Marisa's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 22 Dec 2024 18:27:08 -0800 60 Marisa's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder]]> 199345551
On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.]]> 214 Salman Rushdie 0593730267 Marisa 0 currently-reading 4.28 2024 Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> A Moveable Feast 220111562 165 Ernest Hemingway Marisa 0 currently-reading 4.38 1964 A Moveable Feast
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Marisa 4 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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]]> Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sistersâ€� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano Marisa 4 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Marisa 0 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> The Women 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankieâ€� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Marisa 3 4.59 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 3
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]]> The Frozen River 112975658 A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546874 Marisa 5 4.38 2023 The Frozen River
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

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

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

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

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Marisa 5 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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]]> The People We Keep 55711726 The People We Keep is about a young songwriter longing to find a home in the world.

Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a motorless motorhome that her father won in a poker game. Failing out of school, picking up shifts at Margo’s diner, she’s left fending for herself in a town where she’s never quite felt at home. When she “borrowsâ€� her neighbor’s car to perform at an open mic night, she realizes her life could be much bigger than where she came from. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and leaves for good, setting off on a journey to find a life that’s all hers.

As April moves through the world, meeting people who feel like home, she chronicles her life in the songs she writes and discovers that where she came from doesn’t dictate who she has to be.

This lyrical, unflinching tale is for anyone who has ever yearned for the fierce power of found family or to grasp the profound beauty of choosing to belong.]]> 368 Allison Larkin 1982171294 Marisa 5 4.07 2021 The People We Keep
author: Allison Larkin
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 5
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]]> The Things We Cannot Say 40899464
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parentsâ€� farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.

Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced
and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.]]> 448 Kelly Rimmer 1525831518 Marisa 4 to-read 4.51 2019 The Things We Cannot Say
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/05/02
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]]> The Paris Library 55631367 Paris, 1939. Odile Souchet is obsessed with books and the Dewey Decimal System, which makes order out of chaos. She soon has it all � a handsome police officer beau, an English best friend, a beloved twin, and a job at the American Library in Paris, a thriving community of students, writers, diplomats, and book lovers. Yet when war is declared, there's also a war on words.

Montana, 1983. Widowed and alone, Odile suffers the solitary confinement of small-town life. Though most adults are cowed by her, the neighbor girl will not let her be. Lily, a lonely teenager yearning to break free of Froid is obsessed by the older French woman who lives next door and wants to know her secrets.

As the two become friends, Odile sees herself in Lily â€� the same love of language, the same longings, the same lethal jealousy. The Paris Library’s dual narratives explore the relationships that make us who we are â€� family and friends, first loves and favorite authors â€� in the fairy tale setting of the City of Light. It also explores the geography of resentment, the consequences of unspeakable betrayal, and what happens when the people we count on for understanding and protection fail us.

The wit, empathy, and deep research that brings The Paris Library to life also brings to light a cast of lively historical characters and a little-known chapter of World War II history: the story of the American librarian, Miss Reeder, who created the Soldiersâ€� Service to deliver books to servicemen, and who later faced the Nazi ‘Book Protectorâ€� in order to keep her library open. She and her colleagues defied the Bibliotheksschutz by delivering books to Jewish readers after they were forbidden from entering the library.]]> 368 Janet Skeslien Charles 1982172533 Marisa 3 4.07 2021 The Paris Library
author: Janet Skeslien Charles
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains]]> 51951587
“Destined to be compared toÌę Hillbilly Elegy and Educated. ”â€� BookPage (starred review)
“Poverty is enmeshed with pride in these stories of survival.”—Associated Press

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

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

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

Appalachian women face issues that are all too domestic violence, the opioid crisis, a world that seems more divided by the day. But they are also community leaders, keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers uses these women’s stories paired with her own journey to break down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminate a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.]]> 304 Cassie Chambers 1984818910 Marisa 4 3.92 2020 Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains
author: Cassie Chambers
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/25
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]]> People We Meet on Vacation 54985743 Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?]]> 400 Emily Henry 1984806750 Marisa 0 3.85 2021 People We Meet on Vacation
author: Emily Henry
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
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]]> In Five Years 50093704 Where do you see yourself in five years?

When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Kohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend's marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.

After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.

That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.

Brimming with joy and heartbreak, In Five Years is an unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny.]]> 272 Rebecca Serle 1982137444 Marisa 0 3.74 2020 In Five Years
author: Rebecca Serle
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Crying in H Mart 54814676
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band â€� and meeting the man who would become her husband â€� her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 243 Michelle Zauner 0525657746 Marisa 0 to-read 4.25 2021 Crying in H Mart
author: Michelle Zauner
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Sweetness of Water 54404602 In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, a profound debut about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever.

In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys.

Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox.

With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.]]> 368 Nathan Harris 031646127X Marisa 0 4.08 2021 The Sweetness of Water
author: Nathan Harris
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
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]]> The Lincoln Highway 57109107 The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.]]> 576 Amor Towles 0735222355 Marisa 0 4.18 2021 The Lincoln Highway
author: Amor Towles
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Paper Palace 58698241 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

"This house, this place, knows all my secrets."

It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at "The Paper Palace"--the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives. As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.]]> 400 Miranda Cowley Heller 0593329821 Marisa 0 3.74 2021 The Paper Palace
author: Miranda Cowley Heller
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Great Alone 34927828 Alaska, 1974.
Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: He will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents� passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights� lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: They are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.]]> 440 Kristin Hannah 0312577230 Marisa 0 to-read 4.35 2018 The Great Alone
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
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]]> Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix up their own marriage. There's a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can't seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment's only bathroom, and you've got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Marisa 0 4.17 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> American Dirt 50634450
Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?]]> 380 Jeanine Cummins 1250209765 Marisa 0 4.34 2020 American Dirt
author: Jeanine Cummins
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> The Vanishing Half 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Marisa 0 4.12 2020 The Vanishing Half
author: Brit Bennett
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> The Guest List 54911607 here.

It's the wedding of the year. But someone won't survive it.

On a remote island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate the wedding of Jules Keegan and Will Slater. Will is a rising television star, handsome and charming. Jules is a smart, ambitious magazine publisher. Though the sea is a little choppy and the cell service spotty, their wedding is everything you'd expect of a young power couple: designer dress, four-tiered cake, boutique whiskey, vintage champagne. Every detail has been curated to perfection. All that's left to orchestrate is the happiness.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. It's not long after the cake is cut and the champagne popped that resentments and petty jealousies come out. Worse yet, the latest barometer reading shows the weather has shifted from FAIR to CHANGEABLE, and dark clouds are looming overhead.

Everyone on the island has a secret. Everyone has a motive. And someone won't leave this wedding alive...]]> 313 Lucy Foley 0062868934 Marisa 0 to-read 3.77 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life]]> 28257707 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062457738

In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.

