clothes on their backs.
As the mold infestation spreads from row house to high-rise, and frightened, bewildered New Yorkers wait out this plague (is it an act of God?) on their city and property, the four women become caught up in a centrifugal nightmare.
Part horror story, part screwball comedy, Jill Ciment’s brilliant suspense novel looks at what happens when our lives—so seemingly set and ordered, yet so precariously balanced—break down in the wake of calamity. It is, as well, a novel about love (familial and profound) and how it can appear from the most unlikely circumstances.]]> 179 Jill Ciment 0307911705 Liz 5 to-read 3.10 2015 Act of God
author: Jill Ciment
name: Liz
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Runaway Train: Or, the Story of My Life So Far]]> 203578958 In this brutally candid memoir, Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Eric Roberts pulls no punches about the ups and downs of his career and his sometimes stormy relationship with his famous sister, Julia.

Eric Roberts grew up in Georgia, spending most of his teens away from his mother and sisters, Lisa and Julia, and instead stayed with his controlling father, a grifter jealous of his early success. At age 17, Eric moved to New York to pursue acting, where he worked and partied with future legends like Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke, John Malkovich, Bruce Willis, and Robin Williams.

His big break came when he was cast in King of the Gypsies. Eric became one of the hottest stars of the era, starting an affair with actress Sandy Dennis, working with Bob Fosse on the critically acclaimed Star 80, and earning an Oscar nomination for Runaway Train. But for Eric, Hollywood came with a dark side—an ocean of cocaine that nearly swept him away, culminating in a car accident that almost cost him his life.

Eric is open about the seriousness of his addictions and their devastating effect on his career. He reveals the reasons behind his complicated relationship with his sister, Julia, and his daughter, Emma, a successful actress in her own right. Now, happily married to casting director Eliza Roberts, who helped him confront his demons, he is revered among his peers as the ultimate actor’s actor.

Written with New York Times bestselling author, for years a Vanity Fair contributing editor, and current Air Mail writer-at-large Sam Kashner, this is a powerful memoir of a Hollywood legend.]]> 304 Eric Roberts 1250275326 Liz 3 to-read 3.54 2024 Runaway Train: Or, the Story of My Life So Far
author: Eric Roberts
name: Liz
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia's Power Cult]]> 20754067
About the Author
Anna Arutunyan’s work has appeared in USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, Foreign Policy in Focus, and The Moscow News, where she is an editor and senior correspondent. She is author of The Media in Russia (McGraw- Hill, 2009), and is the co-author (with Vladimir Shlapentokh) of Freedom, Repression and Private Property in Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2013). She has lectured on Russian power, politics and media at Tampere University in Finland and at Michigan State University.

A bilingual Russian-American, she was born in the Soviet Union in 1980 but grew up and received her education in the United States. In 2002 she returned to Moscow to write about Russia.

Anna Arutunyan lives in Moscow with her husband and daughter.]]> 328 Anna Arutunyan Liz 5 3.65 2012 The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia's Power Cult
author: Anna Arutunyan
name: Liz
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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shelves: currently-reading, russian-soviet-history
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]]> Scenes from My Life: A Memoir 60254856 A moving, unflinching memoir of hard-won success, struggles with addiction, and a lifelong mission to give back--from the late iconic actor beloved for his roles in The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, and Lovecraft Country

When Michael K. Williams died on September 6, 2021, he left behind a career as one of the most electrifying actors of his generation. From his star turn as Omar Little in The Wire to Chalky White in Boardwalk Empire to Emmy-nominated roles in HBO's The Night Of and Lovecraft Country, Williams inhabited a slew of indelible roles that he portrayed with a rawness and vulnerability that leapt off the screen. Beyond the nominations and acclaim, Williams played characters who connected, whose humanity couldn't be denied, whose stories were too often left out of the main narrative.

At the time of his death, Williams had nearly finished a memoir that tells the story of his past while looking to the future, a book that merges his life and his life's work. Mike, as his friends knew him, was so much more than an actor. In Scenes from My Life, he traces his life in whole, from his childhood in East Flatbush and his early years as a dancer to his battles with addiction and the bar fight that left his face with his distinguishing scar. He was a committed Brooklyn resident and activist who dedicated his life to working with social justice organizations and his community, especially in helping at-risk youth find their voice and carve out their future. Williams worked to keep the spotlight on those he fought for and with, whom he believed in with his whole heart.

Imbued with poignance and raw honesty, Scenes from My Life is the story of a performer who gave his all to everything he did--in his own voice, in his own words, as only he could.]]> 259 Michael K. Williams 0593240375 Liz 4 to-read 4.46 2022 Scenes from My Life: A Memoir
author: Michael K. Williams
name: Liz
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Grace After Midnight: A Memoir]]> 1867925
While the story of coming up from the hood has been told by Antwone Fisher and Chris Gardner, among others, Snoop's tale goes far deeper into The Life than any previous books. And like Mary Karr's story, Snoop's is a woman's story from a fresh point of view. She defied traditional conventions of gender and sexual preference on the hardest streets in America and she continues to do so in front of millions of viewers on TV.]]> 240 Felicia Pearson 0446195189 Liz 4 to-read 3.64 2007 Grace After Midnight: A Memoir
author: Felicia Pearson
name: Liz
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Grim Portraits: Six Stories About the Dark Side of Art]]> 199149500
Herein you'll find stories about self-destructive lovers on a quest to find themselves while getting lost in each other ("Sometimes They See Me"), meet a man who wakes to find himself bound to a chair in a gallery of nightmarish paintings ("The Binding"), discover how one horrific act converts a child's grief into artistic talent in "The Portrait", witness the unveiling of an art collector's most precious and macabre find in "The Acquisition", visit a comic book store with a pair of thieves intent on robbing a man they don't know is expecting them ("The Barbed Lady Wants for Nothing"), and read a roadie's account of a band's final days after they discover "The Amp."

Inspired by Rod Serling's NIGHT GALLERY, GRIM PORTRAITS features six stories of art, madness, and horror by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kealan Patrick Burke.

Browse at your peril.]]> 108 Kealan Patrick Burke Liz 0 to-read 3.89 2023 Grim Portraits: Six Stories About the Dark Side of Art
author: Kealan Patrick Burke
name: Liz
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> Serafina's Promise 17270515

Serafina has
a secret dream.

She wants to go to school
and become a doctor
with her best friend, Julie Marie.

But in their rural village
outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti,
many obstacles
stand in Serafina’s way--
little money,
never-ending chores,
and Manman’s worries.

More powerful even
than all of these
are the heavy rains
and the shaking earth
that test Serafina’s resolve
in ways she never dreamed.

At once heartbreaking and hopeful,
this exquisitely crafted story
will leave a lasting impression
on your heart.]]> 304 Ann E. Burg 0545535646 Liz 0 to-read 4.01 2013 Serafina's Promise
author: Ann E. Burg
name: Liz
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Tulsi Gabbard: Why I Fight: A Soldier in Politics]]> 50145426 If Gabbard defeats her Democratic rivals and beats Donald Trump in the 2020 election, she will become the first Hindu to hold the nation's highest office. She's an Iraq war vet who is anti-war and has not been afraid to challenge her fellow Democrats on the issue. As a congresswoman from Hawaii, she has fought for women's rights, religious freedom, and a new foreign policy to help truly make America great again. Gabbard is not afraid to speak to her opponents or adversaries. She went to Syria to speak with Bashar al-Assad. She has also met with President Trump to share her views on U.S. foreign policy.
As a Democrat woman, she is facing tough challenges from a record number of women following in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton. Among her challengers are Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand. She's also facing a strong field of male challengers to become the Democrat nominee for president that includes Bernie Sanders, Corey Booker, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Vice President Joe Biden.]]> 60 Tulsi Gabbard Liz 0 to-read 4.06 Tulsi Gabbard: Why I Fight: A Soldier in Politics
author: Tulsi Gabbard
name: Liz
average rating: 4.06
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]]> <![CDATA[For Love of Country: Why I Left the Democratic Party]]> 101147876 Tulsi Gabbard was the rising star of the Democratic Party. But the growing wokeness, racism, and intolerance were more than she could stomach, and she left. This is her story.

Today's Democratic Party is controlled by an elitist cabal of warmongers driven crazy by woke ideology and anti-white animus. They are a clear and present threat to the God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.

A soldier, former member of Congress, and a presidential candidate, Tulsi loves her "I answered the call of duty and took an oath, dedicating my life to supporting and defending those freedoms, both in uniform and in public office. I became a Democrat when I ran for office because I saw them as a party that stood up for the little guy and against the interests of big business and warmongers. I remained a Democrat for twenty years, albeit with an independent streak."

Today that party is antagonistic to people of faith, hostile to the police and law and order, suspicious of law-abiding Americans, unserious about border security, and uncritical of a national security apparatus that targets political opponents and that is dragging us ever closer to apocalyptic nuclear war.

