en-US Tue, 31 Oct 2023 11:42:55 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Robert 2 3.88 1993
author: Annie Proulx
name: Robert
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 2
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date added: 2023/10/31
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]]> 36217818
Richard has spent his life as a university professor, immersed in the world of books and ideas, but now he is retired, his books remain in their packing boxes and he steps into the streets of his city, Berlin. Here, on Alexanderplatz, he discovers a new community -- a tent city, established by African asylum seekers. Hesitantly, getting to know the new arrivals, Richard finds his life changing, as he begins to question his own sense of belonging in a city that once divided its citizens into them and us.

At once a passionate contribution to the debate on race, privilege and nationality and a beautifully written examination of an ageing man's quest to find meaning in his life, Go, Went, Gone showcases one of the great contemporary European writers at the height of her powers.]]> 339 Jenny Erpenbeck 1846276217 Robert 0 currently-reading 3.95 2015
author: Jenny Erpenbeck
name: Robert
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/06
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]]> 672948 Forbidden to return to his own country, and dodging the everyday dangers of jail and deportation, Ravic manages to hang on � all the while searching for the Nazi who tortured him back in Germany. And though he’s given up on the possibility of love, life has a curious way of taking a turn for the romantic, even during the worst of times�.]]> 464 Erich Maria Remarque Robert 5 4.44 1945
author: Erich Maria Remarque
name: Robert
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1945
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/03/27
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]]> 322 Cien años de soledad leídos en todas las lenguas y el premio Nobel de literatura coronando una obra que se había abierto paso «boca a boca» -como gusta decir el escritor- son la más palpable demostración de que la aventura fabulosa de la familia Buendía-Iguarán, con sus milagros, fantasías, obsesiones, tragedias, incestos, adulterios, rebeldías, descubrimientos y condenas, representaba al mismo tiempo el mito y la historia, la tragedia y el amor del mundo entero.]]> 495 Gabriel García Márquez 9871138148 Robert 5 4.42 1967
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Robert
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 1997/03/01
date added: 2020/03/20
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One of my all time favorite books. Garcia Marquez uses Magical Realism to tell the story of the coming and going of a small town in Columbia. It grabs hold of the essence of Latin American culture. You have to struggle a little to get through the middle of the novel, but it is worth it. Great ending to a book.
]]> 5947099
Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to the master’s work.
--back cover]]> 115 Gabriel García Márquez 1400095948 Robert 3 3.59 2004
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Robert
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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date added: 2019/03/28
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]]> 313276
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.]]> 296 Sylvia Plath Robert 3 4.01 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Robert
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1963
rating: 3
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date added: 2018/12/03
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]]> 10054335 335 Amor Towles Robert 4 4.06 2011
author: Amor Towles
name: Robert
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2018/01/23
date added: 2018/01/23
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]]> 25887529 Jorge Amado Robert 4 4.05 1958
author: Jorge Amado
name: Robert
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2018/01/12
date added: 2018/01/12
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]]> 254704 Mind of the Raven, Bernd Heinrich, award-winning naturalist, finds himself dreaming of ravens and decides he must get to the truth about this animal reputed to be so intelligent.

Much like a sleuth, Heinrich involves us in his quest, letting one clue lead to the next. But as animals can only be spied on by getting quite close Heinrich adopts ravens, thereby becoming a "raven father," as well as observing them in their natural habitat, studying their daily routines, and in the process painting a vivid picture of the world as lived by the ravens. At the heart of this book are Heinrich's love and respect for these complex and engaging creatures, and through his keen observation and analysis, we become their intimates too.

Throughout history there has existed an extraordinary relationship between humans and ravens. Ravens, like early humans, are scavengers on the kills of great carnivores. As scavengers, ravens were associated with hunters they found in the north: wolves and, later, men. The trinity of wolf, man, and raven in the hunt is an extremely ancient one. In considering the appeal of the raven, Bernd Heinrich suspects that a meeting of the minds might reside in that hunting trinity.

Heinrich's passion for ravens has led him around the world in his research. Mind of the Raven takes you on an exotic journey—from New England to Germany, Montana to Baffin Island in the high Arctic—offering dazzling accounts of how science works in the field, filtered through the eyes of a passionate observer of nature.

Heinrich has a true gift; through his stories, his beautiful writing, illustrations, and photography, the ravens come alive. Each new discovery and insight into their behavior is thrilling to read. just as the title promises, the reader is given a rare glimpse into the mind of these wonderful creatures. Following the dictum of Leonardo da Vinci�"It is not enough to believe what you see. YOU Must also understand what you see"—Bernd Heinrich enables us to see the natural world through the eyes of a scientist. At once lyrical and scientific, Mind of the Raven is bound to be a modern classic.]]> 380 Bernd Heinrich 0060930632 Robert 0 currently-reading 4.01 1994
author: Bernd Heinrich
name: Robert
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/01/04
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 16282857 Karl Ove KnausgĂĄrd Robert 0 to-read 4.13 2009
author: Karl Ove KnausgĂĄrd
name: Robert
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/01/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 25489094
Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences of Tomás’s quest.

Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in his ancestral village in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he arrives with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee. And there the century-old quest will come to an unexpected conclusion.

The High Mountains of Portugal—part quest, part ghost story, part contemporary fable—offers a haunting exploration of great love and great loss. Filled with tenderness, humor, and endless surprise, it takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century—and through the human soul.]]> 332 Yann Martel 0812997174 Robert 4 3.36 2016
author: Yann Martel
name: Robert
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 25614492
Sepetys (writer of 'Between Shades of Gray') crafts four fictionalized but historically accurate voices to convey the real-life tragedy. Joana, a Lithuanian with nursing experience; Florian, a Prussian soldier fleeing the Nazis with stolen treasure; and Emilia, a Polish girl close to the end of her pregnancy, converge on their escape journeys as Russian troops advance; each will eventually meet Albert, a Nazi peon with delusions of grandeur, assigned to the Gustloff decks.]]> 391 Ruta Sepetys Robert 4 4.35 2016
author: Ruta Sepetys
name: Robert
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 16176440
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, Lowell, Rosemary and her unusual sister Fern. Rosemary begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “Until Fern’s expulsion...,� Rosemary says, “she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her.� As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.

In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date—a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences.]]> 310 Karen Joy Fowler 0399162097 Robert 4 3.70 2013
author: Karen Joy Fowler
name: Robert
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 15815333
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.

The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules's now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.

Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.]]> 468 Meg Wolitzer 1594488398 Robert 3 3.58 2013
author: Meg Wolitzer
name: Robert
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
rating: 3
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 18651980
After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.

But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Benjamin's activities spark the full-blown interest of the F.B.I., putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.]]> 466 Smith Henderson 0062286447 Robert 4 3.81 2014
author: Smith Henderson
name: Robert
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 3722183 Life After Life Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy � would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father � as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.]]> 480 Kate Atkinson 0316176532 Robert 3 3.91 2015
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Robert
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 3
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.ĚýYet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Robert 4 4.28 2015
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Robert
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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Fantastic characters. extremely hard to read depressing book. Woryh the read if you can stomach it
]]> 17830123
Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has been consumed.

When Eileen meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men she grew up with, she thinks she's found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit. They marry, and Eileen quickly discovers Ed doesn't aspire to the same, ever bigger, stakes in the American Dream.

Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house, but as years pass it becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future.

Through the Learys, novelist Matthew Thomas charts the story of the American Century, particularly the promise of domestic bliss and economic prosperity that captured hearts and minds after WWII. The result is a riveting and affecting work of art; one that reminds us that life is more than a tally of victories and defeats, that we live to love and be loved, and that we should tell each other so before the moment slips away.

Epic in scope, heroic in character, masterful in prose, We Are Not Ourselves heralds the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction.]]> 620 Matthew Thomas 147675666X Robert 4 3.69 2014
author: Matthew Thomas
name: Robert
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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Scary reality of early set alzheimers. Hard to read, but powerful.
]]> 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Robert 5 4.35 2012
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Robert
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

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

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Robert 5 4.31 2014
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Robert
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 6493208
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored� ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia � a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo � to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality� until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family � past and present � is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.]]> 370 Rebecca Skloot 1400052173 Robert 4 4.12 2010
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: Robert
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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really gets under your skin. Do the ends justify the means? Frustrated that the family was not compensated and that even in present day this is not resolved.
]]> 29430012 He can't leave. You won't want to.

With his breakout novel Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late-1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov.

When, in 1922, the thirty-year-old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