For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.

Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited�"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek.

There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives.]]> 212 Mark Manson Marisa 4 3.88 2016 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
author: Mark Manson
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/02/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Not All Diamonds and RosĂ©: The Inside Story of The Real Housewives from the People Who Lived It]]> 55708509 For the first time in the ultimate reunion, the ladies of The Real Housewives dish on the iconic moments we’ll never forget and the off-camera drama we’ve never seen before. From flipped tables to thrown tiki torches, from Atlanta to Beverly Hills, this is the definitive story of the Real Housewives.

For the first time, the Real Housewives go on the record with the incredible story of the juggernaut franchise. With the full support of Bravo and Andy Cohen, Not All Diamonds and RosĂ© is the definitive tell-all of the hit television saga, from its unlikely start in the gated communities of Orange County, to the pop culture behemoth it has become—spanning seven cities, hundreds of cast members, and millions of fans. This is the whole story straight from the lips of the women and men who have made it one of America’s favorite television shows.

Amassing hours of exclusive interviews with the wives, husbands, friends-of, and crew members behind the scenes, People magazine writer and author Dave Quinn gets the unfiltered truth about legendary rivalries and off-camera revelations never before shared. With the stories behind iconic lines like “whooping it upâ€� and “who gonâ€� check me, boo?â€� and deep dives into the most explosive vacation moments in the show’s history, this is your VIP pass to the lives behind the glam squads, talking heads, and paparazzi shots.

Not All Diamonds and Rosé is the must-have book for every Housewives obsessed fan and casual viewer. So pour an ice-cold glass of pinot grigio (or three), forget your worries, and listen close. The ladies are about to get real.

Includes Color Photographs]]> 496 Dave Quinn 1250765781 Marisa 0 currently-reading 3.91 2021 Not All Diamonds and Rosé: The Inside Story of The Real Housewives from the People Who Lived It
author: Dave Quinn
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/04
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Where the Crawdads Sing 42421761
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world–until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 370 Delia Owens Marisa 5 4.60 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
author: Delia Owens
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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]]> The Personal Librarian 55333938 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780593101537.

The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian—who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths to which she must go—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.]]> 341 Marie Benedict Marisa 4 3.98 2021 The Personal Librarian
author: Marie Benedict
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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]]> All Good People Here 60142750 In the propulsive debut novel from the host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie, a journalist uncovers her hometown’s dark secrets when she becomes obsessed with the unsolved murder of her childhood neighbor—and the disappearance of another girl twenty years later.

You can’t ever know for sure what happens behind closed doors.

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist. But she’s always been haunted by the feeling that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

When Margot returns home to help care for her uncle after he is diagnosed with early-onset dementia, she feels like she’s walked into a time capsule. Wakarusa is exactly how she remembers—genial, stifled, secretive. Then news breaks about five-year-old Natalie Clark from the next town over, who’s gone missing under circumstances eerily similar to January’s. With all the old feelings rushing back, Margot vows to find Natalie and to solve January’s murder once and for all.

But the police, Natalie’s family, the townspeople—they all seem to be hiding something. And the deeper Margot digs into Natalie’s disappearance, the more resistance she encounters, and the colder January’s case feels. Could January’s killer still be out there? Is it the same person who took Natalie? And what will it cost to finally discover what truly happened that night twenty years ago?

Twisty, chilling, and intense, All Good People Here is a searing tale that asks: What are your neighbors capable of when they think no one is watching?]]> 312 Ashley Flowers 0593496477 Marisa 3 3.81 2022 All Good People Here
author: Ashley Flowers
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the â€�80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Marisa 5 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/09/01
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]]> Something in the Water 36388243 If you could make one simple choice that would change your life forever, would you?

Erin is a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough, Mark a handsome investment banker with big plans. Passionately in love, they embark on a dream honeymoon to the tropical island of Bora Bora, where they enjoy the sun, the sand, and each other. Then, while scuba diving in the crystal blue sea, they find something in the water. . . .

Could the life of your dreams be the stuff of nightmares?

Suddenly the newlyweds must make a dangerous choice: to speak out or to protect their secret. After all, if no one else knows, who would be hurt? Their decision will trigger a devastating chain of events. . . .

Have you ever wondered how long it takes to dig a grave?

Wonder no longer. Catherine Steadman's enthralling voice shines throughout this spellbinding debut novel. With piercing insight and fascinating twists, Something in the Water challenges the reader to confront the hopes we desperately cling to, the ideals we're tempted to abandon, and the perfect lies we tell ourselves.]]> 342 Catherine Steadman 1524797189 Marisa 0 3.54 2018 Something in the Water
author: Catherine Steadman
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> The Poisonwood Bible 227573 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.]]> 653 Barbara Kingsolver 0060512822 Marisa 3 4.17 1998 The Poisonwood Bible
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/01/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)]]> 16181775
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderfulâ€� husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

The Rosie Project is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.]]> 292 Graeme Simsion 1476729085 Marisa 5 4.00 2013 The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)
author: Graeme Simsion
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
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LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book! Quick read, different, nicely written - so enjoyable!
]]> The Husband's Secret 17465450
Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all - she's an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything - and not just for her. There are other women who barely know Cecilia - or each other - but they, too, are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband's secret.]]> 418 Liane Moriarty Marisa 0 to-read 3.89 2013 The Husband's Secret
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/23
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]]> The Art of Racing in the Rain 3153910
Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through.

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life ... as only a dog could tell it.]]> 336 Garth Stein 1554681723 Marisa 0 4.22 2008 The Art of Racing in the Rain
author: Garth Stein
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]> 374 Suzanne Collins 0439023483 Marisa 0 4.34 2008 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hangman's Daughter (The Hangman's Daughter, #1)]]> 9496240
Jakob Kuisl is charged with extracting a confession from her and torturing her until he gets one. Convinced she is innocent, he, Magdalena, and her would-be suitor race against the clock to find the true killer. Approaching Walpurgisnacht, when witches are believed to dance in the forest and mate with the devil, another tattooed orphan is found dead and the town becomes frenzied. More than one person has spotted what looks like the devil—a man with a hand made only of bones. The hangman, his daughter, and the doctor’s son face a terrifying and very real enemy.

Page Numbers Source ISBN: 054774501X]]> 448 Oliver Pötzsch Marisa 4 3.72 2008 The Hangman's Daughter (The Hangman's Daughter, #1)
author: Oliver Pötzsch
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)]]> 6148028 Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol—a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn.]]> 391 Suzanne Collins 0439023491 Marisa 0 4.34 2009 Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)]]> 7260188 My name is Katniss Everdeen.
Why am I not dead?
I should be dead.