Now an Independent, Tulsi calls on those who love America to protect our rights from those who are seeking to undermine them at every turn. It’s time to say good-bye to the Democratic Party.]]> 242 Tulsi Gabbard Liz 0 to-read 4.33 For Love of Country: Why I Left the Democratic Party
author: Tulsi Gabbard
name: Liz
average rating: 4.33
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]]> The Gentle Spirit 280455 86 Fyodor Dostoevsky 141910134X Liz 0 to-read 3.99 1876 The Gentle Spirit
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Liz
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1876
rating: 0
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]]> The Yellow House 43347603
A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the "Big Easy" of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.]]> 376 Sarah M. Broom 0802125085 Liz 0 to-read 3.88 2019 The Yellow House
author: Sarah M. Broom
name: Liz
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> They Dream in Gold 196841871 A “luminous� (Tara Conklin) literary debut following two dreamers, one intercultural family, and the diasporic pursuit of home.

When Bonnie and Mansour meet in New York in 1968―his piercing gaze in a downtown jazz club threatening to carry her away―their connection is undeniable. Both from fractured homes, with childhoods spent crossing the Atlantic, they quickly find peace with each other. And as Mansour’s soaring Senegalese melodies continue to break new ground, keeping time with the sound of revolution and taking him and Bonnie from Paris to Rio and Switzerland, it seems as though happiness might finally be around the corner for them both.

Then Mansour goes missing. His Spanish tour was only meant to last three weeks, but three months later, he and his band have not returned. In his absence, Bonnie reckons with her memories of him, and comes to understand that the hopes of so many women―her mother and grandmother; his mother, aunt, childhood friend―rest on her perseverance. Stirred by the life growing inside her, Bonnie puts a plan in action to find him.

Spanning two decades and moving through the hotbeds of the African diaspora, They Dream in Gold is an epic yet intimate exploration of the migrant hunger for belonging and a powerful, intergenerational testament to our shared humanity, for lovers of Tara Stringfellow’s Memphis and Abi Daré’s The Girl with the Louding Voice.]]> 432 Mai Sennaar 1638931100 Liz 0 to-read 3.69 They Dream in Gold
author: Mai Sennaar
name: Liz
average rating: 3.69
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]]> The Collected Short Stories 144068 406 Jean Rhys 0393306259 Liz 0 to-read 4.07 1987 The Collected Short Stories
author: Jean Rhys
name: Liz
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore]]> 201751300 An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations

Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.

Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.

The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.]]> 416 Evan Friss 0593299922 Liz 0 to-read 3.93 2024 The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
author: Evan Friss
name: Liz
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist]]> 130908173 Jane Rosenberg is America's pre-eminent courtroom sketch artist. For over forty years, she's been at the heart of the story, covering almost every major trial that has passed through the New York justice system. From mob bosses to fallen titans of finance, terrorists and sex abusers, corrupt cops and warring entertainment icons, she has drawn them all.

In Drawn Testimony , Rosenberg brings us into the high-stakes, dramatic world of her craft, where art, psychology and courtroom drama collide. Over the course of her legendary career, Jane has had a front row seat to some of the most iconic and notorious moments in our nation's recent history, sketching everything from Tom Brady's deflate-gate case, to John Lennon's murder trial to cases against Ghislaine Maxwell, John Gotti, Harvey Weinstein and most recently, the indictment against former President Donald Trump. Readers will learn how she has honed her unique powers of perception, but also what her portraits reveal, not only about her subjects, but about the human condition in general.

Fearless, fascinating and gorgeously written, Drawn Testimony captures the unique career of an artist whose body of work depicts history as it's happening.]]> 256 Jane Rosenberg 1335008047 Liz 0 to-read 4.07 2024 Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist
author: Jane Rosenberg
name: Liz
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases]]> 50092714 A unique collaboration between the American Civil Liberties Union and authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, Fight of the Century features original essays by the most influential writers at work today—including Jennifer Egan, Neil Gaiman, Marlon James, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Salman Rushdie, Jesmyn Ward, and more—each writing about a landmark ACLU case, published in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the organization.

The American Civil Liberties Union began as a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller and Jane Addams. A century after its founding, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

In collaboration with the ACLU, prize-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the ACLU’s 100-year history. In Fight of the Century, bestselling and award-winning authors present unique literary takes on historic decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, the Scopes trial, Roe v. Wade, and more. Contributors include Geraldine Brooks, Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Neil Gaiman, Lauren Groff, Marlon James, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Morgan Parker, Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, Elizabeth Strout, Jesmyn Ward, Meg Wolitzer, and more.

Fight of the Century shows how throughout American history, pivotal legal battles, fought primarily by underdogs and their lawyers, have advanced civil rights and social justice. The ACLU has been integral in this process. The essays range from personal memoir to narrative history, each shedding light on the work of one remarkable organization as it shaped a country.

Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.]]> 336 Michael Chabon 1501190407 Liz 5 non-fiction 4.21 2020 Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases
author: Michael Chabon
name: Liz
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> Viscolul 59160300
Aventura celor doi, cu puternice ecouri din Tolstoi, Gogol și Kafka, este marcată de popasuri și de personaje dintre cele mai stranii � morarul înalt cât palma și soţia lui voluptuoasă, producătorii kazahi de narcotice, cadavrul uriașului îngheţat și omul lui de zăpadă, gigantic și cu un falus enorm �, care transformă această călătorie aparent banală într-un traseu fantastic, infernal, în care nu doar viscolul dobândește proporţii gigantice, ci și natura umană, care îi cade pradă.]]> 165 Vladimir Sorokin 6064410493 Liz 0 to-read 3.73 2010 Viscolul
author: Vladimir Sorokin
name: Liz
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> Dream Count 209166121 A publishing event ten years in the making�a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists�the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until � betrayed and brokenhearted � she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America � but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]> 320 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 0593803477 Liz 0 to-read 3.94 2025 Dream Count
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Liz
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis]]> 12696979 The fall and maybe rise of Detroit, America's most epic urban failure, from local native and Rolling Stone reporter Mark Binelli

Once America's capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city's worst crisis yet (and that's saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neo-pastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists—all have been drawn to Detroit's baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier.

With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new, Detroit-area native and Rolling Stone writer Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence. Throughout the city's "museum of neglect"—its swaths of abandoned buildings, its miles of urban prairie—he tracks the signs of blight repurposed, from the school for pregnant teenagers to the killer ex-con turned street patroller, from the organic farming on empty lots to GM's wager on the Volt electric car and the mayor's realignment plan (the most ambitious on record) to move residents of half-empty neighborhoods into a viable, new urban center.

Sharp and impassioned, Detroit City Is the Place to Be is alive with the sense of possibility that comes when a city hits rock bottom. Beyond the usual portrait of crime, poverty, and ruin, we glimpse a future Detroit that is smaller, less segregated, greener, economically diverse, and better functioning—what might just be the first post-industrial city of our new century.]]> 318 Mark Binelli 0805092293 Liz 3 3.83 2012 Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis
author: Mark Binelli
name: Liz
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: Selected Stories of Nikolai Leskov]]> 53998211
The story of a passionate young woman who escapes her stifling marriage through adultery and murder, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is now the basis for an acclaimed new film starring Florence Pugh.

Nikolai Leskov is one of the most unique voices of nineteenth-century Russia, with a fascination for idiosyncratic characters, lurid crimes, comic absurdity, spirituality and the joy of pure story. This volume contains five of his greatest short tales, including the matchless masterpiece Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

Translated with an introduction by David McDuff]]> 448 Nikolai Leskov 1681374919 Liz 0 to-read 4.09 1865 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: Selected Stories of Nikolai Leskov
author: Nikolai Leskov
name: Liz
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1865
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring]]> 40121995 A 2019 NPR Staff Pick



How the blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America's civil rights history

Richard Gergel's Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America's civil rights history.

On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver's disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.

President Harry Truman was outraged by the incident. He established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shull. In July 1948, following his commission's recommendation, Truman ordered an end to segregation in the U.S. armed forces. An all-white South Carolina jury acquitted Shull, but the presiding judge, J. Waties Waring, was conscience-stricken by the failure of the court system to do justice by the soldier. Waring described the trial as his "baptism of fire," and began issuing major civil rights decisions from his Charleston courtroom, including his 1951 dissent in Briggs v. Elliott declaring public school segregation per se unconstitutional. Three years later, the Supreme Court adopted Waring's language and reasoning in Brown v. Board of Education.]]> 336 Richard Gergel 0374107890 Liz 0 to-read 4.40 2019 Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring
author: Richard Gergel
name: Liz
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/25
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]]> The Beautiful and Damned 4708 The Beautiful and the Damned followed Fitzgerald's impeccable debut, This Side of Paradise, thus securing his place in the tradition of great American novelists. Embellished with the author's lyrical prose, here is the story of Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife, Gloria. As they await the inheritance of his grandfather's fortune, their reckless marriage sways under the influence of alcohol and avarice. A devastating look at the nouveau riche, and the New York nightlife, as well as the ruinous effects of wild ambition, The Beautiful and the Damned achieved stature as one of Fitzgerald's most accomplished novels. Its distinction as a classic endures to this day. Pocket Book's Enriched Classics present the great works of world literature enhanced for the contemporary reader. Special features include critical perspectives, suggestions for further read, and a unique visual essay composed of period photographs that help bring every word to life.]]> 422 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743451503 Liz 0 to-read 3.74 1922 The Beautiful and Damned
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Liz
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1922
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan]]> 46158740

Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the reader on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.