Unexpectedly, the Count's reduced circumstances provide him entry to a much larger world of emotional discovery as he forges friendships with the hotel's other denizens, including a willful actress, a shrewd Kremlinite, a gregarious American, and a temperamental chef. But when fate suddenly puts the life of a young girl in his hands, he must draw on all his ingenuity to protect the future she so deserves.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the Count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Robert 5 4.33 2016
author: Amor Towles
name: Robert
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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]]> 21853621 In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Robert 4 4.63 2015
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Robert
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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powerful story of womens involvement WW2. Captivating story.
]]> 5205
A loner by nature, Alice is torn between a yearning for solitude coupled with a deep need to be at the center of a perfect family. On this particular day, Emma has started the morning with a violent tantrum, her little sister Claire is eating pennies, and it is Alice's turn to watch her neighbor's two small girls as well as her own. She absentmindedly steals a minute alone that quickly becomes ten: time enough for a devastating accident to occur. Her neighbor's daughter Lizzy drowns in the farm's pond, and Alice - whose own volatility and unmasked directness keep her on the outskirts of acceptance - becomes the perfect scapegoat. At the same time, a seemingly trivial incident from Alice's past resurfaces and takes on gigantic proportions, leading the Goodwins far from Lizzy's death into a maze of guilt and doubt culminating in a harrowing court trial and the family's shattering downfall.]]> 400 Jane Hamilton 0385720106 Robert 4 3.82 1992
author: Jane Hamilton
name: Robert
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/01/03
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]]> 16158542
It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys� own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.]]> 404 Daniel James Brown 067002581X Robert 3 4.37 2013
author: Daniel James Brown
name: Robert
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2013
rating: 3
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date added: 2018/01/03
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story was great. Not well written and to dramatic.
]]> 24922 397 John Kennedy Toole 0140282688 Robert 4 3.96 1980
author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Robert
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1980
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/03/31
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]]> 259028 447 Erik Larson 0375725601 Robert 4 3.97 2003
author: Erik Larson
name: Robert
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/03/09
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]]> 1839 The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.]]> 518 Jared Diamond 0393061310 Robert 3 4.04 1997
author: Jared Diamond
name: Robert
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2006/02/01
date added: 2014/06/04
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Eye opening perspective on why/how certain countries grew as modern day superpowers while others are still struggling. Shows how the enviroment placed the biggest factor in why the U.S prospered. Textbook like read, but if you can get through it you will find it fascinating.
]]> 6599342
Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.]]> 658 Stieg Larsson Robert 3 4.23 2005
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Robert
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/11/27
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]]> 10692
Late one night in 1972, as a 16-year-old girl, she discovers a mysterious book and a sheaf of letters in her father's library—a discovery that will have dreadful and far-reaching consequences, and will send her on a journey of mind-boggling danger. While seeking clues to the secrets of her father's past and her mother's puzzling disappearance, she follows a trail from London to Istanbul to Budapest and beyond, and learns that the letters in her possession provide a link to one of the world's darkest and most intoxicating figures. Generation after generation, the legend of Dracula has enticed and eluded both historians and opportunists alike. Now a young girl undertakes the same search that ended in the death and defilement of so many others—in an attempt to save her father from an unspeakable fate.
(Fall 2005 Selection)]]> 704 Elizabeth Kostova 0751537284 Robert 4 3.78 2005
author: Elizabeth Kostova
name: Robert
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/12/30
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]]> 30118 Last night while I lay thinking here
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:

Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?...This 20th anniversary of Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic includes a CD of highlights from his Grammy Award-winning album.

Here in the attic of Shel Silverstein you will find Backward Bill, Sour Face Ann, the Meehoo with an Exactlywatt, and the Polar Bear in the Frigidaire. You will talk with Broiled Face, and find out what happens when Somebody steals your knees, you get caught by the Quick-Digesting Gink, a Mountain snores, and They Put a Brassiere on the Camel.

From the creator of the beloved poetry collections Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up, here is another wondrous book of poems and drawings.]]> 176 Shel Silverstein 0060513063 Robert 5 4.36 1981
author: Shel Silverstein
name: Robert
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1981
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/12/30
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]]> 48855
In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe� of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
--back cover]]> 283 Anne Frank Robert 5 4.19 1947
author: Anne Frank
name: Robert
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1947
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/12/30
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]]> 30119 Come in... for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein's world begins.

Shel Silverstein, theĚýNew York Times bestselling author of The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, and Every Thing On It, has created a poetry collection that is outrageously funny and deeply profound.

You'll meet a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.

Shel Silverstein's masterful collection of poems and drawings stretches the bounds of imagination and will be cherished by readers of all ages.]]> 176 Shel Silverstein 0060513039 Robert 5 4.34 1974
author: Shel Silverstein
name: Robert
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1974
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/12/30
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]]> 7656 Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family." But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear, and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide, and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

First published in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 is a classic novel set in the future when books forbidden by a totalitarian regime are burned. The hero, a book burner, suddenly discovers that books are flesh and blood ideas that cry out silently when put to the torch.]]> 186 Ray Bradbury 8445074873 Robert 3 3.92 1953
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Robert
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1953
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/12/30
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]]> 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 Robert 4 3.90 1915
author: Franz Kafka
name: Robert
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 4
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]]> 3711 White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.]]> 448 Zadie Smith 0375703861 Robert 3 3.80 2000
author: Zadie Smith
name: Robert
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2000
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/12/30
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]]> 16527
As we follow her spirited heroine on a perilous journey north in the hold of a ship to the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco and northern California, we enter a world whose newly arrived inhabitants are driven mad by gold fever. A society of single men and prostitutes among whom Eliza moves--with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chien--California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence for the young Chilean. Her search for the elusive JoaquĂ­n gradually turns into another kind of journey that transforms her over time, and what began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom.]]> 432 Isabel Allende 0061120251 Robert 4 3.93 1998
author: Isabel Allende
name: Robert
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/12/30
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]]> 51114
In "Women of the Silk" Gail Tsukiyama takes her readers back to rural China in 1926, where a group of women forge a sisterhood amidst the reeling machines that reverberate and clamor in a vast silk factory from dawn to dusk. Leading the first strike the village has ever seen, the young women use the strength of their ambition, dreams, and friendship to achieve the freedom they could never have hoped for on their own. Tsukiyama's graceful prose weaves the details of "the silk work" and Chinese village life into a story of courage and strength.]]> 278 Gail Tsukiyama 0312099436 Robert 4 3.96 1991
author: Gail Tsukiyama
name: Robert
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1991
rating: 4
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]]> 7140754
When Michael’s personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?