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans—except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay—no matter what the personal cost.]]> 390 Suzanne Collins 0439023513 Marisa 0 4.10 2010 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together]]> 104189 A dangerous, homeless drifter who grew up pickingÌęcotton in virtual slavery.

An upscale art dealer accustomed to the worldÌęof Armani and Chanel.

A gutsy woman with a stubborn dream.

A story so incredible no novelist would dare dream it.

It begins outside a burning plantation hut in Louisiana . . . and an East TexasÌęhonky-tonk . . . and, without a doubt, inside the heart of God. It unfolds at aÌęHollywood hacienda . . . an upscale New York gallery . . . a downtown dumpster . . . a Texas ranch.

Gritty with betrayal, pain, and brutality, it also shines with anÌęunexpected, life-changing love.

Bonus material in this special movie edition includes:
Ìę]]> 237 Ron Hall 0849900417 Marisa 4 4.18 2006 Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together
author: Ron Hall
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Black Echo (Harry Bosch, #1; Harry Bosch Universe, #1)]]> 32508 482 Michael Connelly 0446612731 Marisa 4 4.11 1992 The Black Echo (Harry Bosch, #1; Harry Bosch Universe, #1)
author: Michael Connelly
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/01/21
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]]> Gone Girl 8442457 What have we done to each other?

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

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 399 Gillian Flynn Marisa 4 3.93 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/01/21
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]]> Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir 12978996 insightfully illuminates a little-understood corner of America.

Domingo Martinez lays bare his interior and exterior worlds as he struggles to make sense of the violent and the ugly, along with the beautiful and the loving, in a Texas border town in the 1980s. Partly a reflection on the culture of machismo and partly an exploration of the author’s boyhood spent in his sister’s hand-me-down clothes, this book delves into the enduring, complex bond between Martinez and his deeply flawed but fiercely protective older brother, Daniel. It features a cast of memorable characters, including his gun-hoarding former farmhand, Gramma, and “the Mimis”â€� two of his older sisters who for a short, glorious time manage to transform themselves from poor Latina adolescents into upper-class white girls. Martinez provides a glimpse into a society where children are traded like commerce, physical altercations routinely solve problems, drugs are rampant, sex is often crude, and people depend on the family witch doctor for advice. Charming, painful, and enlightening, this book examines the traumas and pleasures of growing up in South Texas and the often terrible consequences when different cultures collide on the banks of a dying river.]]> 456 Domingo Martinez 0762779195 Marisa 3 3.62 2012 Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir
author: Domingo Martinez
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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]]> So Brave, Young, and Handsome 2306331 Peace Like a River, Leif Enger's new work is a rugged and nimble story about an aging train robber on a quest to reconcile the claims of love and judgment on his life, and the failed writer who goes with him.

In 1915 Minnesota, novelist Monte Becket has lost his sense of purpose. His only success long behind him, Monte lives simply with his wife and son. But when he befriends outlaw Glendon Hale, a new world of opportunity and experience presents itself. Glendon has spent years in obscurity, but the guilt he harbors for abandoning his wife, Blue, over two decades ago, has lured him from hiding. As the modern age marches swiftly forward, Glendon aims to travel back to his past--heading to California to seek Blue's forgiveness. Beguiled and inspired, Monte soon finds himself leaving behind his own family to embark for the unruly West with his fugitive guide. As they desperately flee from the relentless Charles Siringo, an ex-Pinkerton who's been hunting Glendon for years, Monte falls ever further from his family and the law, to be tempered by a fiery adventure from which he may never get home.]]> 287 Leif Enger 0871139855 Marisa 4 3.74 2008 So Brave, Young, and Handsome
author: Leif Enger
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> The Great Santini 85448 440 Pat Conroy 0553268929 Marisa 4 4.15 1976 The Great Santini
author: Pat Conroy
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at:
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]]> Their Eyes Were Watching God 37415 238 Zora Neale Hurston 0061120065 Marisa 5 3.98 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God
author: Zora Neale Hurston
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1937
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Killer Angels (The Civil War Trilogy, #2)]]> 682804 The Killer Angels is unique, sweeping, unforgettable—a dramatic re-creation of the battleground for America's destiny.]]> 345 Michael Shaara 0345348109 Marisa 5 4.32 1974 The Killer Angels (The Civil War Trilogy, #2)
author: Michael Shaara
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at:
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]]> <![CDATA[Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple, #12)]]> 16300
Soon after Gwenda moved into her new home, odd things started to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernize the house, she only succeeded in dredging up its past. Worse, she felt an irrational sense of terror every time she climbed the stairs.

In fear, Gwenda turned to Miss Marple to exorcise her ghosts. Have they dredged up a “perfectâ€� crime committed many years before?

Librarian's note: this entry is for the novel, "Sleeping Murder." Collections and other Miss Marple stories are located elsewhere on Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ. The series includes 12 novels and 20 short stories. Entries for the short stories can be found by searching Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ for: "a Miss Marple Short Story."]]> 242 Agatha Christie 0002317850 Marisa 3 3.98 1976 Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple, #12)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1976
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated]]> 7284508 Little House on the Prairie viewers hated Nellie Oleson and her evil antics, Arngrim grew to love her character—and the freedom and confidence Nellie inspired in her.

In Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, Arngrim describes growing up in Hollywood with her eccentric parents: Thor Arngrim, a talent manager to Liberace and others, whose appetite for publicity was insatiable, and legendary voice actress Norma MacMillan, who played both Gumby and Casper the Friendly Ghost. She recalls her most cherished and often wickedly funny moments behind the scenes of Little House: Michael Landon's "unsaintly" habit of not wearing underwear; how she and Melissa Gilbert (who played her TV nemesis, Laura Ingalls) became best friends and accidentally got drunk on rum cakes at 7-Eleven; and the only time she and Katherine MacGregor (who played Nellie's mom)Ìę appeared in public in costume, provoking a posse of elementary schoolgirls to attack them.

Arngrim relays all this and more with biting wit, but she also bravely recounts her life's challenges: her struggle to survive a history of traumatic abuse, depression, and paralyzing shyness; the "secret" her father kept from her for twenty years; and the devastating loss of her "Little House husband" and best friend, Steve Tracy, to AIDS, which inspired her second career in social and political activism. Arngrim describes how Nellie Oleson taught her to be bold, daring, and determined, and how she is eternally grateful to have had the biggest little bitch on the prairie to show her the way.]]> 302 Alison Arngrim 0061962147 Marisa 3 4.05 2010 Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated
author: Alison Arngrim
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America]]> 13425592 Devil in the GroveÌęis the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.