In Kyrgyzstani villages, she meets victims of the tradition of bride snatching; she visits the huge and desolate Polygon in Kazakhstan where the Soviet Union tested explosions of nuclear bombs; she meets shrimp gatherers on the banks of the dried out Aral Sea; she witnesses the fall of a dictator.


She travels incognito through Turkmenistan, a country that is closed to journalists. She meets exhausted human rights activists in Kazakhstan, survivors from the massacre in Osh in 2010, and German Mennonites that found paradise on the Kyrgyzstani plains 200 years ago. We learn how ancient customs clash with gas production and witness the underlying conflicts between ethnic Russians and the majority in a country that is slowly building its future in nationalist colors.


Once the frontier of the Soviet Union, life follows another pace of time. Amidst the treasures of Samarkand and the brutalist Soviet architecture, Sovietistan is a rare and unforgettable adventure.]]> 477 Erika Fatland 1643133268 Liz 0 to-read 4.29 2014 Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan
author: Erika Fatland
name: Liz
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/19
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]]> <![CDATA[First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent]]> 61884980
" I side with prisoners against guards, enlisted men against officers, weakness against power. "

From the beginning of World War II through the early days of Vietnam, groundbreaking female photojournalist and war correspondent Dickey Chapelle chased dangerous assignments her male colleagues wouldn’t touch, pioneering a radical style of reporting that focused on the humanity of the oppressed.

She documented conditions across Eastern Europe in the wake of the Second World War. She marched down the Ho Chi Minh Trail with the South Vietnamese Army and across the Sierra Maestra Mountains with Castro. She was the first reporter accredited with the Algerian National Liberation Front, and survived torture in a communist Hungarian prison. She dove out of planes, faked her own kidnapping, and endured the mockery of male associates, before ultimately dying on assignment in Vietnam with the Marines in 1965, the first American female journalist killed while covering combat.

Chapelle overcame discrimination both on the battlefield and at home, with much of her work ultimately buried from the public eye―until now. In First to the Front, Lorissa Rinehart uncovers the incredible life and unparalleled achievements of this true pioneer, and the mark she would make on history.]]> 400 Lorissa Rinehart 1250276578 Liz 0 to-read 4.31 2023 First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent
author: Lorissa Rinehart
name: Liz
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Liz 0 to-read 4.39 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Liz
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
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]]> <![CDATA[Expensive People (Wonderland Quartet, #2)]]> 628801 Expensive People is a stunning combination of social satire and gothic horror.

Joyce Carol Oates' Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative and suspenseful look at the roiling secrets of Americas affluent suburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession is narrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who sees himself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding around him.

Fascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbed parents and the privileged world they inhabit, Richard incisively analyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious private schooling, his “successful-executive� father, and his elusive mother. In an act of defiance and desperation, eleven-year-old Richard strikes out in a way that presages the violence of ever-younger Americans in the turbulent decades to come.

Expensive People is the second novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series are A Garden of Earthly Delights, them, and Wonderland.]]> 256 Joyce Carol Oates 0812976541 Liz 0 currently-reading 3.67 1968 Expensive People (Wonderland Quartet, #2)
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Liz
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Garden of Earthly Delights (Wonderland Quartet, #1)]]> 15981
Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In A Garden of Earthly Delights , Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother’s ambition.

A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, Expensive People , them, and Wonderland , are also available from the Modern Library.]]> 406 Joyce Carol Oates 0812968344 Liz 0 to-read 3.83 1967 A Garden of Earthly Delights (Wonderland Quartet, #1)
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Liz
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation of the World's Most Familiar Bird]]> 208145504 A charming and eye-opening exploration of the special relationship between humans and chickens from Sy Montgomery, “one of our finest chroniclers of the natural world� (The New York Times).

For more than two decades, Sy Montgomery—whose The Soul of an Octopus was a National Book Award finalist—has kept a flock of chickens in her backyard. Each chicken has an individual personality (outgoing or shy, loud or quiet, reckless or cautious) and connects with Sy in her own way.

In this short, delightful book, Sy takes us inside the flock and reveals all the things that make chickens such remarkable only hours after leaving the egg, they are able to walk, run, and peck; relationships are important to them and the average chicken can recognize more than one hundred other chickens; they remember the past and anticipate the future; and they communicate specific information through at least twenty-four distinct calls. Visitors to her home are astonished by all this, but for Sy what’s more astonishing is how little most people know about chickens, especially considering there are about twenty percent more chickens on earth than people.

With a winning combination of personal narrative and science, What the Chicken Knows is exactly the kind of book that has made Sy Montgomery such a beloved and popular author.]]> 91 Sy Montgomery Liz 0 to-read 3.84 2024 What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation of the World's Most Familiar Bird
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Liz
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
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]]> You Like It Darker 201242757 From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new collection of twelve short stories, many never-before-published, and some of his best EVER.

“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,� writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,� and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.

“Two Talented Bastids� explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,� a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,� a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,� a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man� asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

King’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.]]> 512 Stephen King 1668037718 Liz 0 to-read 4.17 2024 You Like It Darker
author: Stephen King
name: Liz
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
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]]> <![CDATA[Random Acts of Badness: My Story]]> 1252148 293 Danny Bonaduce 0786867221 Liz 3 to-read 3.75 2001 Random Acts of Badness: My Story
author: Danny Bonaduce
name: Liz
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2001
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening]]> 61354671 INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

�The Best Strangers in the World is a witty, poignant book that captures Ari Shapiro’s love for the unusual, his pursuit of the unexpected, and his delight at connection against the odds.”—Ronan Farrow,Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times-bestselling author of Catch and Kill and War on Peace

From the beloved host of NPR's All Things Considered, a stirring memoir-in-essays that is also a lover letter to journalism.

In his first book, broadcaster Ari Shapiro takes us around the globe to reveal the stories behind narratives that are sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, but always poignant. He details his time traveling on Air Force One with President Obama, or following the path of Syrian refugees fleeing war, or learning from those fighting for social justice both at home and abroad.

As the self-reinforcing bubbles we live in become more impenetrable, Ari Shapiro keeps seeking ways to help people listen to one another; to find connection and commonality with those who may seem different; to remind us that, before religion, or nationality, or politics, we are all human. The Best Strangers in the World is a testament to one journalist’s passion for Considering All Things—and sharing what he finds with the rest of us.]]> 254 Ari Shapiro 0063221365 Liz 4 to-read 4.27 2023 The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening
author: Ari Shapiro
name: Liz
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Visualizing Labor in American Sculpture: Monuments, Manliness, and the Work Ethic, 1880�1935 (Cambridge Studies in American Visual Culture)]]> 116897 314 Melissa Dabakis 0521461472 Liz 0 to-read 5.00 1999 Visualizing Labor in American Sculpture: Monuments, Manliness, and the Work Ethic, 1880–1935 (Cambridge Studies in American Visual Culture)
author: Melissa Dabakis
name: Liz
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Sergei Yesenin: The Man, the Verse, the Age]]> 41739369 310 Yuri Prokushev 0714714208 Liz 0 to-read 5.00 Sergei Yesenin: The Man, the Verse, the Age
author: Yuri Prokushev
name: Liz
average rating: 5.00
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rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[New Orleans Stories: Great Writers on the City]]> 113286 224 John Miller 0811844943 Liz 0 to-read 3.63 1992 New Orleans Stories: Great Writers on the City
author: John Miller
name: Liz
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> Man’s Search for Meaning 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X Liz 0 to-read 4.39 1946 Man’s Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Liz
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1946
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> <![CDATA[In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile]]> 22732450 QE2. Dan thought his quest had come to an end in October 2011 when Savile's golden coffin was lowered into a grave dug at a 45-degree angle in a Scarborough cemetery. He was wrong. In the last two and a half years, Dan has been interviewing scores of people, many of them unobtainable while Jimmy was alive. What he has discovered was that his instincts were right all along and behind the mask lay a hideous truth. Jimmy Savile was not only complex, damaged and controlling, but cynical, calculating and predatory. He revelled in his status as a Pied Piper of youth and used his power to abuse the vulnerable and underage, all the while covering his tracks by moving into the innermost circles of the establishment.]]> 591 Dan Davies 1782067450 Liz 0 to-read 4.18 2014 In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile
author: Dan Davies
name: Liz
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/14
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]]> The Silent Twins 314349
Award-winning investigative journalist Marjorie Wallace delves into the twins' silent world, revealing their genius, alienation, and the mystic bond by which the extremes of good and evil ended in possession and death.]]> 320 Marjorie Wallace 009958641X Liz 0 to-read 3.65 1986 The Silent Twins
author: Marjorie Wallace
name: Liz
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Liz 0 to-read 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: Liz
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> Human Acts 30091914 A riveting, poetic, and fearless portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice by the acclaimed author of The Vegetarian.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.

The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend, who meets his own fateful end, to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, both suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother, their collective heartbreak and acts of hope tell the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of a historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.]]> 218 Han Kang 1101906723 Liz 0 to-read 4.26 2014 Human Acts
author: Han Kang
name: Liz
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> Rage 66370 131 Richard Bachman 0451076451 Liz 0 to-read 3.73 1977 Rage
author: Richard Bachman
name: Liz
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/02
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]]> Small Things Like These 58639322
**A Book of the Year in The Times - The New Statesman - Observer - Financial Times - Irish Times - Irish Independent - Times Literary Supplement **

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CILLIAN MURPHY!
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE AND THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE DALKEY LITERARY AWARDS!

