Jodie's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 16:27:21 -0700 60 Jodie's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Count Your Lucky Stars (Written in the Stars, #3)]]> 58079450 DZǷɾԲWritten in the StarsԻHang the Moon, national bestselling author Alexandria Bellefleur pens another steamy queer rom-com about former best friends who might be each other's second chance at love�

Margot Cooper doesn’t do relationships. She tried and it blew up in her face, so she’ll stick with casual hookups,thank you very much. But now her entire crew has found"the one"and she’s beginning tofeel like a fifth wheel. And then fate (the heartless bitch) intervenes. While touring a wedding venue with her engaged friends, Margot comes face-to-face with Olivia Grant—her childhood friend, her first love, her first� well, everything. It’s been ten years, but the moment they lock eyes, Margot’s cold, dead heart thumps in her chest.

Olivia must be hallucinating. In the decade since she last saw Margot, her life hasn’t gone exactly as planned. At almost thirty, she’s been married... and divorced. However, a wedding planner job in Seattle means a fresh start and a chance to follow her dreams. Never in a million years did she expect her important new client’s Best Woman would be the one that got away.

When a series of unfortunate events leaves Olivia without a place to stay, Margot offers up her spare room because she’s a Very Good Person.Obviously. It has nothing to do with the fact that Olivia is as beautiful as ever and the sparks between them still make Margot tingle. As they spend time in close quarters, Margot starts to question her no-strings stance. Olivia is everything she’s ever wanted, but Margot let her in once and it ended in disaster. Will history repeat itself or should she count her lucky stars that she gets a second chance with her first love?]]> 384 Alexandria Bellefleur 0063000881 Jodie 0 currently-reading 3.95 2022 Count Your Lucky Stars (Written in the Stars, #3)
author: Alexandria Bellefleur
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Poor Things 72355 Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter - a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.

The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished authors.]]> 318 Alasdair Gray 0747562288 Jodie 5 3.92 1992 Poor Things
author: Alasdair Gray
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:
different but same to the movie. I loved the movie, but this book was amazing on its own. loved the letter at the end and the mystery that presents
]]> <![CDATA[Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)]]> 37442 When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

]]> 406 Gregory Maguire 0060987103 Jodie 4 3.52 1995 Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves:
review:
I liked this a lot more the second time around, I think being older and having a better idea of what's happening helped because it's very, for me at least, nuanced. That she's not really magic annoyed me in the first reading too. I enjoyed reading it, quite strangely written, and I'll probably read the series.
]]> House of Leaves 24800
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.]]> 710 Mark Z. Danielewski Jodie 0 to-read 4.11 2000 House of Leaves
author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

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

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 Jodie 0 to-read 3.79 2014 Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Severance 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 Jodie 0 to-read 3.90 2018 Severance
author: Ling Ma
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Dream Hotel 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Jodie 0 to-read 3.67 2025 The Dream Hotel
author: Laila Lalami
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> Funny Story 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry Jodie 5
The will they won't they but was a bit meh but I'm here for the girl development]]> 4.21 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/06
date added: 2025/03/20
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review:
10/5 stars. The main takeaway: be your own person. Loved it. More stories should have this independence in them.

The will they won't they but was a bit meh but I'm here for the girl development
]]> Can't I Go Instead 61885134 Two women's lives and identities are intertwined—through World War II and the Korean War—revealing the harsh realities of class division in the early part of the 20th century.

Can't I Go Instead follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th century. When the daughter’s suitor is arrested as a Korean Independence activist, and she is implicated during the investigation, she is quickly forced into marriage to one of her father’s Japanese employees and shipped off to the United States. At the same time, her maidservant is sent in her mistress's place to be a comfort woman to the Japanese Imperial army.

Years of hardship, survival, and even happiness follows. In the aftermath of WWII, the women make their way home, where they must reckon with the tangled lives they've led, in an attempt to reclaim their identities, and find their place in an independent Korea.]]> 384 Lee Geum-yi 1250859557 Jodie 3
However, prior to the ending the history that was woven into the story was well done and the translation was excellent.]]> 3.93 2023 Can't I Go Instead
author: Lee Geum-yi
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves:
review:
Really enjoyed the first 2/3 of this book, then all the characters seemed to do complete reversals and undo all the character development. Junpei and Sunam were done dirty. Characters just seemed to be made bad for a more villainous ending and undid like 2/300 pages with of character development.

However, prior to the ending the history that was woven into the story was well done and the translation was excellent.
]]> <![CDATA[Book of Night (Book of Night, #1)]]> 58293924 Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies.

In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.

Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister—all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.]]> 304 Holly Black 1250812194 Jodie 0 to-read 3.51 2022 Book of Night (Book of Night, #1)
author: Holly Black
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Jodie 0 to-read 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them]]> 61423989
The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows � their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman � Madge Oberholtzer � who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.]]> 432 Timothy Egan 0735225265 Jodie 0 to-read 4.33 2023 A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
author: Timothy Egan
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Memory Police 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yōko Ogawa 1101870605 Jodie 0 to-read 3.72 1994 The Memory Police
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions]]> 33566870 From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today--written as a letter to a friend.

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response.

Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions--compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive--for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.]]> 0 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 0525494707 Jodie 0 to-read 4.57 2017 Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> Greta & Valdin 176443453
It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Māori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore—and the future he wants.

Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master’s thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word.

Sharp, hilarious, and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblings� misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.]]> 352 Rebecca K. Reilly 1668028042 Jodie 0 to-read 3.90 2021 Greta & Valdin
author: Rebecca K. Reilly
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)]]> 23168817 512 Liu Cixin Jodie 4
Regardless I'll definitely read the third installment because I want to see the scenarios that pop up.

Also, this book had some absolutely devastating scenarios in it.]]> 4.39 2008 The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves:
review:
I loved the concepts in this book, but it was a hard slog. I'm glad I got through it because the last 300 pages were amazing and worth the wait. My main problems was the writing, or the translation, seemed to drag on and wasn't very natural. The second is there's like 5 women in the whole book and one just straight up is so innocent with a slender frame that everyone loves her (possible scenario is she's a robot, considering her lack of emotions and personality).

Regardless I'll definitely read the third installment because I want to see the scenarios that pop up.

Also, this book had some absolutely devastating scenarios in it.
]]> <![CDATA[More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #2)]]> 199295788 In this charming and emotionally resonant follow up to the internationally bestselling Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa paints a poignant and thoughtful portrait of life, love, and how much books and bookstores mean to the people who love them.

Set again in the beloved Japanese bookshop and nearby coffee shop in the Jimbocho neighborhood of Toyko, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop deepens the relationship between Takako, her uncle Satoru , and the people in their lives. A new cast of heartwarming regulars have appeared in the shop, including an old man who wears the same ragged mouse-colored sweater and another who collects books solely for the official stamps with the author’s personal seal.

Satoshi Yagisawa illuminates the everyday relationships between people that are forged and grown through a shared love of books. As time passes, Satoru, with Takako’s help, must choose whether to keep the bookshop open or shutter its doors forever. Making the decision will take uncle and niece on an emotional journey back to their family’s roots and remind them again what a bookstore can mean to an individual, a neighborhood, and a whole culture.]]> 176 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278715 Jodie 5 3.90 2011 More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #2)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves:
review:
Lots of book adventures with a mix of sadness
]]> <![CDATA[White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color]]> 53260224 This explosive book of history and cultural criticism argues that white feminism has been a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women and all colonized women. It offers a long-overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. Taking us from the slave era—when white women fought in court to keep "ownership" of their slaves—through the centuries of colonialism—when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics—to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars

Examining subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and nineteenth-century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad builds a powerful argument about the entrenched systems of white supremacy that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.]]> 284 Ruby Hamad 194822674X Jodie 0 to-read 4.56 2020 White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color
author: Ruby Hamad
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known About Menopause]]> 216351864
At thirty-six, Naomi Watts had just completed filming King Kong and was trying to start a family when she was told that she was on the brink of menopause. It is estimated that seventy-five million women in the United States are currently dealing with menopause symptoms (dry itchy skin, raging hormones, night sweats), and yet the very word “menopause� continues to be associated with stigma and confusion. With so little information, many women feel unprepared, ashamed, and deeply alone when the time comes.

This is the book Naomi Watts wishes she had when she first started experiencing symptoms. Like sitting down over coffee and having an intimate chat with your girlfriend, Dare I Say It blends funny and poignant stories from Naomi and her friends with advice from doctors, hormone experts, and nutritionists to take the secrecy and shame out of menopause and aging. Answering questions such as: What’s hormone therapy and should I be on it? Will I ever sleep again? Will I get myself back? What happened to my libido? Do I need eighteen serums for my aging skin? Whose body is this anyway? Who am I now? Naomi Watts shares the most up-to-date research on how to manage menopause symptoms and tackle the physical and emotional challenges we encounter as we age.