In 1949, Florida’s orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day’s end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as “the Groveland Boys.â€�

And so began the chain of events that would bring Thurgood Marshall, the man known as “Mr. Civil Rights,â€� into the deadly fray. Associates thought it was suicidal for him to wade into the “Florida Terrorâ€� at a time when he was irreplaceable to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but the lawyer would not shrink from the fight—not after the Klan had murdered one of Marshall’s NAACP associates involved with the case and Marshall had endured continual threats that he would be next.

Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI’s unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund files, King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader, setting his rich and driving narrative against the heroic backdrop of a case that U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson decried as “one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.”]]> 434 Gilbert King 0062097717 Marisa 0 attemptedtoread 4.38 2012 Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
author: Gilbert King
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: attemptedtoread
review:

]]> Where'd You Go, Bernadette 13526165
When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter's love for her mother.]]> 330 Maria Semple 0316204277 Marisa 0 to-read 3.87 2012 Where'd You Go, Bernadette
author: Maria Semple
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories]]> 329266 Brief Encounters with Che Guevara are caught -- to both disastrous and hilarious effect -- in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. In "Near-Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera," an ornithologist being held hostage in the Colombian rain forest finds that he respects his captors for their commitment to a cause, until he realizes that the Revolution looks a lot like big business. In "The Good Ones Are Already Taken," the wife of a Special Forces officer battles a Haitian voodoo goddess with whom her husband is carrying on a not-entirely-spiritual relationship. And in "The Lion's Mouth," a disillusioned aid worker makes a Faustian bargain to become a diamond smuggler for the greater good. With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story in Brief Encounters with Che Guevara is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition.]]> 229 Ben Fountain 0060885602 Marisa 0 attemptedtoread 3.94 2006 Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories
author: Ben Fountain
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/21
shelves: attemptedtoread
review:

]]> Room 7937843
Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough ... not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.]]> 321 Emma Donoghue Marisa 4 4.04 2010 Room
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Sycamore Row (Jake Brigance, #2)]]> 17288661
The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?]]> 447 John Grisham 0385537131 Marisa 3 4.00 2013 Sycamore Row (Jake Brigance, #2)
author: John Grisham
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible]]> 2864193 416 A.J. Jacobs 0743291484 Marisa 4 3.76 2007 The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible
author: A.J. Jacobs
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/10/09
shelves:
review:

]]> State of Wonder 10404051 New York Times Bestselling Author

The award-winning, New York Times bestselling author returns with her most provocative and assured novel yet—a tale of morality and miracles, science and sacrifice set in the Amazonian jungle, that is both a gripping adventure and a profound look at the difficult choices we make in the name of discovery and love

Years ago, Marina Singh traded the hard decisions and intensity of medical practice for the quieter world of research at a pharmaceutical company, a choice that has haunted her life. Enveloping herself in safety, limiting emotional risk, she shares a quiet intimacy with her widowed older boss, Mr. Fox, and a warm friendship with her colleague Anders Eckman. But Marina’s security is shaken when she learns that Anders, sent to the Amazon to check on a field team, is dead—and Mr. Fox wants her to go into the jungle to discover what happened.

Plagued by trepidation, yet propelled by her sense of duty, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the unknown, down into the Amazonian delta, deep into the dense, insect-infested jungle to find answers from the company’s research team. Led by the formidable Dr. Annick Swenson, the scientists are looking into the development of a new drug that could have a profound impact on Western society. But the team has been silent for two years and the daunting Dr. Swenson does not like interlopers inserting themselves in her work, as Marina well knows. The eminent and fiercely uncompromising doctor was once her mentor, the woman she admired, emulated, and feared. To fulfill her mission, Marina must confront the ghosts of her past, as well as unfulfilled dreams and expectations—a journey that will force her to make painful moral choices and take her deep into her own heart of darkness.

A rich narrative dense with atmosphere and full of deeply realized characters, packed with amazing twists and surprises—encounters with an anaconda, cannibals, death, and birthâ€�State of Wonder is Ann Patchett’s most enthralling and confident novel, a tale that will leave readers in their own state of wonder, examining their own values and beliefs.]]> 368 Ann Patchett 0062074717 Marisa 0 to-read 3.78 2011 State of Wonder
author: Ann Patchett
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/06/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> One Day 6280118
So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that?

And every year that follows?
--back cover]]> 435 David Nicholls 0340896965 Marisa 3
To start on a positive note, I could not put this book down (and it is hard for me these days to find a book that keeps my interest). That being said, maybe I flew right by the "character development" sections, because I just felt that the characters were so stereotypical and unlikeable. Which is a shame, because I think we could all relate to the situations the characters found themselves in (not knowing what to do after graduation, having a bad jobs, having a good friend of the opposite sex). Instead of choosing to delve into each situation further (which I feel would make a more interesting read), the author took the easy way out - he chose "movie-made", instead of realistic, characters and plots.

After the twist about 3/4 through the book, I just gave up. At that point, I barley read a paragraph in its entirety because I just didn't care about the characters. It's sad....because the author had a good idea in his hands...very clever concept for a book.]]> 3.86 2009 One Day
author: David Nicholls
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2011/05/22
date added: 2011/05/22
shelves:
review:
Hmm.....I had to wait a few days before reviewing this book, because I couldn't (and still can't) decide whether I loved or hated it (hence the three stars; in the middle of 1 and 5).

To start on a positive note, I could not put this book down (and it is hard for me these days to find a book that keeps my interest). That being said, maybe I flew right by the "character development" sections, because I just felt that the characters were so stereotypical and unlikeable. Which is a shame, because I think we could all relate to the situations the characters found themselves in (not knowing what to do after graduation, having a bad jobs, having a good friend of the opposite sex). Instead of choosing to delve into each situation further (which I feel would make a more interesting read), the author took the easy way out - he chose "movie-made", instead of realistic, characters and plots.

After the twist about 3/4 through the book, I just gave up. At that point, I barley read a paragraph in its entirety because I just didn't care about the characters. It's sad....because the author had a good idea in his hands...very clever concept for a book.
]]> Her Fearful Symmetry 6202342
When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers--with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building's other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike, Martin's devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth's elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including--perhaps--their aunt, who can't seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.

Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry about love and identity, about secrets and sisterhood, and about the tenacity of life--even after death.]]> 406 Audrey Niffenegger 0224085611 Marisa 3 3.27 2009 Her Fearful Symmetry
author: Audrey Niffenegger
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/05/12
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]]> Night 1617 Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.]]> 120 Elie Wiesel 0374500010 Marisa 3 4.38 1956 Night
author: Elie Wiesel
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1956
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/05/12
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]]> Secrets of Eden 6562253 The Double Bind, Midwives, and Skeletons at the Feast comes a novel of shattered faith, intimate secrets, and the delicate nature of sacrifice.