'Exquisite.' Damon Galgut
'Masterly.' The Times
'Miraculous.' Herald
'Astonishing.' Colm Tóibín
'Stunning.' Sunday Independent
'Absolutely beautiful.' Douglas Stuart]]> 116 Claire Keegan 0571368719 Liz 0 to-read 4.23 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Liz
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Forty Rooms 25716695 The internationally acclaimed author of The Dream Life of Sukhanov now returns to gift us with Forty Rooms, which outshines even that prizewinning novel.

Totally original in conception and magnificently executed, Forty Rooms is mysterious, withholding, and ultimately emotionally devastating. Olga Grushin is dealing with issues of women’s identity, of women’s choices, that no modern novel has explored so deeply.

“Forty rooms� is a conceit: it proposes that a modern woman will inhabit forty rooms in her lifetime. They form her biography, from childhood to death. For our protagonist, the much-loved child of a late marriage, the first rooms she is aware of as she nears the age of five are those that make up her family’s Moscow apartment. We follow this child as she reaches adolescence, leaves home to study in America, and slowly discovers sexual happiness and love. But her hunger for adventure and her longing to be a great poet conspire to kill the affair. She seems to have made her choice.

But one day she runs into a college classmate. He is sure of his path through life, and he is protective of her. (He is also a great cook.) They drift into an affair and marriage. What follows are the decades of births and deaths, the celebrations, material accumulations, and home comforts—until one day, her children grown and gone, her husband absent, she finds herself alone except for the ghosts of her youth, who have come back to haunt and even taunt her.

Compelling and complex, Forty Rooms is also profoundly affecting, its ending shattering but true. We know that Mrs. Caldwell (for that is the only name by which we know her) has died. Was it a life well lived? Quite likely. Was it a life complete? Does such a life ever really exist? Life is, after all, full of trade-offs and choices. Who is to say her path was not well taken? It is this ambiguity that is at the heart of this provocative novel.]]> 335 Olga Grushin 1101982330 Liz 0 currently-reading 3.88 2016 Forty Rooms
author: Olga Grushin
name: Liz
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> Mother Country 39863468 Starred reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly

Award-winning author Irina Reyn explores what it means to be a mother in a world where you can't be with your child

Nadia's daily life in south Brooklyn is filled with small indignities: as a senior home attendant, she is always in danger of being fired; as a part-time nanny, she is forced to navigate the demands of her spoiled charge and the preschooler's insecure mother; and as an ethnic Russian, she finds herself feuding with western Ukrainian immigrants who think she is a traitor.

The war back home is always at the forefront of her reality. On television, Vladimir Putin speaks of the "reunification" of Crimea and Russia, the Ukrainian president makes unconvincing promises about a united Ukraine, while American politicians are divided over the fear of immigration. Nadia internalizes notions of "union" all around her, but the one reunion she has been waiting six years for - with her beloved daughter - is being eternally delayed by the Department of Homeland Security. When Nadia finds out that her daughter has lost access to the medicine she needs to survive, she takes matters into her own hands.

Mother Country is Irina Reyn's most emotionally complex, urgent novel yet. It is a story of mothers and daughters and, above all else, resilience.]]> 276 Irina Reyn 1250076048 Liz 0 to-read 3.46 2019 Mother Country
author: Irina Reyn
name: Liz
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> American Prince: A Memoir 2866290
He was the Golden Boy of the Golden Age. A prince of the silver screen. Dashing and debonair, Tony Curtis arrived on the scene in a blaze of bright lights and celluloid. His good looks, smooth charm, and natural talent earned him fame, women, and adulation—Elvis copied his look and the Beatles put him on their Sgt. Pepper album cover. But the Hollywood life of his dreams brought both invincible highs and debilitating lows. Now, in his captivating, no-holds-barred autobiography, Tony Curtis shares the agony and ecstasy of a private life in the public eye.

No simple tell-all, American Prince chronicles Hollywood during its heyday. Curtis revisits his immense body of work—including the unforgettable classics Houdini , Spartacus , and Some Like It Hot —and regales readers with stories of his associations with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, director Billy Wilder, and film industry heavyweight Lew Wasserman, as well as paramours Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe, among others.

As forthright as he is enthralling, Tony Curtis offers intimate glimpses into his succession of failed marriages (and the one that has endured), his destructive drug addiction, and his passion as a painter. Written with humor and grace, American Prince is a testament to the power of living the life of one’s dreams.]]> 384 Tony Curtis 0307408493 Liz 0 to-read 3.59 2008 American Prince: A Memoir
author: Tony Curtis
name: Liz
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2008
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]]> Songs for the Brokenhearted 203956664
1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida’s daughter, has been living in New York City—a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing that her skin was lighter, that her illiterate mother’s Yemeni music was quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn’t looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni’s childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket.

Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family—including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future.

The debut novel of an award-winning literary voice.]]> 352 Ayelet Tsabari 0812989007 Liz 0 to-read 4.27 2024 Songs for the Brokenhearted
author: Ayelet Tsabari
name: Liz
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/12
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]]> <![CDATA[What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia]]> 35606508 What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia is a frank assessment of America’s recent fascination with the people and problems of the region. The book analyzes trends in contemporary writing on Appalachia, presents a brief history of Appalachia with an eye toward unpacking Appalachian stereotypes, and provides examples of writing, art, and policy created by Appalachians as opposed to for Appalachians. The book offers a must-needed insider’s perspective on the region.]]> 200 Elizabeth Catte 0998904147 Liz 0 to-read 4.02 2018 What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia
author: Elizabeth Catte
name: Liz
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains]]> 51951587
“Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated. ”� BookPage (starred review)
“Poverty is enmeshed with pride in these stories of survival.”—Associated Press

Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County is one of the poorest counties in both Kentucky and the country. Buildings are crumbling and fields sit vacant, as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women are finding creative ways to subsist in their hollers in the hills.

Cassie Chambers grew up in these hollers and, through the women who raised her, she traces her own path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Despite her poverty, she wouldn’t hesitate to give the last bite of pie or vegetables from her garden to a struggling neighbor. Her two daughters took very different strong-willed Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while spirited Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school, then moved an hour away for college. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish school. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated her from the larger world.

Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County, both while Wilma was in college and after. With her “hill women� values guiding her, Cassie went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her knowledge and opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved back home to help her fellow rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services.

Appalachian women face issues that are all too domestic violence, the opioid crisis, a world that seems more divided by the day. But they are also community leaders, keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers uses these women’s stories paired with her own journey to break down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminate a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.]]> 304 Cassie Chambers 1984818910 Liz 4 non-fiction, apalachia 3.92 2020 Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains
author: Cassie Chambers
name: Liz
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: non-fiction, apalachia
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]]> The Blind Owl 45967 The Blind Owl is a haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation. Replete with potent symbolism and terrifying surrealistic imagery, Sadegh Hedayat's masterpiece details a young man's despair after losing a mysterious lover. And as the author gradually drifts into frenzy and madness, the reader becomes caught in the sandstorm of Hedayat's bleak vision of the human condition. The Blind Owl, which has been translated into many foreign languages, has often been compared to the writing of Edgar Allan Poe.]]> 148 Sadegh Hedayat 0802131808 Liz 0 to-read 4.02 1937 The Blind Owl
author: Sadegh Hedayat
name: Liz
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1937
rating: 0
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]]> Woman of Valor: A Novel 52603676 Woman of Valor follows the lives of two women in their first years of motherhood. One is a fictional character trying to live the happily-ever-after life we all imagined for ourselves. The second woman is the author herself, relating her real life story. It s a story of metamorphosis, from independent working woman to mother, helpless in the face of the discovery that there s something wrong with her small daughter something very seriously wrong. Interspersed are actual letters from readers of Lapid s popular newspaper column about women s lives, sharing their experiences of juggling their many roles. In trenchant, thoughtful, and often laugh-out-loud funny prose, Lihi Lapid tells a true-life story of women and men struggling to live up to modern pressures: a story about shattered dreams, and about finding the strength to gather up the pieces and to learn to smile again.]]> 208 Lihi Lapid 1792678088 Liz 0 to-read 3.00 2008 Woman of Valor: A Novel
author: Lihi Lapid
name: Liz
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/10
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]]> Suddenly, a Knock on the Door 12308081 189 Etgar Keret 0374533334 Liz 0 to-read 3.89 2010 Suddenly, a Knock on the Door
author: Etgar Keret
name: Liz
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer]]> 194197
The book is divided into sections reflecting four distinct periods of creativity in Toomer's career. The Aesthetic period includes Imagist, Symbolist, and other experimental pieces, such as "Five Vignettes," while "Georgia Dusk" and the newly discovered poem "Tell Me" come from Toomer' s Ancestral Consciousness period in the early 1920s. "The Blue Meridian" and other Objective Consciousness poems reveal the influence of idealist philosopher Georges Gurdjieff. Among the works of this period the editor presents a group of local color poems picturing the landscape of the American Southwest, including "Imprint for Rio Grande." "It Is Everywhere," another newly discovered poem, celebrates America and democratic idealism. The Quaker religious philosophy of Toomer's final years is demonstrated in such Christian Existential works as "They Are Not Missed" and "To Gurdjieff Dying."