Irreverent, bold, and reassuring, Dare I Say It is the companion every woman needs to embrace the best version of herself as she moves into what can be the most powerful and satisfying period of her life.]]> 256 Naomi Watts 059372903X Jodie 0 to-read 3.98 2025 Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known About Menopause
author: Naomi Watts
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Strange Weather in Tokyo 18283207 176 Hiromi Kawakami 1846275083 Jodie 5 3.63 2001 Strange Weather in Tokyo
author: Hiromi Kawakami
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves:
review:
So sweet. Helped I had no idea what was going to unfold, so it was a surprise
]]> <![CDATA[The Creative Act: A Way of Being]]> 60965426 From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.

"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment." --Anne Lamott

"I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be." --Rick Rubin

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn't, he has learned that being an artist isn't about your specific output, it's about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone's life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.

The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments--and lifetimes--of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.]]> 406 Rick Rubin 0593652886 Jodie 4 4.00 2023 The Creative Act: A Way of Being
author: Rick Rubin
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:
My friend called it a creative bible and I'm inclined to agree, I think it would be a good book to have on the bookshelf and open to random chapters in times of creative need.
]]> Taipei 16041828
Taipei is an ode - or lament - to the way we live now. Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas.

From one of this generation's most talked-about and enigmatic writers comes a deeply personal and uncompromising novel about memory, love, and what it means to be alive.]]> 248 Tao Lin 0307950174 Jodie 0 to-read 3.35 2013 Taipei
author: Tao Lin
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2)]]> 199347538 Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade. Featuring gorgeous orange sprayed edges!

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 125088120X Jodie 4 But I wish there was more about the family and David joining it.]]> 4.17 2024 Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:
I loved it
But I wish there was more about the family and David joining it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Convenience Store by the Sea]]> 213819980 Welcome to Tenderness!

A quaint seaside town in Kitakyushu, Mojiko is full of hidden delights. And one unexpected treasure is the 24/7 convenience store, Tenderness.

At first glance, it’s a store like any other.

Sure, it’s a bit odd that the handsome manager has his own fan club. And perhaps the customers are somewhat eccentric. But there’s a warmth about Tenderness that draws you in.

The bright lights are always on. The employees know you by name. And the shelves are stacked with delicious treats, from strong hot coffee to sweet parfaits, egg sandos to ramen, crispy fried chicken to refreshing soba.

After a while, you get the feeling that whatever you need might just be waiting for you here�

Celebrating the joy of connection and community, The Convenience Store by the Sea is the heartwarming international bestseller from award-winning Japanese novelist Sonoko Machida.]]> 320 Sonoko Machida 1398722774 Jodie 0 to-read 3.83 2020 The Convenience Store by the Sea
author: Sonoko Machida
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor]]> 59738203
For a brief period in the mid-2000s, a network of independent music bloggers and fans merged the digital and physical worlds in a never-before-seen way. Their punk-inspired DIY ethos elevated noname DJs, music producers, and parties to a level of international success that was quickly eclipsed by corporatized EDM and the music festival boom. But before that, for a moment, there was bloghouse.

NEVER BE ALONE AGAIN: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor chronicles the rise of the DJ-slash-It Girl, roaming party photography, illegal Mp3 file sharing, canonical scene reports of bloghouse capitals Los Angeles and Paris, the overlooked impact of suburban Latino communities on nightlife, Kanye West’s contribution to the movement, and the slow death of the blog itself.

With a foreword from DJ/producer A-Trak, the highly anticipated new book features over 50 original interviews with DJs, cultural icons, and industry insiders, including A-TRAK, Acid Girls, Bag Raiders, The Cobrasnake, The Bloody Beetroots, The Cool Kids, Chromeo, Crookers, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Flosstradamus, Franki Chan, Girl Talk, The Hood Internet, The Hype Machine, The Knocks, Myspace Music, MSTRKRFT, Nick Catchdubs, Paul Devro, The Presets, The Rapture, Simian Mobile Disco, Spank Rock, Steve Aoki, Van She Tech, and many more.

"This book is essential" - A-Trak, DJ/Producer

“This writing and these stories don't ache for the past as much as they contextualize how the present is still being made by what was left behind by recent horizons that still echo.� - Hanif Abdurraqib, New York Times Bestselling Author]]> 161 Lina Abascal 0578983001 Jodie 5
It's short, even though it cost $40 or something, but lots of insights from musicians and information about bloghouse in the States. So happy to have been a part of this scene and for the amount of Australian artists mentioned in this book!

Electro/bloghaus for life]]> 4.01 Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor
author: Lina Abascal
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.01
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:
Omg the nostalgia. This was my early 20's life to a t. I even found an old blog of my own the other day that is incredibly cringe, a relic from the bloghouse days. Although at the time we called it electro, and forever my music taste will lie in the years of 2006-2010.

It's short, even though it cost $40 or something, but lots of insights from musicians and information about bloghouse in the States. So happy to have been a part of this scene and for the amount of Australian artists mentioned in this book!