A complex novel that brilliantly traces the arc of one man’s ambitions and self-deceptions, Solar is a startling, witty, and stylish new work from one of the world’s great writers.]]> 287 Ian McEwan Robert 3 3.28 2010
author: Ian McEwan
name: Robert
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/12/30
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]]> 3591262
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
(front flap)]]> 560 Abraham Verghese 0375414495 Robert 5 4.32 2009
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Robert
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> 11556 538 Robert McCammon 0671737767 Robert 4 3.86 1988
author: Robert McCammon
name: Robert
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1988
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/06/16
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]]> 11553
Robert McCammon delivers "a tour de force of storytelling" (BookPage) in his award-winning masterpiece, a novel of Southern boyhood, growing up in the 1960s, that reaches far beyond that evocative landscape to touch readers universally.

Boy's Life is a richly imagined, spellbinding portrait of the magical worldview of the young -- and of innocence lost.

Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson -- a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake -- and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible, haunting vision of death. As Cory struggles to understand his father's pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that surround him. From an ancient mystic who can hear the dead and bewitch the living, to a violent clan of moonshiners, Cory must confront the secrets that hide in the shadows of his hometown -- for his father's sanity and his own life hang in the balance....]]> 580 Robert McCammon Robert 3 4.33 1991
author: Robert McCammon
name: Robert
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1991
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/06/15
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]]> 8300755 Lisbeth Salander - outsider and apparent enemy of society - is charged with attempted murder. The state has also ruled that she is mentally unstable, and should be locked away in an institution once again But she is closely guarded in a hospital having taken a bullet to the head so how will she prove her innocence?

The Enemy
Pulling the strings of the prosecution is the powerful inner circle of Säpo, the state security police. Determined to protect the secrets and corruption at Sweden's rotten core, Säpo is not an adversary to take on alone.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Only with the help of Mikael Blomkvist and the journalists at Millennium magazine can Salander avoid the fate that has been decided for her. Together they form a compelling and dynamic alliance. This final volume of the Millenium Trilogy is the culmination of one of the most mesmerizing fictional achievements of our time.]]> 675 Stieg Larsson Robert 3 4.37 2007
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Robert
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/03/18
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]]> 29658 Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award
One of theĚýNew York Times'ĚýTen Best Books of the Year.

Table of contents

About the author
Copyright page
Dedication
Preface & acknowledgement
Introduction

PART ONE - Post-War: 1945-1953
1. The legacy of war
2. Retribution
3. The rehabilitation of Europe
4. The impossible settlement
5. The coming of the Cold War
6. Into the whirlwind
7. Culture wars
CODA The end of old Europe

PART TWO - Prosperity and its discontents: 1953-1971
8. The politics of stability
9. Lost illusions
10. The age of affluence
POSTSCRIPT: A Tale of two economies
11. The Social Democrat moment
12. The spectre of revolution
13. The end of the affair

PART THREE - Recessional: 1971-1989
14. Diminished expectations
15. Politics in a new key
16. A time of transition
17. The new realism
18. The power of the powerless
19. The end of the old order

PART FOUR - After the Fall: 1989-2005
20. A fissile continent
21. The reckoning
22. The old Europe -and the new
23. The varieties of Europe
24. Europe as a way of life

Photo crdits
Suggestions for further readings]]> 933 Tony Judt 0143037757 Robert 0 currently-reading so far so good. 4.36 2005
author: Tony Judt
name: Robert
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/03/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:
so far so good.
]]> 188330 The last time Silas Ali encountered Lieutenant Du Boise, Silas was locked in the back of a police van and the lieutenant was conducting a vicious assault on Silas's wife, Lydia, in revenge for her husband's participation in Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. When Silas sees Du Boise by chance twenty years later, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is about to deliver its report, crimes from the past erupt into the present, splintering the Alis' fragile peace. Meanwhile Silas and Lydia's son, Mikey, a thoroughly contemporary young hip-hop lothario, contends in unforeseen ways with his parents' pasts.
A harrowing story of a brittle family on the crossroads of history and a fearless skewering of the pieties of revolutionary movements, Bitter Fruit is a cautionary tale of how we do, or do not, address the past's deepest wounds.]]> 288 Achmat Dangor 0802170064 Robert 2 3.30 2001
author: Achmat Dangor
name: Robert
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2001
rating: 2
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]]> 95186 357 Kiran Desai 0802142818 Robert 2 3.46 2005
author: Kiran Desai
name: Robert
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2005
rating: 2
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]]> 109335
Twenty years of failure later, that unfortunately does not appear to be the case. A sullen government worker, Sampath is inspired only when in search of a quiet place to take his nap. "But the world is round," his grandmother says. "Wait and see Even if it appears he is going downhill, he will come up the other side. Yes, on top of the world. He is just taking a longer route." No one believes her until, one day, Sampath climbs into a guava tree and becomes unintentionally famous as a holy man, setting off a series of events that spin increasingly out of control. A delightfully sweet comic novel that ends in a raucous bang, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is as surprising and entertaining as it is beautifully wrought.]]> 224 Kiran Desai 0385493703 Robert 3 3.48 1998
author: Kiran Desai
name: Robert
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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]]> 5174 Fall on Your Knees follows four remarkable sisters whose lives are filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Their experiences will take them from their stormswept homeland, across the battlefields of World War I, to the freedom and independence of Jazz-era New York City.