Robert Jones's clear and comprehensive introduction examines the major poems in this volume and serves as a guide through the stages of Toomer's evolution as an artist and thinker. The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer will prove essential to Toomer's admirers as well as to scholars and students of modern poetry, Afro-American literature, and American studies.]]> 148 Robert B. Jones 0807842095 Liz 0 to-read 3.80 1988 The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer
author: Robert B. Jones
name: Liz
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Brother Mine: The Correspondence of Jean Toomer and Waldo Frank]]> 7971516 Cane.

While individual letters between Frank and Toomer have been published separately on occasion, they have always been presented out of context. This volume presents for the first time their entire correspondence in chronological order, comprising 121 letters ranging from 200 to 800 words each. Kathleen Pfeiffer annotates and introduces the letters, framing the correspondence and explaining the literary and historical allusions in the letters themselves.

Reading like an epistolary novel, Brother Mine captures the sheer emotional force of the story that unfolds in these letters: two men discover an extraordinary friendship, and their intellectual and emotional intimacy takes shape before our eyes. This unprecedented collection preserves the raw honesty of their exchanges, together with the developing drama of their ambition, their disappointments, their assessment of their world, and ultimately, the betrayal that ended the friendship.]]> 188 Kathleen Pfeiffer 0252035402 Liz 0 to-read 4.25 2010 Brother Mine: The Correspondence of Jean Toomer and Waldo Frank
author: Kathleen Pfeiffer
name: Liz
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> Happy Moscow 341711 Happy Moscow Platonov exposes the gulf between this premature triumphal­ism and the harsh reality of low living standards and even lower expectations. For in Stalin's ideal city there is no longer a place for those who do not fit the bright, shining image of the new men and women of the future. The heroine, Moscow Chestnova, is an Everywoman, both virgin and whore, who flits from man to man, fascinated by the brave new world supposedly taking shape around her. In a variety of styles ranging from the grotesque, to the sentimental and the absurd, Platonov lays bare the ways in which language itself has been debased, even borrowing slogans from Stalin's own speeches for comic effect.

In an age of spin doctors and soundbites, this anarchic satire has as much resonance as ever.]]> 153 Andrei Platonov 186046646X Liz 0 currently-reading 3.89 1991 Happy Moscow
author: Andrei Platonov
name: Liz
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> Cane 765172 Cane is a powerful work of innovative fiction evoking black life in the South. The sketches, poems, and stories of black rural and urban life that make up Cane are rich in imagery. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear.
]]> 116 Jean Toomer 0871401517 Liz 0 currently-reading 3.86 1923 Cane
author: Jean Toomer
name: Liz
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1923
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Build Up: A Black Romance Novel]]> 61737188
Rumpled and ragged was not how architect Ari James envisioned kicking off her first day at a new firm. And few things can top the horror of her new—and extremely hot—colleague walking in on her at the worst moment ever. Learning that she’ll be working with him on the project that’s supposed to get her career back on top makes it harder than ever to focus on her big comeback.

With a partnership at his firm on the line, nothing is going to stand in the way of Porter Harrison absolutely killing it on his new project: not his obnoxious rival, not his unpredictable brother and definitely not his new coworker whose gorgeous curves he accidentally saw and now can’t get out of his head.

Though neither of them is looking for love, once their creative juices get flowing, Ari and Porter’s connection is obvious. But when their shared goal has always been winning at work, building a solid foundation for a relationship might end up costing them everything…]]> 368 Tati Richardson 1335621938 Liz 4 liz-book-club 3.79 2023 The Build Up: A Black Romance Novel
author: Tati Richardson
name: Liz
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/04
date added: 2024/08/04
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]]> Small Town Horror 199221815
Maybe this is a ghost story...

Andrew Larimer thought he left the past behind. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he finds he has no choice but to return home, and to confront the memories—and the horror—of a night, years ago, that changed everything.

For Andrew and his friends, the past is not dead, and the curse that has befallen them now threatens to destroy all that they've become.

One dark secret...

One small-town horror...]]> 400 Ronald Malfi 180336758X Liz 0 to-read 3.88 2024 Small Town Horror
author: Ronald Malfi
name: Liz
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire]]> 34788324
The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire gathers all of Cesaire's celebrated verse into one bilingual edition. The French portion is comprised of newly established first editions of Césaire's poetic ouvre made available in French in 2014 under the title Poésie, Théâtre, Essais et Discours, edited by A. J. Arnold and an international team of specialists. To prepare the English translations, the translators started afresh from this French edition. Included here are translations of first editions of the poet's early work, prior to political interventions in the texts after 1955, revealing a new understanding of Cesaire's aesthetic and political trajectory. A truly comprehensive picture of Cesaire's poetry and poetics is made possible thanks to a thorough set of notes covering variants, historical and cultural references, and recurring figures and structures, a scholarly introduction and a glossary. This book provides a new cornerstone for readers and scholars in 20th century poetry, African diasporic literature, and postcolonial studies.]]> 994 Aimé Césaire 081957483X Liz 0 to-read 4.06 The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire
author: Aimé Césaire
name: Liz
average rating: 4.06
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]]> Matterhorn 6411016
Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones's The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.

Written over the course of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, Matterhorn is a visceral and spellbinding novel about what it is like to be a young man at war. It is an unforgettable novel that transforms the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful and universal story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice: a parable not only of the war in Vietnam but of all war, and a testament to the redemptive power of literature.

A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. This is his first novel. He lives in rural Washington State.]]> 663 Karl Marlantes 0979528534 Liz 0 to-read 4.23 2010 Matterhorn
author: Karl Marlantes
name: Liz
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Character of Cats: The Origins, Intelligence, Behavior, and Stratagems of Felis Silvestris Catus]]> 328185 227 Stephen Budiansky 014200281X Liz 0 to-read 3.80 2002 The Character of Cats: The Origins, Intelligence, Behavior, and Stratagems of Felis Silvestris Catus
author: Stephen Budiansky
name: Liz
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> THE IMMIGRANT 62022114 235 Frederic Petrovsky 1646638077 Liz 0 to-read 3.75 THE IMMIGRANT
author: Frederic Petrovsky
name: Liz
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/30
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]]> <![CDATA[From a Distant Relation (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)]]> 56025507 448 Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky 0815611366 Liz 0 to-read 4.00 From a Distant Relation (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)
author: Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky
name: Liz
average rating: 4.00
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rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Here We Are All Jews: 175 Russian-Jewish Journeys]]> 73348328 374 Jonathan Porath Liz 0 to-read 4.75 Here We Are All Jews: 175 Russian-Jewish Journeys
author: Jonathan Porath
name: Liz
average rating: 4.75
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rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land]]> 72114452
Today it calls to mind a jumble of post-Soviet states paved over with C&A and McDonald's. We could describe Eastern Europe as a group of twenty nations—but why? For most of their history, they weren't nations at all.

The region is more than the sum total of its annexations, invasions and independence declarations. Eastern Europe abounds with peoples tied together by tragicomic twists of fate. Lives could be turned upside down by distant decrees from Vienna or Istanbul, or just as easily by a stubborn bureaucrat in your village. In twentieth-century Khust, you could live in six different countries without ever leaving your house. You could get married any day, but buying a teakettle was a singular event.

Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a eulogy for a world we are losing, a vanishing culture of polytheism, vampires, sacred groves, and movable borders.]]> 400 Jacob Mikanowski 1524748501 Liz 0 to-read 4.06 2023 Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land
author: Jacob Mikanowski
name: Liz
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> All-Night Pharmacy 58349243
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction
Finalist for the California Book Awards
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Novel

Rachel Kushner meets David Lynch in this fever dream of an LA novel about a young woman who commits a drunken act of violence just before her sister vanishes without a trace.

On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions—nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears.

Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who arrives at the hospital claiming to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator’s spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics.