Electro/bloghaus for life
]]> Horse 59109077 A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse--one studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.]]> 401 Geraldine Brooks 0399562966 Jodie 4 4.17 2022 Horse
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:
I was not expecting that ending. It's a book about horses, but also the history of horseracing and slavery in America.
]]> Love Unleashed 205257440
Yet good things are always possible in New York, especially when you believe in them hard enough. And Brynn has a collection of NYC Missions to set her on her challenges from her mother, whose death she is still getting over, to help Brynn rejoice in the city that never sleeps.

Brynn soon finds herself making meaningful friendships, engaging in flirty flings, and meeting the gorgeous Sienna, also known as dancer Scarlett Belle. And when she stumbles on a handsome, single dog-dad who just happens to be a literary editor, she decides that if she can convince him she’s more than just a dog-sitter, her dreams will finally come true. But Sienna has other plans, and as Brynn’s NY ride begins to stall, the city shows her just how full of surprises it is.]]> 344 Melanie Saward 1761342096 Jodie 5 3.84 2024 Love Unleashed
author: Melanie Saward
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves:
review:
A more comfy rom com full of affirmations, believing in yourself (or having people help you to do so), healthy boundaries (and setting them), consent, and the problems People of Colour face. And of course friendship. Plus dogs.
]]> Into the Wild 60869516 Krakauer’s page-turning bestseller explores a famed missing person mystery while unraveling the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.

"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." —New York Times

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.

Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless.

When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.]]> 217 Jon Krakauer Jodie 0 to-read 4.13 1996 Into the Wild
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hundred Years' War on Palestine]]> 52960854
Accepted interpretations of the confrontation tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same land. Drawing on archival materials and the accounts of generations of family members—judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists�The Hundred Years' War on Palestine instead shows that this war has always been colonial in nature, waged against the native population first by the Zionist movement and then by Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.

Neither a chronicle of victimization nor a whitewash of mistakes made by Palestinian leaders, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine offers both a compelling family history and an original, illuminating view of the Middle East's most intractable conflict.]]> 319 Rashid Khalidi 1250787653 Jodie 0 to-read 4.45 2020 The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
author: Rashid Khalidi
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Jodie 4 4.08 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:
I preferred the first half of the book when it was more mysterious. I've already put a request for the second book at the library, so I'm interested to see how that one is.
]]> 11/22/63 29284150
In 2011, Jake Epping, an English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, sets out on an insane � and insanely possible � mission to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

Leaving behind a world of computers and mobile phones, he goes back to a time of big American cars and diners, of Lindy Hopping, the sound of Elvis, and the taste of root beer.

In this haunting world, Jake falls in love with Sadie, a beautiful high school librarian. And, as the ominous date of 11/22/63 approaches, he encounters a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald...]]> 1089 Stephen King Jodie 0 to-read 4.52 2011 11/22/63
author: Stephen King
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Men Without Women 33652490 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all.

Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.]]> 242 Haruki Murakami 0385689454 Jodie 0 to-read 3.75 2014 Men Without Women
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hang the Moon (Written in the Stars, #2)]]> 55004138 384 Alexandria Bellefleur 0063000849 Jodie 4 3.78 2021 Hang the Moon (Written in the Stars, #2)
author: Alexandria Bellefleur
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
So cheeeeeeeesy but a better premise than the first. Was great to see all the character from the first book come back and for there to be a safe sex bit!
]]> Water Moon 211479192 A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy novel.

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.]]> 384 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0593724992 Jodie 0 to-read 3.81 2025 Water Moon
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Butter 200776812 The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer," Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.]]> 464 Asako Yuzuki 0063236400 Jodie 4 3.51 2017 Butter
author: Asako Yuzuki
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves:
review:
I was very enthralled in some parts, found the eating straight butter thing weird, it was very long though. I liked the social commentary
]]> <![CDATA[Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)]]> 61242426
The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success � not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.]]> 296 Travis Baldree Jodie 4 Very cosy 4.05 2022 Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)
author: Travis Baldree
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
Very cosy
]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida]]> 57224204
Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a “thrilling satire� (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.]]> 386 Shehan Karunatilaka 1908745908 Jodie 0 to-read 3.89 2022 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
author: Shehan Karunatilaka
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop]]> 133938826 should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighborhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings.

Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that bind them, Yeongju begins to write a new chapter in her life. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop evolves into a warm, welcoming haven for lost souls—a place to rest, heal, and remember that it’s never too late to scrap the plot and start over.]]> 307 Hwang Bo-Reum Jodie 5 3.94 2022 Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
I desperately want to go to this bookshop and drink some coffee. The atmosphere of this book is so calm and relaxing, I read through this at a fairly slow pace considering how often I sat down to read it.
]]> <![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Jodie 3 3.86 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves:
review:
I got into it by the end, but it was probably too poetic for me. Wouldn't re-read it, but the way it was written was interesting
]]> <![CDATA[The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work]]> 25102832
In this thought-provoking book, David Frayne questions the central place of work in mainstream political visions of the future, laying bare the ways in which economic demands colonise our lives and priorities. Drawing on his original research into the lives of people who are actively resisting nine-to-five employment, Frayne asks what motivates these people to disconnect from work, whether or not their resistance is futile, and whether they might have the capacity to inspire an alternative form of development, based on a reduction and social redistribution of work.

A crucial dissection of the work-centred nature of modern society and emerging resistance to it, The Refusal of Work is a bold call for a more humane and sustainable vision of social progress.]]> 280 David Frayne 1783601175 Jodie 0 to-read 4.27 2015 The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work
author: David Frayne
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century]]> 51456746
From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.]]> 309 Alice Wong 1984899422 Jodie 0 to-read 4.46 2020 Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century
author: Alice Wong
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Written in the Stars (Written in the Stars, #1)]]> 51179990 With nods to Bridget Jones and Pride and Prejudice, a charming #ownvoices queer rom-com debut about a free-spirited social media astrologer who agrees to fake a relationship with an uptight actuary until New Year’s Eve—with results not even the stars could predict!

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love—and the inevitable heartbreak—is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.

Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy... a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother—and Elle's new business partner—expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because... awkward.

When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship.

But maybe opposites can attract when true love is written in the stars?]]> 370 Alexandria Bellefleur 0063000806 Jodie 3 3.85 2020 Written in the Stars (Written in the Stars, #1)
author: Alexandria Bellefleur
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
review:
Mostly I liked the characters, the story was predictable. The whole "this person completes me" trope is one that needs to be burned
]]> <![CDATA[No, You Shut Up: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America]]> 45449496 In this rousing call to leadership, the self-described millennial spokesperson for the culture, CNN’s designated "woke AF" former commentator, and the youngest national press secretary in the history of the United States shares her take-no-prisoners approach to life, politics, and career success, and shows a new generation how to be loud and powerful in their own right.

Many people—most notably white older men—may try to stop Symone Sanders from speaking up and out. But Symone will NOT shut up. And neither should you. In this inspiring call-to-action, Symone tells stories from her own life of not-shutting-up alongside loud young revolutionaries who came before her to help you find your authentic voice and use it to your advantage; to fight ideological battles more effectively; and to resist those who try to silence you.

We are all gurus, masterminds, artists, entrepreneurs—we are the change agents we have been waiting for. IT IS US. And the time is RIGHT NOW. I know you’re wondering, “But HOW?� And we don’t have all the answers! Symone is the first to admit we’re all winging it in one way or another. But the point is we’re out there doing it. So get started. Open your mouth and start talking. Loudly.

No You Shut Up goes beyond the surplus of “Vote-Or-Die� books we’ve seen before. Because change doesn’t just happen at the ballot box. We need people fighting oppression, injustice, and inequality—in the workplace, on the cultural battlefield, in government, in every corner of the world. With spirited storytelling filtered through a voice that cannot and will not be ignored, Symone inspires you to start now. You don’t need to have all the answers, or wait your turn to help create the change you want to see. All you need is a new toolbox, an unshakeable commitment, and the confidence and guidance to wield those tools effectively.


]]> 245 Symone D. Sanders 0062942697 Jodie 0 to-read 3.99 2020 No, You Shut Up: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America
author: Symone D. Sanders
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Night on the Milky Way Railway (The Kenji Collection Book 1)]]> 21245033
About this Translation
This translation includes a simple glossary (just click on the featured word to jump to the explanation) to help you navigate your way through the galaxy, which can also be accessed at the back of the book after you have finished reading the story. I have also added the translation of the 'Cello Voice' sections that Kenji cut from the final version. The Cello Voice sections provide an interesting insight into the author's motivation for writing the story. A much more detailed glossary can be found on the Little J Books website.
All effort was made to create a translation faithful to the author's vision. No material has been used in this translation that wasn't written by the author, and the names of the characters have not been changed.