"There," says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism, and just before going home to the husband who will kill her that evening and then shoot himself. Drew, tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, feels his faith in God slipping away and is saved from despair only by a meeting with Heather Laurent, the author of wildly successful, inspirational books about . . . angels.Ìę

Heather survived a childhood that culminated in her own parents' murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice’s daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor to the girl and a shoulder for Stephen â€� who flees the pulpit to be with Heather and see if there is anything to be salvaged from the spiritual wreckage around him.
But then the State's Attorney begins to suspect that Alice's husband may not have killed himself. . .and finds out that Alice had secrets only her minister knew.

Secrets of Eden is both a haunting literary thriller and a deeply evocative testament to the inner complexities that mark all of our lives.Ìę Once again Chris Bohjalian has given us a riveting page-turner in which nothing is precisely what it seems.Ìę As one character remarks, “Believe no one.Ìę Trust no one.Ìę Assume all of our stories are suspect.”Ìę]]> 370 Chris Bohjalian 0307394972 Marisa 4 3.44 2010 Secrets of Eden
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/05/12
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]]> Let the Great World Spin 5941033
Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.â€� A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talentâ€� (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.]]> 351 Colum McCann 1400063736 Marisa 0 currently-reading 3.95 2009 Let the Great World Spin
author: Colum McCann
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/05/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love]]> 7841677 "This book is the story of the two love affairs that interrupted the trajectory of my life: one with farming—that dirty, concupiscent art—and the other with a complicated and exasperating farmer."

Single, thirtysomething, working as a writer in New York City, Kristin Kimball was living life as an adventure. But she was beginning to feel a sense of longing for a family and for home. When she interviewed a dynamic young farmer, her world changed. Kristin knew nothing about growing vegetables, let alone raising pigs and cattle and driving horses. But on an impulse, smitten, if not yet in love, she shed her city self and moved to five hundred acres near Lake Champlain to start a new farm with him. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of their first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through the following harvest season—complete with their wedding in the loft of the barn.

Kimball and her husband had a plan: to grow everything needed to feed a community. It was an ambitious idea, a bit romantic, and it worked. Every Friday evening, all year round, a hundred people travel to Essex Farm to pick up their weekly share of the "whole diet"—beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables—produced by the farm. The work is done by draft horses instead of tractors, and the fertility comes from compost. Kimball’s vivid descriptions of landscape, food, cooking—and marriage—are irresistible.

"As much as you transform the land by farming," she writes, "farming transforms you." In her old life, Kimball would stay out until four a.m., wear heels, and carry a handbag. Now she wakes up at four, wears Carhartts, and carries a pocket knife. At Essex Farm, she discovers the wrenching pleasures of physical work, learns that good food is at the center of a good life, falls deeply in love, and finally finds the engagement and commitment she craved in the form of a man, a small town, and a beautiful piece of land.]]> 276 Kristin Kimball 1416551603 Marisa 4 4.07 2010 The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love
author: Kristin Kimball
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/05/12
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]]> The Imperfectionists 6834410
Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines. Kathleen, the imperious editor in chief, is smarting from a betrayal in her open marriage; Arthur, the lazy obituary writer, is transformed by a personal tragedy; Abby, the embattled financial officer, discovers that her job cuts and her love life are intertwined in a most unexpected way. Out in the field, a veteran Paris freelancer goes to desperate lengths for his next byline, while the new Cairo stringer is mercilessly manipulated by an outrageous war correspondent with an outsize ego. And in the shadows is the isolated young publisher who pays more attention to his prized basset hound, Schopenhauer, than to the fate of his family’s quirky newspaper.

As the era of print news gives way to the Internet age and this imperfect crew stumbles toward an uncertain future, the paper’s rich history is revealed, including the surprising truth about its founder’s intentions.

Spirited, moving, and highly original, The Imperfectionists will establish Tom Rachman as one of our most perceptive, assured literary talents.]]> 272 Tom Rachman 0385343663 Marisa 4 3.55 2010 The Imperfectionists
author: Tom Rachman
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/05/12
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]]> The Justice Game 6363755 382 Randy Singer 1414316348 Marisa 4 3.93 2009 The Justice Game
author: Randy Singer
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/05/12
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review:

]]> The Help 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 Marisa 5 4.46 2009 The Help
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2011/05/12
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]]> Jane Eyre 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 Marisa 5 4.14 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2011/05/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Independence Day (Frank Bascombe, #2)]]> 12374 Independence Day reveals a man and our country with unflinching comedy and the specter of hope and even permanence, all of which Richard Ford evokes with a keen intelligence, perfect emotional pitch, and a voice invested with absolute authority.]]> 464 Richard Ford 0099447126 Marisa 3 3.87 1995 Independence Day (Frank Bascombe, #2)
author: Richard Ford
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2008/01/11
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
This one was tough to rate....almost gave it four stars. It wasn't a bad read; although, there are definitely parts that I skimmed over instead of read. While not plot driven, it is a very insightful character study. It is a good book for anyone in a contemplative state of mind....
]]> Nineteen Minutes 14866
Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult's most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who -- if anyone -- has the right to judge someone else?]]> 440 Jodi Picoult 0743496728 Marisa 3 On one hand, I couldn't put it down. On the other, I thought that the characters were a tad bit stereotypical. ]]> 4.16 2007 Nineteen Minutes
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2007/08/01
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
I waivered between 3 and 4 stars on this....
On one hand, I couldn't put it down. On the other, I thought that the characters were a tad bit stereotypical.
]]> Midwives 5166
As recounted by Sibyl's precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except for the fact that all its participants are acting from the highest motives—and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do.]]> 384 Chris Bohjalian Marisa 4 Wonderful ending.
Possibly could have developed the bond between the mother and daughter a little more (make the ending that much better), but still well done.]]> 3.99 1997 Midwives
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/12/17
shelves:
review:
Very well written....couldn't put it down.
Wonderful ending.
Possibly could have developed the bond between the mother and daughter a little more (make the ending that much better), but still well done.
]]> <![CDATA[The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing]]> 33926 The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, and relationships as well as the treacherous waters of the workplace. With an unforgettable comic touch, Melissa Bank skillfully teases out issues of the heart; puts a new spin on the mating dance; and captures what it's like to be a young woman coming of age in America today.]]> 274 Melissa Bank 0143035479 Marisa 0 attemptedtoread 3.36 1998 The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
author: Melissa Bank
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.36
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves: attemptedtoread
review:
I was in the mood for a light-hearted book, but this may have been a little TOO light hearted. Characters = stereotypes. Shallow. Again...didn't finish....
]]> <![CDATA[Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany]]> 139220
In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes the frenetic experience of working in Babbo’s kitchen: the trials and errors (and more errors), humiliations and hopes, disappointments and triumphs as he worked his way up the ladder from slave to cook. He talks about his relationships with his kitchen colleagues and with the larger-than-life, hard-living Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters.