With prose pulsing like a neon sign, Ruth Madievsky’s All-Night Pharmacy is an intoxicating portrait of a young woman consumed with unease over how a person should be. As she attempts sobriety and sexual embodiment, she must decide whether to search for her estranged sister, or allow her to remain a relic of the past.]]> 304 Ruth Madievsky Liz 0 to-read 3.48 2023 All-Night Pharmacy
author: Ruth Madievsky
name: Liz
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[My Left Skate: The Extraordinary Story of Eliezer Sherbatov]]> 60779169 FINALIST 2024-25 SNOW WILLOW AWARD
Based on extensive interviews, My Left The Extraordinary Story of Eliezer Sherbatov is a first-person biography of a Jewish teenager who had it all on the hockey guts, drive, and exceptional talent. When a freak accident leaves him with a permanent disability and no feeling below his left knee, everyone believes Eliezer's career is over - everyone except his mother, a professional power skating coach. She teaches Eliezer to skate using the muscles in his upper leg, and after two and a half years of operations and rehabilitation, he returns to the rink to become one of Quebec's elite junior players. Still undrafted at age nineteen, Eliezer embarks on a professional career in Europe in the hopes of one day returning to the NHL. His travels lead him to France, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, and to Poland, where he lives and plays hockey just a few kilometres from the Auschwitz death camp, haunted by memories of the past. In its stunning conclusion, My Left Skate describes Eliezer's life in Ukraine and his struggle to escape from war after Russia invades the very region in which he plays. "Eliezer Sherbatov scores a hat trick with My Left Skate . This story is wonderfully gritty, inspiring, joyful at times and sad at other moments. He deserves to be a hockey hero for all that he has survived." -Marty Klinkenberg, The Globe and Mail]]> 104 Anna Rosner 1773370871 Liz 0 to-read 4.55 My Left Skate: The Extraordinary Story of Eliezer Sherbatov
author: Anna Rosner
name: Liz
average rating: 4.55
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rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Tears and Prayers of Fools: A Novel (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)]]> 131776513 320 Grigory Kanovich 0815611595 Liz 0 to-read 3.60 1983 The Tears and Prayers of Fools: A Novel (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)
author: Grigory Kanovich
name: Liz
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)]]> 36336078 Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.]]> 248 André Aciman 1786495252 Liz 0 to-read 4.08 2007 Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)
author: André Aciman
name: Liz
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Unterzakhn (Pantheon Graphic Library)]]> 12918119 A mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.

For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings�) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land�, where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.]]> 208 Leela Corman 0805242597 Liz 0 to-read 3.79 2012 Unterzakhn (Pantheon Graphic Library)
author: Leela Corman
name: Liz
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Women in the Trees: U.S. Women's Short Stories About Battering and Resistance, 1839-2000 (American Women's Stories Project)]]> 2088626
While it resonates with the force of shared experience, Women in the Trees cuts across lines of race, ethnicity, class, region, and time. The Women's Review of Books writes, "One of the strongest aspects of this anthology is that while the collection as a whole reveals the similarities in the patterns of abuse, the stories singly do not read the same. Koppelman has selected well. These are not in any sense sociological tracts to prove a point. Focused, as fiction should be, on individual lives, they reveal the variations in the patterns as they are lived out by individual women, who come from different backgrounds, inhabit different communities, and respond to their situations in distinctly personal ways."

Acclaimed on its first publication by critics, educators, and activists, this new edition of Women in the Trees includes several new selections, over thirty stories in all. Together, these stories form a unique and ultimately empowering collection notable for both its emotional impact and its literary wealth.]]> 336 Susan Koppelman 1558614877 Liz 4 currently-reading 4.36 1996 Women in the Trees: U.S. Women's Short Stories About Battering and Resistance, 1839-2000 (American Women's Stories Project)
author: Susan Koppelman
name: Liz
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/06/30
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]]> Half an Inch of Water 23848505 A new collection of stories set in the West from "one of the most gifted and versatile of contemporary writers" (NPR)

Percival Everett's long-awaited new collection of stories, his first since 2004's Damned If I Do, finds him traversing the West with characteristic restlessness. A deaf Native American girl wanders off into the desert and is found untouched in a den of rattlesnakes. A young boy copes with the death of his sister by angling for an unnaturally large trout in the creek where she drowned. An old woman rides her horse into a mountain snowstorm and sees a long-dead beloved dog.
For the plainspoken men and women of these stories--fathers and daughters, sheriffs and veterinarians--small events trigger sudden shifts in which the ordinary becomes unfamiliar. A harmless comment about how to ride a horse changes the course of a relationship, a snakebite gives rise to hallucinations, and the hunt for a missing man reveals his uncanny resemblance to an actor. Half an Inch of Water tears through the fabric of the everyday to examine what lies beneath the surface of these lives. In the hands of master storyteller Everett, the act of questioning leads to vistas more strange and unsettling than could ever have been expected.]]> 163 Percival Everett 1555977197 Liz 4 to-read 3.99 2015 Half an Inch of Water
author: Percival Everett
name: Liz
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dissident: Alexey Navalny: Profile of a Political Prisoner]]> 60420397
There’s an old saying that Russia without corruption isn’t Russia. Alexey Navalny refuses to accept this proposition. His stubborn insistence that Russians can defy the stereotype and create an entirely different country made him such a threat to Putin that the Kremlin wanted him exiled—or dead—and now seems intent on keeping him locked in a prison colony for decades.

International correspondent David M. Herszenhorn,weaves together the threads of Navalny’s remarkable life and Riveting and complex, THE DISSIDENT introduces readers to modern Russia’s greatest agitator, a man willing to sacrifice his freedom—and even his own life—to build the decent, democratic country he wants to live in and hopes to pass on to his children.]]> 320 David Herszenhorn 1538709457 Liz 4 to-read 3.80 The Dissident: Alexey Navalny: Profile of a Political Prisoner
author: David Herszenhorn
name: Liz
average rating: 3.80
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rating: 4
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]]> Hard Rain Falling 6553843 308 Don Carpenter 1590173244 Liz 4 4.13 1966 Hard Rain Falling
author: Don Carpenter
name: Liz
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1966
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Wild Rain (Women Who Dare, #2)]]> 43701060 The second novel in USA Today bestselling author Beverly Jenkins� compelling new Women Who Dare series follows a female rancher in Wyoming after the Civil War.

A reporter has come to Wyoming to do a story on doctors for his Black newspaper back east. He thinks Colton Lee will be an interesting subject…until he meets Colton’s sister, Spring. She runs her own ranch, wears denim pants instead of dresses, and is the most fascinating woman he’s ever met.

But Spring, who has overcome a raucous and scandalous past, isn’t looking for, nor does she want, love. As their attraction grows, will their differences come between them or unite them for an everlasting love?]]> 384 Beverly Jenkins 0062861719 Liz 3 liz-book-club 4.02 2021 Wild Rain (Women Who Dare, #2)
author: Beverly Jenkins
name: Liz
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/02
date added: 2024/06/30
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]]> Business Not As Usual 58537382 A woman learns the hard way about mixing business with pleasure in this hilarious new romantic comedy by USA Today bestselling author Sharon C. Cooper.

I am beautiful. I am confident. I am lovable. I am a lottery winner.

This is the mantra that will get Dreamy Daniels through each day until she makes it big. So what if she lives in a seedy part of Los Angeles in a house that's one earthquake away from crumbling, or works an unfulfilling secretarial job while struggling to finish her bachelor's degree? All Dreamy needs to do is win the lottery, which she's been entering in as a weekly tradition with her grandfather. When she catches the attention of her boss's potential investor, Dreamy has to remind herself to focus on her career goals so she can be her own boss. Who cares if he has the social grace of the Duke of Sussex and the suaveness of Idris Elba? No distractions allowed.

Growing up with a father who is an A-list actor and a socialite mother, venture capitalist Karter Redford lives in the world of the rich and famous. Instead of attending movie premieres, however, he prefers spending his time helping the less fortunate, backing start-up companies and investing in cutting edge ideas. Karter is used to his life revolving around work, but when he decides he wants someone to share it with, he falls for someone his mother would never approve of: hilarious, quirky Dreamy, who has goals of her own...but also isn't a wealthy, upper-crust socialite. Though it's clear they're from different worlds, their relationship might just be his greatest investment yet.]]> 320 Sharon C. Cooper 0593335252 Liz 3 liz-book-club 3.65 2022 Business Not As Usual
author: Sharon C. Cooper
name: Liz
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/06/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape]]> 55801972 A beautiful, lyrical exploration of the places where nature is flourishing in our absence

Some of the only truly feral cattle in the world wander a long-abandoned island off the northernmost tip of Scotland. A variety of wildlife not seen in many lifetimes has rebounded on the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl. A lush forest supports thousands of species that are extinct or endangered everywhere else on earth in the Korean peninsula's narrow DMZ.

Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an island of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists.

Islands of Abandonment is a tour through these new ecosystems, in all their glory, as sites of unexpected environmental significance, where the natural world has reasserted its wild power and promise. And while it doesn't let us off the hook for addressing environmental degradation and climate change, it is a case that hope is far from lost, and it is ultimately a story of redemption: the most polluted spots on Earth can be rehabilitated through ecological processes and, in fact, they already are.]]> 384 Cal Flyn 1984878190 Liz 0 to-read 4.22 2021 Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape
author: Cal Flyn
name: Liz
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/15
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]]> <![CDATA[RUSSKI DREAD: A Collection of Short Horror Stories Set in Russia]]> 52838431 The voices coming from an old apartment below conspire to kill you.

The flood in a small village brings something wicked from the forbidden forest.

A game cartridge for a pirated Russian gaming console is not what it seems.

"RUSSKI DREAD" brings you short horror stories set in Russia. Stories that could happen only in one place, where the otherworldly terrors are just another layer of dread that looms over the endless state. Whatever kind of horror you desire, from paranormal tales of suspense to brutal slasher flicks - Russia has them all.

LIMITED PRE-ORDER PRICE!]]> 265 Artyom Dereschuk Liz 5 short-stories 4.44 RUSSKI DREAD: A Collection of Short Horror Stories Set in Russia
author: Artyom Dereschuk
name: Liz
average rating: 4.44
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/02
date added: 2024/06/02
shelves: short-stories
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]]> The Man From Beyond 57030823
A short story that follows an old man as he recounts the days of his youth when an enigmatic stranger moved to their small American town, bringing terror along with him.]]> Artyom Dereschuk Liz 0 to-read 4.50 The Man From Beyond
author: Artyom Dereschuk
name: Liz
average rating: 4.50
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> Master of the Forest 42605184

At the edge of the world, unknown and unseen, he endures and survives even in our digital era...