About the Author
Born in 1896, Kenji was brought up as the eldest child in a wealthy household in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. From a very young age he had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, with interests spanning geology, astronomy, through all types of flora and fauna, cinema, music, painting and literature. A devout Buddhist, Kenji turned his back on the family pawn broking and second-hand kimono business, becoming a teacher at the local agricultural high school, and writing poems and fairy tales to help spread a Buddhist message of universal peace.
Night on the Milky Way Railway is his longest story, and is considered by many to be his best.]]> 100 Kenji Miyazawa Jodie 0 3.81 1934 Night on the Milky Way Railway (The Kenji Collection Book 1)
author: Kenji Miyazawa
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:
Not going to write a review since it's unfinished.
]]> Sweet Bean Paste 33376821
Until, that is, Tokue comes into his life. An elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past, she makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. The unlikeliest of friendships blossoms, but it will take all of their resolve � and plenty of pancakes � to protect themselves when Tokue's dark secret comes to light.]]> 216 Durian Sukegawa 1786071959 Jodie 5 4.07 2013 Sweet Bean Paste
author: Durian Sukegawa
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
I bought it because it was about my favourite food, dorayaki, and the parts about dorayaki were awesome. Tokue's story and history really moved me, that was an extra bonus
]]> The Woman in White 830550
“[ TheWomaninWhite ] has lasted, to our great pleasure, because it is superb storytelling about people who engage our minds and our imaginations andinto whose passions we are drawn.”—Anne Perry

ONE OF TIME ’S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME

Generally consideredthefirst English sensation novel, TheWomaninWhite featurestheremarkable heroine Marian Halcombe and her sleuthing partner, drawing master Walter Hartright, pitted againstthediabolical team of Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. After more than a century since its publication, Wilkie Collins’s psychological thriller has never been out of print.]]> 668 Wilkie Collins 0375759069 Jodie 0 to-read 4.11 1859 The Woman in White
author: Wilkie Collins
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1859
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Paladin's Grace (The Saint of Steel, #1)]]> 50702014 Stephen's god died on the longest day of the year�

Three years later, Stephen is a broken paladin, living only for the chance to be useful before he dies. But all that changes when he encounters a fugitive named Grace in an alley and witnesses an assassination attempt gone wrong. Now the pair must navigate a web of treachery, beset on all sides by spies and poisoners, while a cryptic killer stalks one step behind�

From the Hugo and Nebula Award winning author of Swordheart and The Twisted Ones comes a saga of murder, magic, and love on the far side of despair.]]> 366 T. Kingfisher Jodie 0 to-read 4.09 2020 Paladin's Grace (The Saint of Steel, #1)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> The Psychology of Money 41881472 242 Morgan Housel 0857197681 Jodie 0 to-read 4.28 2020 The Psychology of Money
author: Morgan Housel
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]> 464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 Jodie 0 to-read 4.36 2014 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> Fahrenheit 451 13079982 Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.� But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.]]> 194 Ray Bradbury Jodie 0 3.97 1953 Fahrenheit 451
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Jodie 0 to-read 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> Such a Fun Age 43923951 Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.]]> 310 Kiley Reid 052554190X Jodie 0 to-read 3.76 2019 Such a Fun Age
author: Kiley Reid
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray 41975315 ‘There are books you encounter as an adult that you wish you could press into the hands of your younger self. Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray is one of those books � a novel that turns Australia’s long-mythologised settler history into a raw and resilient heartsong.'� Guardian ***WINNER 2022 NSW PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD INDIGENOUS WRITER'S PRIZE*** ***2022 ABIA SHORTLIST******2021 ARA HISTORICAL NOVEL PRIZE SHORTLIST*** ***2022 STELLA PRIZE LONGLIST*** ***2022 INDIE BOOK AWARDS LONGLIST*** ***2022VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS HIGHLY COMMENDED***_______________________________________________ Gundagai, 1852 The powerful Murrumbidgee River surges through town leaving death and destruction in its wake. It is a stark reminder that while the river can give life, it can just as easily take it away. Wagadhaany is one of the lucky ones. She survives. But is her life now better than the fate she escaped? Forced to move away from her miyagan, she walks through each day with no trace of dance in her step, her broken heart forever calling her back home to Gundagai. When she meets Wiradyuri stockman Yindyamarra, Wagadhaany’s heart slowly begins to heal. But still, she dreams of a better life, away from the degradation of being owned. She longs to set out along the river of her ancestors, in search of lost family and country. Can she find the courage to defy the White man’s law? And if she does, will it bring hope ... or heartache?Set on timeless Wiradyuri country, where the life-giving waters of the rivers can make or break dreams, and based on devastating true events, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams) is an epic story of love, loss and belonging.Praise for Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams) 'Heiss fuses fiction with realism, conjuring a resonance still felt in Blak struggle today ...packs heart into every page.'� Saturday Paper 'Tells a powerful and affecting tale of Aboriginal people's identity, community and deep connection to country.� � Canberra Times 'Aprofoundly moving showcase of Heiss� skill ... Intimate, reflective, and impossible to put down.� � AU Review ‘Engrossing and wonderful storytelling. I really loved these strong, brave Wiradyuri characters.� � Melissa Lucashenko ‘A powerful story of family, place and belonging.� � Kate Grenville ‘Aremarkable story of courage and a love of country ... Anita Heiss writes with heart and energy on every page.� � Tony Birch'It is a love story, a story of loss, a hopeful story. The river is a guide, but you have to be open to itsspiritual lessons.]]> 394 Anita Heiss 1760850454 Jodie 0 to-read 4.18 2021 Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray
author: Anita Heiss
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Written in the Stars (Written in the Stars #1)]]> 52335188 With nods to Bridget Jones and Pride and Prejudice, a charming #ownvoices queer rom-com debut about a free-spirited social media astrologer who agrees to fake a relationship with an uptight actuary until New Year’s Eve—with results not even the stars could predict!