Compellingly written, running the literary gamut from menacingly dark to hilariously funny, this is an epic saga of one family’s trials and triumphs in a world of sin, guilt, and redemption.]]> 672 Ann-Marie MacDonald 0743466527 Robert 2 3.97 1996
author: Ann-Marie MacDonald
name: Robert
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1996
rating: 2
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]]> 66059 256 Luana Monteiro 0060899530 Robert 3 3.69 2005
author: Luana Monteiro
name: Robert
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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]]> 6482399 In a Perfect World reveals astonishing and tender insight into human nature while exposing a terrifying, yet believable, world I’d never before imagined. This story will grasp onto your heart before swiftly carrying you away.� —Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

In a Perfect World is critically acclaimed writer Laura Kasischke’s novel of marriage, motherhood, and the choices we make when we have no choices left. Kasischke, the author of The Life Before Her Eyes, tells the story of Jiselle, a young flight attendant who’s just settled into a fairy tale life with her new husband and stepchildren. But as a mysterious new illness spreads rapidly throughout the country, she begins to realize that her marriage, her stepchildren, and their perfect world are all in terrible danger . . .]]> 326 Laura Kasischke 0061766119 Robert 3 3.35 2009
author: Laura Kasischke
name: Robert
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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]]> 19501
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.]]> 368 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143038419 Robert 1 3.64 2006
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Robert
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 1
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]]> 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 Robert 3 4.10 1998
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Robert
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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]]> 2195464
Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back.

By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in running.]]> 188 Haruki Murakami Robert 1 3.87 2007
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Robert
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 1
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]]> 2615008
Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider’s vantage point, and the complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers. Most immediately, though, it is the story of one man--of a marriage foundering and recuperating in its mystery and ordinariness, of the shallows and depths of male friendship, of mourning and memory. Joseph O’Neill’s prose, in its conscientiousness and beauty, involves us utterly in the struggle for meaning that governs any single life.]]> 269 Joseph O'Neill 0307377040 Robert 1 3.43 2008
author: Joseph O'Neill
name: Robert
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2008
rating: 1
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]]> 6289283 Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.

Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence. With the help of Caballo Blanco, a mysterious loner who lives among the tribe, the author was able not only to uncover the secrets of the Tarahumara but also to find his own inner ultra-athlete, as he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of Americans, including a star ultramarathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder.

With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultrarunners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons. Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.]]> 287 Christopher McDougall Robert 4 4.29 2009
author: Christopher McDougall
name: Robert
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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]]> 5171 368 Christina Schwarz 0345439104 Robert 3 3.75 2000
author: Christina Schwarz
name: Robert
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2000
rating: 3
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]]> 4332082
Enter Claire Pendleton from London. Months after her husband is transferred to Hong Kong in 1951, she accepts a position as a piano teacher to the daughter of a wealthy couple, the Chens. Claire begins to see the appeal of the sweltering city and is soon taken in by the Chen's driver, the curiously underutilized Will Truesdale. A handsome charmer with a mysterious limp, Will appears to be the perfect companion for Claire, who's often left to her own devices. But a further examination leaves her with more questions than answers.

An intricately woven tale of lives changed by historical events, Lee's debut brings this hothouse flower of a city alive with passion, and imagines characters both unforgettable and tragic.]]> 328 Janice Y.K. Lee 0670020486 Robert 3 3.35 2009
author: Janice Y.K. Lee
name: Robert
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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]]> 71332 177 Sapphire 0679766758 Robert 3 3.89 1996
author: Sapphire
name: Robert
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/03/05
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]]> 1134381 0 Frank McCourt 0671047272 Robert 4 4.23 1996
author: Frank McCourt
name: Robert
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/03/05
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]]> 5088204 The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience.

It opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic.]]> 636 Margaret Atwood Robert 4 3.95 2000
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Robert
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/03/05
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]]> 4929705
What Catherine Land did not realize was that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own. And what neither anticipated was that they would fall so completely in love.

Filled with unforgettable characters, and shimmering with color and atmosphere, A Reliable Wife is an enthralling tale of love and madness, of longing and murder.]]> 291 Robert Goolrick 1565125967 Robert 2 3.27 2009
author: Robert Goolrick
name: Robert
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2009
rating: 2
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]]> 2265 294 Lance Armstrong 0425179613 Robert 3 3.71 1999
author: Lance Armstrong
name: Robert
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/03/05
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]]> 227181 0 Bob Dylan 1419329995 Robert 3 3.90 2004
author: Bob Dylan
name: Robert
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/03/05
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]]> 43641
Beautifully written, Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.]]> 368 Sara Gruen 1565125606 Robert 4 4.11 2006
author: Sara Gruen
name: Robert
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> 53414 288 Julio Cortázar 0811214370 Robert 5 4.16 1968
author: Julio Cortázar
name: Robert
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1968
rating: 5
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]]> 4667024
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

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

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

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

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


Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here]]> 464 Kathryn Stockett 0399155341 Robert 4 4.46 2009
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Robert
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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]]> 228221
So young, so sweet. She appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of traffic, on a busy day. A teenager with no past, no family - no memories.