With nothing much to lose, our hero agrees, venturing to the edge of the Earth, beyond the borders of civilization and into the untouched wilderness.There, thousands of miles from home, in a race against the clock before the cold seals the ground, he has to face nature, other diggers,his inner demons and, most importantly, the enigmatic "Master of the Forest" - a prehistoric creature and the origin of all local legends,who ferociously protects his domain.

]]> 306 Artyom Dereschuk Liz 0 to-read 3.92 Master of the Forest
author: Artyom Dereschuk
name: Liz
average rating: 3.92
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> Borne (Borne, #1) 31451186
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still make creatures and send them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse.

Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an attachment she resents; attachments are traps, and in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet when she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, the Balcony Cliffs, Rachel convinces her lover, Wick, not to render Borne down to raw genetic material for the drugs he sells—she cannot break that bond.

Wick is a special kind of supplier, because the drug dealers in the city don’t sell the usual things. They sell tiny creatures that can be swallowed or stuck in the ear, and that release powerful memories of other people’s happier times or pull out forgotten memories from the user’s own mind—or just produce beautiful visions that provide escape from the barren, craterous landscapes of the city.

Against his better judgment, out of affection for Rachel or perhaps some other impulse, Wick respects her decision. Rachel, meanwhile, despite her loyalty to Wick, knows he has kept secrets from her. Searching his apartment, she finds a burnt, unreadable journal titled “Mord,� a cryptic reference to the Magician (a rival drug dealer) and evidence that Wick has planned the layout of the Balcony Cliffs to match the blueprint of the Company building. What is he hiding? Why won’t he tell her about what happened when he worked for the Company?]]> 323 Jeff VanderMeer 0374115249 Liz 0 to-read 3.93 2017 Borne (Borne, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Liz
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/16
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]]> Consent: A Memoir 200798634 Half a Life. She asks herself whether she told the whole truth back then. What did truth look like to her in the era of love-bead curtains, when no one asked who was served by the permissibility of May-December romance? With new understanding about the imbalance of power between an older man and a minor girl, Ciment re-explores the erotic wild ride and intellectual flowering that shaped an improbable but blissful marriage that lasted for forty-five years, until her husband’s death at age ninety-three.]]> 145 Jill Ciment 0593701062 Liz 0 to-read 3.83 2024 Consent: A Memoir
author: Jill Ciment
name: Liz
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Inferno in Chechnya: The Russian-Chechen Wars, the Al Qaeda Myth, and the Boston Marathon Bombings]]> 26484421 Brian Glyn Williams describes the tragic history of the bombers war-devastated homeland including tsarist conquest and two bloody wars with post-Soviet Russia that would lead to the rise of Vladimir Putin showing how the conflict there influenced the rise of Europe s deadliest homegrown terrorist network. He provides a historical account of the Chechens terror campaign in Russia, documents their growing links to Al Qaeda and radical Islam, and describes the plight of the Chechen diaspora that ultimately sent two Chechens to Boston.
Inferno in Chechnya delivers a fascinating and deeply tragic story that has much to say about the historical and ethnic roots of modern terrorism."]]> 296 Brian Glyn Williams 1611687373 Liz 0 to-read 3.89 2015 Inferno in Chechnya: The Russian-Chechen Wars, the Al Qaeda Myth, and the Boston Marathon Bombings
author: Brian Glyn Williams
name: Liz
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Crimean Tatars: From Soviet Genocide to Putin's Conquest]]> 27186188
Taking as its starting point the 1783 Russian conquest of the independent Tatar state known as the Crimean Khanate, Williams explains how the peninsula's native population, with ethnic roots among the Goths, Kipchak Turks, and Mongols, was scattered across the Ottoman Empire. He also traces their later emigration and the radical transformation of this conservative tribal-religious group into a modern, politically mobilized, secular nation under Soviet rule. Stalin's genocidal deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 to Uzbekistan and their almost messianic return to their cherished 'Green Isle' in the 1990s are examined in detail, while the author's archival investigations are bolstered by his field research among the Crimean Tatar exiles in Uzbekistan and in their samozakhvat (self-seized) squatter camps and settlements in the Crimea.]]> 240 Brian Glyn Williams 0190494700 Liz 0 to-read 4.23 2015 The Crimean Tatars: From Soviet Genocide to Putin's Conquest
author: Brian Glyn Williams
name: Liz
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Queen Fish: A Story in Two Parts and Twelve Episodes]]> 2842505 444 Victor Astafiev 0828525234 Liz 3 4.00 Queen Fish: A Story in Two Parts and Twelve Episodes
author: Victor Astafiev
name: Liz
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2021/08/04
date added: 2024/04/12
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[New Orleans Noir: The Classics (Akashic Noir)]]> 25330018 New Orleans Noir....Anyone who knows New Orleans even slightly will relish revisiting the city in story after story. For anyone who has never been to New Orleans, this is a great introduction to its neighborhoods and history."
-- Publishers Weekly , Starred review

"Ten years after the publication of the original New Orleans Noir, Akashic's 'Noir' series returns with a follow-up....Each entry is strong, but the collection is worth reading alone for Poppy Z. Brite's 'Mussolini and the Axeman's Jazz,' a delirious and brutal ghost story....Strongly recommended for fans of the Akashic anthologies and Hard Case Crime mysteries and lovers of New Orleans fiction. Devotees of Southern gothic fiction (e.g., the works of Flannery O'Connor and Tom Franklin.) will also find much to enjoy."
-- Library Journal , Starred review

"Smith, who edited Akashic's original New Orleans Noir (2007), goes back for a second trip to the Big Easy."
-- Kirkus Reviews

"A riveting read."
--Back to Books

"Eighteen diverse stories...capture the feeling of this fascinating city. New Orleans Noir: The Classics embraces the city's rich literature and spans two centuries, from the pre–Civil War era to post-Katrina."
--Underrated Reads

"This anthology really has the feel of New Orleans....I enjoyed this batch of stories. Good ones all the way through. Give it a try."
--Journey of a Bookseller

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each volume comprises stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.

Classic reprints from: James Lee Burke, Armand Lanusse, Grace King, Kate Chopin, O. Henry, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Shirley Ann Grau, John William Corrington, Tom Dent, Ellen Gilchrist, Valerie Martin, O’Neil De Noux, John Biguenet, Poppy Z. Brite, Nevada Barr, Ace Atkins, and Maurice Carlos Ruffin.

From the introduction by Julie Smith:

"A glittering constellation of writers has passed through New Orleans--including Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, O. Henry, and even Walt Whitman, to name some of the not-so-usual suspects. Then there are the ones whose sojourns here are better known, the ones on whom we pride ourselves, such as Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Ellen Gilchrist, and James Lee Burke.

It was an anthologist's feast--just about everybody who came to New Orleans wrote about it. But there were surprises as well...

If you're from New Orleans, the neighborhood theme will resonate like Tibetan temple bells. And yet, surely every city has similar hoods, similar behavior patterns, similar travails--and has had them forever. 'Indeed,' wrote Voltaire, 'history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.'"
]]> 300 Julie Smith 161775384X Liz 0 to-read 3.83 2007 New Orleans Noir: The Classics (Akashic Noir)
author: Julie Smith
name: Liz
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> I Am Not Sidney Poitier 6080748

An irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America

I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier.

Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation.

Percival Everett’s hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney’s tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: “What’s your name?� a kid would ask. “Not Sidney,� I would say. “Okay, then what is it?�

]]> 234 Percival Everett 1555975275 Liz 5 fiction 3.97 2009 I Am Not Sidney Poitier
author: Percival Everett
name: Liz
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/12
date added: 2024/03/12
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Murderville (Murderville #1) 9805946
Two children from Sierra Leone, Liberty and A’shai, are brought together by chance only to be forced apart by the most inevitable and tragic fate—sold as slaves into the human trafficking world. Ashley and JaQuavis bring us this classic love story set against modern life’s most horrifying realities.

Liberty is dying of a fatal heart condition, though she desperately wants to survive until her 25th birthday when her sister has promised to visit her. A’shai blames himself for not protecting Liberty, but all Liberty asks is for A’shai to tell her a story, to help her remember what brought them to this point. He knows that this is the last story he will ever tell and the last she will ever hear.

As Liberty lies dying, A’shai walks her though their past, reliving their ill-fated journeys through the streets. Their story takes them from an arranged marriage, through Mexico’s drug cartel, child brothels, hustling in Detroit, to escaping the high-powered heads of L.A.’s underworld. But ultimately, this is a story of love and redemption that will leave you breathless from the unpredictable and mind-blowing ending.]]> 272 Ashley Antoinette 1936399008 Liz 3 urban-fiction 4.54 2011 Murderville (Murderville #1)
author: Ashley Antoinette
name: Liz
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/12
date added: 2024/03/12
shelves: urban-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York]]> 8165949
Some reforms succeeded. Others failed. While few have evaluated Lindsay's controversial legacy with the benefit of hindsight and within the context of national cultural upheaval, this book does just that. Edited by The New York Times urban affairs correspondent Sam Roberts and published in collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York, America's Mayor is lavishly illustrated and features original essays by Hilary Ballon, Joshua Freeman, Jeff Greenfield, Pete Hamill, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Kenneth T. Jackson, John Mollenkopf, Charles Morris, Nicholas Pileggi, Richard Reeves, James Sanders, and Steven Weisman. Key contemporaries such as Jimmy Breslin, Mario Cuomo, and Juan Gonzalez offer personal reminiscences enhanced by compelling documents and articles.