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love—and the inevitable heartbreak—is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.

Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy... a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother—and Elle's new business partner—expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because... awkward.

When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship.

But maybe opposites can attract when true love is written in the stars?]]> 384 Alexandria Bellefleur 0063000814 Jodie 0 to-read 3.94 2020 Written in the Stars (Written in the Stars #1)
author: Alexandria Bellefleur
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/22
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]]> More Than a Woman 49397893 A Good Morning America September Book Pick

The author of the international bestseller How to Be a Woman returns with another “hilarious neo-feminist manifesto� (NPR) in which she reflects on parenting, middle-age, marriage, existential crises—and, of course, feminism.

A decade ago, Caitlin Moran burst onto the scene with her instant bestseller, How to Be a Woman, a hilarious and resonant take on feminism, the patriarchy, and all things womanhood. Moran’s seminal book followed her from her terrible 13th birthday through adolescence, the workplace, strip-clubs, love, and beyond—and is considered the inaugural work of theirreverent confessional feminist memoir genre that continues to occupy a major place in the cultural landscape.

Since that publication, it’s been a glorious ten years for young women: Barack Obama loves Fleabag,and Dior make “FEMINIST� t-shirts. However, middle-aged women still have some nagging, unanswered questions: Can feminists have Botox? Why isn’t there such a thing as “Mum Bod�? Why do hangovers suddenly hurt so much? Is the camel-toe the new erogenous zone? Why do all your clothes suddenly hate you? Has feminism gone too far? Will your To Do List ever end?And WHO’S LOOKING AFTER THE CHILDREN?

As timely as it is hysterically funny, this memoir/manifesto will have readers laughing out loud, blinking back tears, and redefining their views on feminism and the patriarchy. More Than a Woman is a brutally honest, scathingly funny, and absolutely necessary take on the life of the modern woman—and one that only Caitlin Moran can provide.
]]> 252 Caitlin Moran 0062893718 Jodie 2 4.12 2020 More Than a Woman
author: Caitlin Moran
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/22
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I think this is more for women in their 40's with children, a good job and a nice husband. It just wasn't for me. The chapter on feminism and patriarchy was excellent.
]]> Daisy Jones & The Six 40597810 Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n� roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.]]> 368 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798622 Jodie 5 4.20 2019 Daisy Jones & The Six
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
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Took me a bit to get into the style, then spent the rest of the book wishing there was a soundtrack to go with it
]]> Conversations on Love 57028269 320 Natasha Lunn 0241448735 Jodie 0 currently-reading 4.23 2021 Conversations on Love
author: Natasha Lunn
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Tokyo Express 61920966 'It was a puzzle with no solution. But he did not lose heart.'

In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Stood in the coast's wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime...

Now widely available in English for the first time, Tokyo Express is celebrated around the world as Seicho Matsumoto's masterpiece - and as one of the most fiendish puzzles ever written.]]> 149 Seichō Matsumoto 0241439086 Jodie 5 3.78 1958 Tokyo Express
author: Seichō Matsumoto
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/08/31
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If a time warp back to 1950's Japan to investigate a case largely based around train travel interests you, read this book. Plus it was short and sweet (well sweet-ish)
]]> <![CDATA[The Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #2)]]> 205063868 The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is the second book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Kamogawa Food Detectives series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps recreate them...

Chef Nagare and his daughter Koishi serve their customers more than delicious food at their Kamogawa Diner down a quiet street in Kyoto. They can help recreate meals from their customers� most treasured memories. Through ingenious investigations, these “food detectives� untangle flavors and pore through old shopping lists to remake unique dishes from the past.