Such a lovely child...

So blond and beautiful. Carol and Paul were drawn to her - she was the child they'd never had. A dream come true. And then Carol's nightmares began - the ghastly sounds in the night... the bloody face in the mirror... the razor-sharp ax.

Such relentless evil...

So deceptively innocent. Most mothers would die for such a darling little angel. And that's what frightened Carol most of all...]]> 305 Dean Koontz 0425127583 Robert 4 3.81 1981
author: Dean Koontz
name: Robert
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1981
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/03/04
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]]> 32435
They found the first body hideously swollen and still warm. Then they found two severed hands. Then two staring heads in wall ovens. 150 were grotesquely dead and it had hardly begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California.

and closer...

At first they thought it was a maniac. Then they thought it was an obscene new disease. Then they thought it was the Russians.

and closer...

Then they found out the truth. And they saw it in the flesh. And it was worse than anything any of them had ever imagined...]]> 434 Dean Koontz 0425181103 Robert 3 3.94 1983
author: Dean Koontz
name: Robert
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1983
rating: 3
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]]> 32424
The second time it strikes the terror starts... though eight-year-old Laura is saved by a mysterious stranger from the perverted and deadly intentions of a drug-crazed robber. Throughout her childhood she is plagued by ever more terrifying troubles, and with increasing courage she finds the strength to prevail - even without the intervention of her strange guardian. But, despite her success as a novelist and her happy family life, Laura cannot shake the certainty that powerful and malignant forces are controlling her destiny.

Then the lightning strikes once more and shatters her world. The adventure - and the terror - have only just begun...]]> 384 Dean Koontz 0425192032 Robert 2 4.08 1988
author: Dean Koontz
name: Robert
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1988
rating: 2
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]]> 8328937 224 Stephen F. Cohen 1933002409 Robert 3 3.51 2010
author: Stephen F. Cohen
name: Robert
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/03/04
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]]> 8115818 Millenium publisher Mikael Blomkvist has made his reputation exposing corrupt establishment figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with an investigation into sex trafficking, Blomkvist cannot resist waging war on the powerful figures who control this lucrative industry.

The Murder
When a young couple is found dead in their Stockholm apartment, it's a straightforward job for Inspector Bublanski and his team. The killer left the weapon at the scene - and the fingerprints on the gun point in only one direction.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
Ex-security analyst Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. The only way Salander can be reached is by computer. But she can break into almost any network she chooses...]]> 738 Stieg Larsson Robert 4 4.37 2006
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Robert
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/03/04
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]]> 2657 "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Robert 3 4.25 1960
author: Harper Lee
name: Robert
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 3
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]]> 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Robert 5 3.87 1955
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Robert
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 5
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]]> 3398625 The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon.

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve "the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century": What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett & his quest for the Lost City of Z?

In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humans. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions inspired Conan Doyle's The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions round the globe, Fawcett embarked with his 21-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilisation--which he dubbed Z--existed. Then his expedition vanished. Fawcett's fate, & the tantalizing clues he left behind about Z, became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness.

For decades scientists & adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett's party & the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes or gone mad. As Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett's quest, & the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, being irresistibly drawn into the jungle's green hell. His quest for the truth & discoveries about Fawcett's fate & Z form the heart of this complexly enthralling narrative.]]> 339 David Grann 0385513534 Robert 3 3.87 2009
author: David Grann
name: Robert
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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]]> 1812457
In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!]]> 248 William Paul Young 0964729237 Robert 2 3.73 2007
author: William Paul Young
name: Robert
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
rating: 2
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]]> 4214 460 Yann Martel 0770430074 Robert 4 3.94 2001
author: Yann Martel
name: Robert
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> 2517 My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers.

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery–or crime? –lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power.]]> 417 Orhan Pamuk Robert 4 3.87 1998
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Robert
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> 394228