With his undeniable charisma and bold support for cities and urban living, Lindsay galvanized the attention of a nation at a time of looming crisis. This collection vividly reexamines the truth behind Lindsay's reputation as a failed dreamer and the forces that transformed him into America's mayor.]]> 256 Sam Roberts 0231152612 Liz 0 to-read 4.14 2010 America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York
author: Sam Roberts
name: Liz
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born � a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam � and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 Liz 0 to-read 4.05 2019 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Liz
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Poverty Industry: The Exploitation of America's Most Vulnerable Citizens (Families, Law, and Society, 11)]]> 27558399
In The Poverty Industry, Daniel L. Hatcher shows us how state governments and their private industry partners are profiting from the social safety net, turning America's most vulnerable populations into sources of revenue. The poverty industry is stealing billions in federal aid and other funds from impoverished families, abused and neglected children, and the disabled and elderly poor. As policy experts across the political spectrum debate how to best structure government assistance programs, a massive siphoning of the safety net is occurring behind the scenes.

In the face of these abuses of power, Hatcher offers a road map for reforms to realign the practices of human service agencies with their intended purpose, to prevent the misuse of public taxpayer dollars, and to ensure that government aid truly gets to those in need.]]> 288 Daniel L. Hatcher 1479874728 Liz 0 to-read 3.95 The Poverty Industry: The Exploitation of America's Most Vulnerable Citizens (Families, Law, and Society, 11)
author: Daniel L. Hatcher
name: Liz
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> Widespread Panic 55502882
Welcome to the world of the malevolent monarch of the Hollywood underground - a tale of pervasive paranoia teeming with communist conspiracies, FBI finks, celebrity smut films and strange bedfellows.]]> 336 James Ellroy 0593319346 Liz 0 to-read 3.31 2021 Widespread Panic
author: James Ellroy
name: Liz
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Moon's a Balloon 57778 One of the bestselling memoirs of all time, David Niven's The Moon's a Balloon is an account of one of the most remarkable lives Hollywood has ever seen.

Beginning with the tragic early loss of his aristocratic father, then regaling us with tales of school, army and wartime hi-jinx, Niven shows how, even as an unknown young man, he knew how to live the good life.

But it is his astonishing stories of life in Hollywood and his accounts of working and partying with the legends of the silver screen - Lawrence Oliver, Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, James Stewart, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward and dozens of others, while making some of the most acclaimed films of the last century - which turn David Niven's memoir into an outright masterpiece.

An intimate, gossipy, heartfelt and above all charming account of life inside Hollywood's dream factory, The Moon is a Balloon is a classic to be read and enjoyed time and again..]]> 327 David Niven 0140239243 Liz 0 to-read 4.06 1971 The Moon's a Balloon
author: David Niven
name: Liz
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> Laughing all the way 2597503 298 Barbara Howar 0812815394 Liz 0 to-read 3.24 1973 Laughing all the way
author: Barbara Howar
name: Liz
average rating: 3.24
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wrath 41739762
Jonas, the only boy in a family of four children, came into the world under less than favorable conditions, and he has always been a fighter. From the neighborhood bullies to the stepfather who uses him and his siblings as punching bags, his life has always been one battle after another. At night, he would lay awake and dream of rising above his circumstances, and when he crosses paths with rogue homicide detective Louis “Lou� Ceavers, he’s offered a bargain that will change the course of his life.

Detective Ceavers becomes like a guardian angel and surrogate father to Jonas, teaching him the game and guiding him in his quest for power. In a short time, Jonas goes from errand boy and street muscle to one of the most dangerous young men in the city, dubbed Wrath because of his violent exploits.

His dreams are finally becoming reality, and Wrath feels like he’s on his way to having everything he’s ever dreamed of, until Alex, his childhood crush, comes home on break from college and gives him a glimpse of the one thing he’s always craved more than money and love. Wrath begins to question himself and his decisions as he’s drawn further away from the world he’s created and deeper into the stable life he believes he could have with Alex. When Alex becomes pregnant, Wrath decides that being there for her and his unborn child are more important to him than power or money, but when he seeks to end his arrangement with the detective, he’s taught the final lesson in his no bargain comes without a price.]]> 400 K'wan 1601621329 Liz 4 4.38 Wrath
author: K'wan
name: Liz
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/08
date added: 2023/12/08
shelves:
review:
I've just started an Urban Fiction book club at our library and this was the first pick. The perfect starting book! So many surprises, ups and downs, and a bunch of spoilers so I won't reveal much. I felt for many of the characters, especially for Janette and her children. Addiction is Hell, and I spent much of the time rooting for her success. I am looking forward to reading more by this author, K'wan. Also, if anyone reading this review can recommend a great woman-focused book in the genre, I would appreciate it!
]]> <![CDATA[The Boy from the Woods (Wilde, #1)]]> 51204046
No one seems to take Naomi Pine's disappearance seriously, not even her father-with one exception. Hester Crimstein, a television criminal attorney, knows through her grandson that Naomi was relentlessly bullied at school. Hester asks Wilde-with whom she shares a tragic connection-to use his unique skills to help find Naomi.

Wilde can't ignore an outcast in trouble, but in order to find Naomi he must venture back into the community where he has never fit in, a place where the powerful are protected even when they harbor secrets that could destroy the lives of millions . . . secrets that Wilde must uncover before it's too late.]]> 371 Harlan Coben 1538748142 Liz 4 3.84 2020 The Boy from the Woods (Wilde, #1)
author: Harlan Coben
name: Liz
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/12
date added: 2023/10/24
shelves:
review:
I gotta say, this was a good one! I just wanted a real page turner, a solid plot, and something that would hold my attention for a solid time period-this did the trick. Satisfying ending and plenty to keep me guessing throughout. I will definitely come back to this author, especially having just finished the Netflix limited series "Stay Close" which was based on a book by Mr. Coben. Loved it!
]]> 72 Hour Hold 186435048
Fed up with the bureaucracy and determined to save her daughter by any means necessary, Keri signs on for an illegal intervention known as The Program, a group of radicals who eschew the psychiatric system and model themselves after the Underground Railroad. In the upheaval that follows, she is forced to confront a past that refuses to stay buried, even as she battles to secure a future for her child.]]> Bebe Moore Campbell Liz 0 to-read 4.00 72 Hour Hold
author: Bebe Moore Campbell
name: Liz
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony]]> 57331966 488 Abraham Sutzkever 0228008921 Liz 0 to-read 4.69 From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony
author: Abraham Sutzkever
name: Liz
average rating: 4.69
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Siberia, SIBIR, A Poem By Abraham Sutzkever with Illustrations By Marc Chagall סיביר עם ציורים צארק שאגאל]]> 137575827 34 Avraham Sutzkever Liz 0 to-read 0.0 Siberia, SIBIR, A Poem By Abraham Sutzkever with Illustrations By Marc Chagall סיביר עם ציורים צארק שאגאל
author: Avraham Sutzkever
name: Liz
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West]]> 51801180 A revealing look at the intersection of wealth, philanthropy, and conservation

Billionaire Wilderness takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy, showing how today’s richest people are using the natural environment to solve the existential dilemmas they face. Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States, and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, and other prominent figures in business and politics. He also talked with the rural poor who live among the ultra-wealthy and often work for them. The result is a penetrating account of the far-reaching consequences of the massive accrual of wealth and a troubling portrait of a changing American West where romanticizing rural poverty and conserving nature can be lucrative, socially as well as financially.]]> 392 Justin Farrell 0691176671 Liz 4 non-fiction 3.69 2020 Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West
author: Justin Farrell
name: Liz
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/17
date added: 2023/09/17
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> Baumgartner 134899244
Paul Auster’s brilliant eighteenth novel opens with a scorched pot of water, which Sy Baumgartner � phenomenologist, noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor � has just forgotten on the stove.

Baumgartner’s life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next forty years, and back to Baumgartner’s youth in Newark and his Polish-born father’s life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.

Rich with compassion, wit, and Auster’s keen eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient moments of ordinary life, Baumgartner asks: Why do we remember certain moments, and forget others? In one of his most luminous works and his first novel since the Booker-shortlisted tour-de-force 4 3 2 1, Paul Auster captures several lifetimes.]]> 208 Paul Auster 0802161448 Liz 0 to-read 3.71 2023 Baumgartner
author: Paul Auster
name: Liz
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Let Us Descend 87556695
“‘Let us descend,� the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’� � Inferno, Dante Alighieri

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

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

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.]]> 305 Jesmyn Ward 198210449X Liz 0 to-read 3.68 2023 Let Us Descend
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Liz
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>