Buford takes us to the restaurant in a remote Appennine village where Batali first apprenticed in Italy and where Buford learns the intricacies of handmade pasta . . . the hill town in Chianti where he is tutored in the art of butchery by Italy’s most famous butcher, a man who insists that his meat is an expression of the Italian soul . . . to London, where he is instructed in the preparation of game by Marco Pierre White, one of England’s most celebrated (or perhaps notorious) chefs. And throughout, we follow the thread of Buford’s fascinating reflections on food as a bearer of culture, on the history and development of a few special dishes (Is the shape of tortellini really based on a woman’s navel? And just what is a short rib?), and on the what and why of the foods we eat today.

Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a richly evocative memoir of Buford’s kitchen adventure, the story of Batali’s amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters.

It is a book to delight in—and to savor.]]> 336 Bill Buford 1400041201 Marisa 5 3.90 2006 Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
author: Bill Buford
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2007/06/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves:
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I loved this book! Learning how to cook from my Italian grandmother, I could relate to the author's desire to research the roots of Italian (particularly, Mario Batali's) cooking. The author's research is vast; it starts in Babbo's kitchen, and ends in a Tuscan butcher shop. Wow!!!!!
]]> The Inheritance of Loss 95186 357 Kiran Desai 0802142818 Marisa 3 3.46 2005 The Inheritance of Loss
author: Kiran Desai
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2008/02/03
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves:
review:
Hmmm....always interesting to learn about a different culture, but I did not like the writing style of this author. The climax of the book centered around a lost dog. Sure - the dog represented something else, but I guess I didn't have the energy to look into the symbolism.
]]> <![CDATA[Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)]]> 37781 Things Fall Apart is written with remarkable economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.]]> 215 Chinua Achebe Marisa 3 ]]> 3.73 1958 Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)
author: Chinua Achebe
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves:
review:
It was a quick read....enjoyable. However - I didn't get much out of it.

]]> The Double Bind 126807
In his moments of lucidity, the gentle, likable Bobbie alludes to his earlier life as a successful photographer. Laurel finds it hard to believe that this destitute, unstable man could once have chronicled the lives of musicians and celebrities, but a box of photographs and negatives discovered among Bobbie's meager possessions after his death lends credence to his tale. How could such an accomplished man have fallen on such hard times? Becoming obsessed with uncovering Bobbie's past, Laurel studies his photographs, tracking down every lead they provide into the mystery of his life before homelessness -- including links to the rich neighborhoods of her own Long Island childhood and to the earlier world of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, with its larger-than-life characters, elusive desires, and haunting sorrows.

In a narrative of dazzling invention, literary ingenuity, and psychological complexity, Bohjalian engages issues of homelessness and mental illness by evoking the humanity that inhabits the core of both. At the same time, his tale is fast-paced and riveting -- The Double Bind combines the suspense of a thriller with the emotional depths of the most intimate drama. The breathtaking surprises of its final pages will leave readers stunned, overwhelmed by the poignancy of life's fleeting truths, as caught in Bobbie Crocker's photographs and in Laurel Estabrook's painful pursuit of Bobbie's past -- and her own.


Behind The Double Bind

While Bobbie Crocker, the photographer in The Double Bind, is fictitious, the photographs that appear in the book are real. They were taken by a man named Bob "Soupy" Campbell, who, as Chris Bohaljian explains in his Author's Note, "had gone from photographing luminaries from the 1950s and 1960s to winding up at a homeless shelter in northern Vermont."

Bohaljian's viewing of Campbell's work after the photographer's death provided an inspiration for The Double Bind. "We tend to stigmatize the homeless and blame them for their plight," Bohjalian writes.

"We are oblivious to the fact that most had lives as serious as our own before everything fell apart. The photographs in this book are a testimony to that reality."]]> 368 Chris Bohjalian 1400047463 Marisa 3 3.64 2007 The Double Bind
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/11/29
shelves:
review:
Hmm....ok - couldn't put this book down. However, was so mad at the end when I realized the premise for this ending was stolen from another book! Not sure which book was written first, but the ending in the other book, while a twist, was explained and seemed a little more believable. However, in this book, I just felt like loose ends were not tied up. A little confusing.
]]> The Tender Bar: A Memoir 144977
J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice.

At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices. Cops and poets, bookies and soldiers, movie stars and stumblebums, all sorts of men gathered in the bar to tell their stories and forget their cares. The alphas along the bar—including J.R.'s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler—took J.R. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle. They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fatherhood-by-committee.

Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J.R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys—from his grandfather's tumbledown house to the hallowed towers and spires of Yale; from his absurd stint selling housewares at Lord & Taylor to his dream job at the New York Times, which became a nightmare when he found himself a faulty cog in a vast machine. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak--and eventually from reality.

In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys.]]> 416 J.R. Moehringer 0786888768 Marisa 4 3.96 2005 The Tender Bar: A Memoir
author: J.R. Moehringer
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2009/10/30
date added: 2009/10/31
shelves:
review:

]]> Say You're One of Them 2296567
In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa.

Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.]]> 358 Uwem Akpan 0316113786 Marisa 0 to-read 3.54 2008 Say You're One of Them
author: Uwem Akpan
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Story of Edgar Sawtelle 2731276
Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires—spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes—the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain—create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.]]> 566 David Wroblewski 0061374229 Marisa 4 3.64 2008 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
author: David Wroblewski
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2009/09/23
date added: 2009/09/23
shelves:
review:
Oh wow - couldn't put this down (which wasn't a good thing; it's a rather large book!). I would have given it five stars, but it wasn't perfect (although, it was close to). Unlike a Prayer for Owen Meany, everything didn't tie together for me at the end. I think the ending was proper and true to the book, but I wish the author wrote it out a little differently...seems like he borrowed the description of the ending from another book or movie (screaming mother; stupid cop; mean man; innocent kid), instead of writing it in the same eloquent prose he used throughought the earlier pages.
]]> Netherland 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 Marisa 0 to-read 3.43 2008 Netherland
author: Joseph O'Neill
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Roses Are Red (Alex Cross, #6)]]> 79378 In this heart-pounding but touchingly romantic thriller, Detective Alex Cross pursues the most complex and brilliant killer he's ever confronted - mysterious criminal who calls himself the Mastermind. In a series of crimes that has stunned Washington, D.C., bank robbers have been laying out precise demands when they enter the building - and then killing the bank employees and their families if those instructions are not followed to the letter.

Detective Alex Cross takes on the case, certain that this is no ordinary bank robber at work - the pathological need for control and perfection is too great. Cross is in the midst of a personal crisis at home, but the case becomes all-consuming as he learns that the Mastermind is plotting one huge, last, perfect crime.