From the Paperback edition.]]> 432 Elizabeth George 0553384813 Robert 4 4.11 1990
author: Elizabeth George
name: Robert
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1990
rating: 4
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]]> 77833 408 William Boyd 0375705023 Robert 4 3.88 1982
author: William Boyd
name: Robert
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1982
rating: 4
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]]> 77837
After he finds himself being blackmailed, diagnosed with a venereal disease, attempting bribery, and confounded with a dead body, Morgan realizes that very little is going according to plan.]]> 352 William Boyd 1400030021 Robert 4 3.87 1981
author: William Boyd
name: Robert
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1981
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/03/04
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]]> 77866
Mountstuart's sorry tale is also the story of a British way of life in inexorable decline, as his journey takes in the Bloomsbury set, the General Strike, the Spanish Civil War, 1930s Americans in Paris, wartime espionage, New York avant garde art, even the Baader-Meinhof gang--all with a stellar supporting cast. The most sustained and best moment comes mid-book, as Mountstuart gets caught up in one of Britain's murkier wartime secrets, in the company of the here truly despicable Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Elsewhere Boyd occasionally misplaces his tongue too obviously in his cheek--the Wall Street Crash is trailed with truly crashing inelegance--but overall Any Human Heart is a witty, inventive and ultimately moving novel. Boyd succeeds in conjuring not only a compelling 20th century but also, in the hapless Logan Mountstuart, an anti-hero who achieves something approaching passive greatness. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk]]> 480 William Boyd 1400031001 Robert 3 4.28 2002
author: William Boyd
name: Robert
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2002
rating: 3
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]]> 72148
Three decades later the secrets of Sally’s past still haunt her. Someone is trying to kill her and at last she has decided to trust Ruth with her story. Ruth, meanwhile, is struggling to make sense of her own life as a young single mother with an unfinished graduate degree and escalating dependence on alcohol. She is drawn deeper and deeper into the astonishing events of her mother’s past—the mysterious death of Eva’s beloved brother, her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward American involvement in the war, and her dangerous romantic entanglement. Now Sally wants to find the man who recruited her for the secret service, and she needs Ruth’s help.

Restless is a brilliant espionage book and a vivid portrait of the life of a female spy. Full of tension and drama, and based on a remarkable chapter of Anglo-American history, this is fiction at its finest.]]> 336 William Boyd 0747589372 Robert 4 3.88 2006
author: William Boyd
name: Robert
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> 2767 Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those…whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”]]> 729 Howard Zinn 0060838655 Robert 5 4.07 1980
author: Howard Zinn
name: Robert
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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]]> 11648
The fate of Roth's everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes.

A successful commercial artist with a New York ad agency, he is the father of two sons from a first marriage who despise him and a daughter from a second marriage who adores him. He is the beloved brother of a good man whose physical well-being comes to arouse his bitter envy, and he is the lonely ex-husband of three very different women with whom he's made a mess of marriage. In the end he is a man who has become what he does not want to be.

The terrain of this powerful novel -- Roth's twenty-seventh book and the fifth to be published in the twenty-first century -- is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.

Everyman takes its title from an anonymous fifteenth-century allegorical play, a classic of early English drama, whose theme is the summoning of the living to death.]]> 182 Philip Roth 061873516X Robert 4 3.49 2006
author: Philip Roth
name: Robert
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2007/02/01
date added: 2009/12/16
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Yet again, another solid Roth novel. Depressing, sad, funny, all in one. Sort of a more toned down sentimental Roth novel. I have yet to read a Roth novel that I did not enjoy.
]]> 40102 The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you'll understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?

In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.]]> 296 Malcolm Gladwell 0316010669 Robert 3 3.97 2005
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Robert
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2009/12/16
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I can now tell what a woman is thinking in a millisecond. Neat study. Does not flow nicely, but the content is interesting.
]]> 9503
With picaresque characters and mesmerizing imagery, Saving Fish from Drowning gives us a voice as idiosyncratic, sharp, and affectionate as the mothers of The Joy Luck Club. Bibi is the observant eye of human nature–the witness of good intentions and bad outcomes, of desperate souls and those who wish to save them. In the end, Tan takes her readers to that place in their own heart where hope is found.]]> 472 Amy Tan 034546401X Robert 4 3.46 2005
author: Amy Tan
name: Robert
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2009/12/16
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First novel I have read by Amy Tan. She is a fantastic writer. Nice insight into a country I knew nothing about: Burma. A nice read.
]]> 43944 The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed.

By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française—the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France—where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis—she'd begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovsky's literary masterpiece

The first part, "A Storm in June," opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival—some trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their lives—but soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. In the second part, "Dolce," we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers—from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants—cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity.

Suite Française is a singularly piercing evocation—at once subtle and severe, deeply compassionate, and fiercely ironic—of life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.]]> 431 Irène Némirovsky 1400096278 Robert 3 3.82 2004
author: Irène Némirovsky
name: Robert
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2007/06/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves:
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Interesting portrayal of France during German occupation throughout WWII. Not very well written. Book received more hype than it deserved.
]]> 25179 A young man comes of age and finds the confidence to express his creative voice.

Craig Thompson's poignant sequential-art memoir plays out against the backdrop of a Midwestern winterscape: finely hewn linework draws together a portrait of small town life, a rigorously fundamentalist Christian childhood, and a lonely, emotionally mixed-up adolescence.