]]> 416 James Patterson 0446605484 Marisa 3 4.05 2000 Roses Are Red (Alex Cross, #6)
author: James Patterson
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/09/22
shelves:
review:
I was SO mad when I got to the end of this book....I'm not going to give anything away, but I felt it ended so abruptly, without rhyme or reason!
]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)]]> 5060378 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...]]> 503 Stieg Larsson 0307269981 Marisa 4 4.25 2006 The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2009/09/08
date added: 2009/09/08
shelves:
review:

]]> That Old Cape Magic 6303733
Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parentsâ€� respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that’s now thirty years old and has largely come true. He’d left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they’d moved into an old house full of character; and they’d started a family. Check, check and check.

But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura’s, on the coast of Maine, Griffin’s chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?

That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 9 Richard Russo 0739318926 Marisa 3 3.32 2009 That Old Cape Magic
author: Richard Russo
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/09/08
date added: 2009/09/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Scarecrow (Jack McEvoy, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #20)]]> 4527502
Think again, Jack.

Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the Los Angeles Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling revenues, he's got only a few days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low-cost reporter just out of journalism school. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang � a final story that will win the newspaper journalism's highest honor � a Pulitzer prize.
Jack focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer from the projects who has confessed to police that he brutally raped and strangled one of his crack clients. Jack convinces Alonzo's mother to cooperate with his investigation into the possibility of her son's innocence. But she has fallen for the oldest reporter's trick in the book. Jack's real intention is to use his access to report and write a story that explains how societal dysfunction and neglect created a 16-year-old killer.
But as Jack delves into the story he soon realizes that Alonzo's so-called confession is bogus, and Jack is soon off and running on the biggest story he's had since The Poet crossed his path years before. He reunites with FBI Agent Rachel Walling to go after a killer who has worked completely below police and FBI radar—and with perfect knowledge of any move against him.
What Jack doesn't know is that his investigation has inadvertently set off a digital tripwire. The killer knows Jack is coming—and he's ready.]]> 423 Michael Connelly Marisa 4 4.07 2009 The Scarecrow (Jack McEvoy, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #20)
author: Michael Connelly
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/08/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2)]]> 1914973 In the Woods, itÊŒs six months later and Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad with no plans to go back—until an urgent telephone call summons her to a grisly crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Cassie must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more important, who was this girl?]]> 466 Tana French 0670018864 Marisa 4 4.05 2008 The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2)
author: Tana French
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/08/18
shelves:
review:
Great read; could not put down...however, characterization of college students was slightly stereotypical and did not feel real. Further, of the two characters in the first novel "In the Woods", Cassie was the one I liked, least. ...Hard to see her (after reading the first novel) as a hard-as-nails cop. That aside - great read!
]]> The Northern Clemency 2927460 738 Philip Hensher 0007174799 Marisa 2 3.48 2008 The Northern Clemency
author: Philip Hensher
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2009/08/18
date added: 2009/08/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)]]> 2429135
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.]]> 480 Stieg Larsson 0670069019 Marisa 4
]]> 4.17 2005 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2009/08/18
date added: 2009/08/18
shelves:
review:
I really got hooked about a quarter into the book, and then could not put this book down! ...This book is pretty big for a mystery, and I was afraid that it wouldn't keep my interest the whole time, but it did, and didn't let me down in the end!


]]> The Sidewalk Artist: A Novel 3337262
Alternating between contemporary and historical Italy, The Sidewalk Artist follows two parallel, intertwined romances, offering a unique view of the creative force that has inspired artists and writers for generations.]]> 224 Gina Buonaguro 031237805X Marisa 0 to-read 3.81 2006 The Sidewalk Artist: A Novel
author: Gina Buonaguro
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/07/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Indignation 3015764
It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio’s Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at the local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hard-working neighborhood butcher, seems to have gone mad -- mad with fear and apprehension of the dangers of adult life, the dangers of the world, the dangers he sees in every corner for his beloved boy.

As the long-suffering, desperately harassed mother tells her son, the father’s fear arises from love and pride. Perhaps, but it produces too much anger in Marcus for him to endure living with his parents any longer. He leaves them and, far from Newark, in the midwestern college, has to find his way amid the customs and constrictions of another American world.

Indignation, Philip Roth’s twenty-ninth book, is a story of inexperience, foolishness, intellectual resistance, sexual discovery, courage, and error. It is a story told with all the inventive energy and wit Roth has at his command, at once a startling departure from the haunted narratives of old age and experience in his recent books and a powerful addition to his investigations of the impact of American history on the life of the vulnerable individual.]]> 235 Philip Roth 054705484X Marisa 3 3.73 2008 Indignation
author: Philip Roth
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2009/06/24
date added: 2009/06/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Marisa 4 3.89 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
author: Mark Haddon
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/06/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao]]> 297673
Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.]]> 335 Junot DĂ­az 1594489580 Marisa 5 3.89 2007 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
author: Junot DĂ­az
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/05/16
shelves:
review:
LOVE when I could read a book with a good plot and learn about a culture at the same time...couldn't put this book down. Could have lived without the chapter on the Grandfather, but other than that...the book was great!
]]> Still Alice 2153405 Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...]]> 292 Lisa Genova 0595440096 Marisa 5 4.32 2007 Still Alice
author: Lisa Genova
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life]]> 3026509 Tony Dungy's words and example have intrigued millions of people, particularly following his victory in Super Bowl XLI, the first for an African American coach. How is it possible for a coach―especially a football coach―to win the respect of his players and lead them to the Super Bowl without the screaming histrionics, the profanities, and the demand that the sport come before anything else? How is it possible for anyone to be successful without compromising faith and family? In this inspiring and reflective memoir, now updated with a new chapter, Coach Dungy tells the story of a life lived for God and family―and challenges us all to redefine our ideas of what it means to succeed.

The softcover edition of this #1 New York Times best-seller includes a new chapter! In it, Coach reflects on the 2007 football season and last year's successful hardcover release of Quiet Strength. Also features a foreword by Denzel Washington and a 16-page color-photo insert. Over 1 million in print!]]> 336 Tony Dungy 1414318022 Marisa 4 4.17 2007 Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life
author: Tony Dungy
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Brass Verdict (The Lincoln Lawyer, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #19)]]> 2761626
Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent's killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together.

Bringing together Michael Connelly's two most popular characters, "The Brass Verdict" is a thriller which reaches for, and then surpasses, the highest level!]]> 422 Michael Connelly 0316166294 Marisa 4 4.15 2008 The Brass Verdict (The Lincoln Lawyer, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #19)
author: Michael Connelly
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)]]> 3419808
Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland's changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.]]> 300 Sebastian Barry 0571215289 Marisa 4 3.82 2008 The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2009/04/28
date added: 2009/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> When We Were Romans: A Novel 3292274
Narrated in Lawrence’s perfectly rendered voice, When We Were Romans powerfully evokes the emotions and confusions of childhood—the triumphs, the jealousies, the fears, and the love. Even as everything he understands is turned upside down, Lawrence remains determined to keep his family together, viewing the world from a perspective that is at once endearingly innocent and preternaturally wise.]]> 240 Matthew Kneale 0385526253 Marisa 4 3.30 2007 When We Were Romans: A Novel
author: Matthew Kneale
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2009/03/12
date added: 2009/03/12
shelves:
review:

]]> The House at Sugar Beach 2643182
Helene Cooper is “Congo,â€� a descendant of two Liberian dynasties—traced back to the first ship of freemen that set sail from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia. Helene grew up at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room mansion by the sea. Her childhood was filled with servants, flashy cars, a villa in Spain, and a farmhouse up-country. It was also an African childhood, filled with knock foot games and hot pepper soup, heartmen and neegee. When Helene was eight, the Coopers took in a foster child—a common custom among the Liberian elite. Eunice, a Bassa girl, suddenly became known as “Mrs. Cooper’s daughter.â€�

For years the Cooper daughters—Helene, her sister Marlene, and Eunice—blissfully enjoyed the trappings of wealth and advantage. But Liberia was like an unwatched pot of water left boiling on the stove. And on April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers staged a coup d'Ă©tat, assassinating President William Tolbert and executing his cabinet. The Coopers and the entire Congo class were now the hunted, being imprisoned, shot, tortured, and raped. After a brutal daylight attack by a ragtag crew of soldiers, Helene, Marlene, and their mother fled Sugar Beach, and then Liberia, for America. They left Eunice behind.

A world away, Helene tried to assimilate as an American teenager. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she found her passion in journalism, eventually becoming a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She reported from every part of the globe—except Africa—as Liberia descended into war-torn, third-world hell.

In 2003, a near-death experience in Iraq convinced Helene that Liberia—and Eunice—could wait no longer. At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper’s long voyage home.]]> 354 Helene Cooper 0743266242 Marisa 5 To me, the majority of this book is more about life and family through a child's eyes than it is about the coup that overtook Liberia. I love these kind of books....where you learn about the customs, history, and people of a place inadvertently while following along in the story. PLEASE READ.]]> 3.90 2008 The House at Sugar Beach
author: Helene Cooper
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2008/12/01
date added: 2008/12/31
shelves:
review:
Read most of this in one night. Quick read.
To me, the majority of this book is more about life and family through a child's eyes than it is about the coup that overtook Liberia. I love these kind of books....where you learn about the customs, history, and people of a place inadvertently while following along in the story. PLEASE READ.
]]> American Wife 2807199
A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?

In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Curtis Sittenfeld's Sisterland.]]> 555 Curtis Sittenfeld 1400064759 Marisa 3 3.77 2008 American Wife
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2008/12/02
date added: 2008/12/02
shelves:
review:
Would have given five stars of the book stopped 3/4 of the way through...that part was AMAZING! Could have lived without the last quarter of the book. BUT PLEASE READ. This is one author to look out for!
]]> The Children's Hospital 53169 615 Chris Adrian 1932416609 Marisa 0 attemptedtoread 3.58 2006 The Children's Hospital
author: Chris Adrian
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/11/19
shelves: attemptedtoread
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death]]> 193755 Elle, suffered a massive stroke that left him completely and permanently paralyzed, a victim of "locked-in syndrome." Where once he had been renowned for his gregariousness and wit, Bauby now found himself imprisoned in an inert body, able to communicate only by blinking his left eye. The miracle is that in doing so he was able to compose this stunningly eloquent memoir, which was published two days before Bauby's death in 1996 and went on to become a number-one bestseller across Europe.

The second miracle is that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is less a record of affliction than it is a celebration of the liberating power of consciousness. In a voice that is by turns wistful and mischievous, angry and sardonic, Bauby tells us what it is like to spend a day with his children; to imagine lying in bed beside his lover; to conjure up the flavor of delectable meals even as he is fed by tube. Most of all, this triumphant book allows us to follow the flight of an indomitable spirit and to share its exultation at its own survival.]]> 132 Jean-Dominique Bauby 0375701214 Marisa 3 4.00 1997 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
author: Jean-Dominique Bauby
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2008/11/19
date added: 2008/11/19
shelves:
review:

]]> The Third Angel 2170979 The Third Angel, Hoffman weaves a magical and stunningly original story that charts the lives of three women in love with the wrong men: Headstrong Madeleine Heller finds herself hopelessly attracted to her sister’s fiancĂ©. Frieda Lewis, a doctor’s daughter and a runaway, becomes the muse of an ill-fated rock star. And beautiful Bryn Evans is set to marry an Englishman while secretly obsessed with her ex-husband. At the heart of the novel is Lucy Green, who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at the age of twelve, and who spends four decades searching for the Third Angel–the angel on earth who will renew her faith.

Brilliantly evoking London’s King’s Road, Knightsbridge, and Kensington while moving effortlessly back in time, The Third Angel is a work of startling beauty about the unique, alchemical nature of love.]]> 278 Alice Hoffman 0307393852 Marisa 3 ]]> 3.57 2008 The Third Angel
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2008/11/19
date added: 2008/11/19
shelves:
review:
Almost gave 4 stars. Not a literary masterpiece, but a nice, quick read.

]]> <![CDATA[Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction]]> 180066
David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? The police? The hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll, but as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on him. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional roller coaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.]]> 317 David Sheff 0618683356 Marisa 4 4.04 2007 Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
author: David Sheff
name: Marisa
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/11/13
shelves:
review:
Was so close to giving this five stars...if it was not for the repetition in the book. Thought the author did a good job of entwining personal reflections with his research on addiction. I think anyone who has felt helpless in his/her life can relate to what the father is going through.
]]> The God of Small Things 9777
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

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

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

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy 0679457313 Marisa 3 At times, I really loved the beautiful, off-the-wall prose in this book, but after so many pages, it became tiring and repetitive. I did give it three stars, as the author succeeded in making you see the plot through the eyes of the children and feel what they went through, but I feel the author wasted too much time at the beginning "setting up the scene" only to rush the ending for effect.
]]> 3.97 1997 The God of Small Things
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Marisa
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2008/10/21
shelves:
review:
Eh...
At times, I really loved the beautiful, off-the-wall prose in this book, but after so many pages, it became tiring and repetitive. I did give it three stars, as the author succeeded in making you see the plot through the eyes of the children and feel what they went through, but I feel the author wasted too much time at the beginning "setting up the scene" only to rush the ending for effect.

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