Under an engulfing blanket of snow, Craig and Raina fall in love at winter church camp, revealing to one another their struggles with faith and their dreams of escape. Over time though, their personal demons resurface and their relationship falls apart. It's a universal story, and Thompson's vibrant brushstrokes and unique page designs make the familiar heartbreaking all over again.]]> 582 Craig Thompson 1891830430 Robert 5 4.05 2003
author: Craig Thompson
name: Robert
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2009/12/16
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Very cool adult comic. The cartoon girl is my type. I think Laura and Ruth might find the guy to be a Jack. Seriously now, a great fast fun read. I could get into these graphic novels
]]> 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Robert 4 Very good book. A must read. 4.03 2002
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Robert
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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Very good book. A must read.
]]> 11653 I Married a Communist is the story of the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, a big American roughneck who begins life as a teenage ditch-digger in 1930s Newark, becomes a big-time 1940s radio star, and is destroyed, as both a performer and a man, in the McCarthy witchhunt of the 1950s.

In his heyday as a star—and as a zealous, bullying supporter of "progressive" political causes—Ira marries Hollywood's beloved silent-film star, Eve Frame. Their glamorous honeymoon in her Manhattan townhouse is shortlived, however, and it is the publication of Eve's scandalous bestselling exposé that identifies him as "an American taking his orders from Moscow."

In this story of cruelty, betrayal, and revenge spilling over into the public arena from their origins in Ira's turbulent personal life, Philip Roth—who Commonweal calls the "master chronicler of the American twentieth century—has written a brilliant fictional portrayal of that treacherous postwar epoch when the anti-Communist fever not only infected national politics but traumatized the intimate, innermost lives of friends and families, husbands and wives, parents and children.]]> 323 Philip Roth 0375707212 Robert 4 3.83 1998
author: Philip Roth
name: Robert
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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Story about my parents (just kidding).
]]> 40720 271 Peter W. Galbraith 0743294238 Robert 3 3.78 2006
author: Peter W. Galbraith
name: Robert
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2006/11/01
date added: 2009/12/16
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A history lesson for anybody wondering why we are in Iraq in the first place. The grim reality of our administration's incompetence. A good summary of how Iraq came to be. It also points out a lot of ways we went wrong and what we could do to get us back on the right track.
]]> 10441 401 Kim Edwards 0143037145 Robert 2 3.70 2005
author: Kim Edwards
name: Robert
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves:
review:
Not the best book I ever read. Starts out great and than drags on until the end. If you are looking for a depressing book, go ahead and read it. The book plays with your emotions. I felt pissed off at the main character for what he did, but also felt sorry for him.
]]> 1971304
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.]]> 258 David Benioff 0670018708 Robert 5 4.28 2008
author: David Benioff
name: Robert
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/05/27
date added: 2009/05/27
shelves:
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Fantastic story. A must read no doubt
]]> 199600
It’s not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It’s the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.

It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious—and very well-guarded—secrets of Dublin’s high Catholic society, among them members of his own family.

Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville’s fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black’s debut marks him as a true master of the form.]]> 352 Benjamin Black 0805081526 Robert 3 3.52 2006
author: Benjamin Black
name: Robert
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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date added: 2009/05/18
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]]> 1918305
Apparently, the happiest places on earth include, somewhat unexpectedly, Iceland, Bhutan, and India. Weiner also visits the country deemed most malcontent, Moldova, and finds real merit in the claim.

But the question remains: What makes people happy? Is it the freedom of the West or the myriad restrictions of Singapore? The simple ashrams of India or the glittering shopping malls of Qatar?
From the youthful drunkenness of Iceland to the despond of Slough, a sad but resilient town in Heathrow's flight path, Weiner offers wry yet profound observations about the way people relate to circumstance and fate.

Both revealing and inspirational, perhaps the best thing about this hilarious trip across four continents is that for the reader, the "geography of bliss" is wherever they happen to find themselves while reading it.]]> 335 Eric Weiner 0446580260 Robert 4 3.84 2008
author: Eric Weiner
name: Robert
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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date added: 2009/05/18
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review:
Funny read. Now that I found out that more ding dongs are lopped off in Thailand by pissed off women than any other county in the world, I am out!!
]]> 891671
Into this uncertain world comes Harry Brett: a traumatized veteran of Dunkirk turned reluctant spy for the British Secret Service. Sent to gain the confidence of old school friend Sandy Forsyth, now a shady Madrid businessman, Harry finds himself involved in a dangerous game � and surrounded by memories.

Meanwhile Sandy's girlfriend, ex-Red Cross nurse Barbara Clare, is engaged in a secret mission of her own � to find her former lover Bernie Piper, a passionate Communist in the International Brigades, who vanished on the bloody battlefields of the Jarama.]]> 549 C.J. Sansom 0330411985 Robert 4 3.84 2006
author: C.J. Sansom
name: Robert
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2009/05/18
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Fantastic story. An insight into Spain during Franco's rule.
]]> 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Robert 4 4.44 2007
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Robert
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2009/03/14
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]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Robert 3 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Robert
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 3
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]]> 4989 The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.]]> 324 Anita Diamant 0312353766 Robert 4 4.21 1997
author: Anita Diamant
name: Robert
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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]]> 4980 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.]]> 303 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334206 Robert 3 4.08 1973
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Robert
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 3
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date added: 2009/03/14
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]]>