From the swimmer who misses his father’s lunchbox to the model who longs for fried rice from her childhood, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect�

A beloved bestseller in Japan, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is a tender and healing novel that celebrates the power of community and delicious food.]]> 214 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717805 Jodie 0 to-read 3.86 2014 The Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #2)
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/25
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]]> The Lantern of Lost Memories 204593511 From acclaimed Japanese authorSanaka Hiigari comes aheartwarming, life-affirming novel about amagical photo studio, where people go after they die to view key moments from their life—and relive one precious memory before they pass into the afterlife.

The hands and pendulum of the old wooden clock on the wall were motionless. Hirasakacocked his head to listen, but the silence inside the photo studio was almost deafening. Hisleather shoes sank softly into the aging red carpet as he strode over to the arrangement offlowers on the counter and carefully adjusted the angle of the petals...

This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaki, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard.

Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and deathwhere those who have departed have a chance—one last time—to see their entire life flash before their eyes viaMr. Hirasaki's "spinning lantern ofmemories."

We meetHatsue, a ninety-two year old woman who worked as a nursery teacher,the rowdy Waniguchi, a yakuza overseer in his life who is also capable of great compassion, and finallyMitsuru, a young girl who has died tragically young at the hands of abusive parents.

Sorting through the many photos of their lives,Mr. Hirasaki also offers guests one guests a second achance to travel back in time to take a photo of oneparticular moment in their lives that they wish to cherish in a special way.

Full of charm and whimsy, The Lantern of Lost Memories will sweep you away to a world of nostalgia,laughter, and love.]]> 208 Sanaka Hiiragi 1538757435 Jodie 0 to-read 4.12 2019 The Lantern of Lost Memories
author: Sanaka Hiiragi
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Full Moon Coffee Shop (The Full Moon Coffee Shop, #1)]]> 202468425 Translated from the Japanese bestseller, this charming and magical novel, inspired by the myth of cats returning favors to those who care for them, reminds us that it’s never too late to follow our stars.

In Japan cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they’ll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon. This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and seemingly appears at random to adrift young people at crucial junctions in their lives.

It’s also run by talking cats.

While customers at the Full Moon Coffee Shop partake in cakes, coffees, and teas, the cats also consult them on their star charts, offer cryptic wisdom, and let them know where their lives have veered off course—because every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost. And for a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. After all, there is a reason the shop appeared to each of them…]]> 240 Mai Mochizuki 0593726820 Jodie 0 to-read 3.61 2020 The Full Moon Coffee Shop (The Full Moon Coffee Shop, #1)
author: Mai Mochizuki
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/25
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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 � and meeting the man who would become her husband � 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 Jodie 4 4.25 2021 Crying in H Mart
author: Michelle Zauner
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
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On one hand, it was raw and there were some great lines in it. On the other, the relationship she had with her mum does not seem healthy at all. But overall, once I got through the first 100 pages, I got into it. The Korean culture and food is an added bonus
]]> <![CDATA[Not Now, Not Ever: Ten years on from the misogyny speech]]> 61267944
On 9 October 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard stood up and proceeded to make all present in Parliament House that day pay attention � and left many of them squirming in their seats. The incisive ‘misogyny speech�, as her words came to be known, continues to energise and motivate women who need to stare down sexism and misogyny in their own lives.

With contributions from Mary Beard, Jess Hill, Jennifer Palmieri, Katharine Murphy and members of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, Julia Gillard explores the history and culture of misogyny, tools in the patriarchy’s toolbox, intersectionality, and gender and misogyny in the media and politics.

Kathy Lette looks at how the speech has gained a new life on TikTok, as well as inspiring other tributes and hand-made products, and we hear recollections from Wayne Swan, Anne Summers, Cate Blanchett, Brittany Higgins and others of where they were and how they first encountered the speech.

While behaviours may have improved since the misogyny speech, there remains a way to go and Julia Gillard explores the roadmap for the future with next-generation feminists Sally Scales, Chanel Contos and Caitlin Figueiredo to motivate us with that rallying cry: Not now, not ever!

Proceeds from the book will go to the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership (GIWL).]]> 260 Julia Gillard 0143779761 Jodie 4 4.27 Not Now, Not Ever: Ten years on from the misogyny speech
author: Julia Gillard
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.27
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
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Very important to read about the misogyny faced by Julia Gillard and how the speech has helped people. There were some excellent essays on misogyny in different areas, I particularly liked the one about Hillary Clinton.
]]> <![CDATA[The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China]]> 57432319
The relationship between the US and China, the world’s two superpowers, is peculiarly volatile. It rests on a seismic fault—of cultural misunderstanding, historical grievance, and ideological incompatibility. No other nations are so quick to offend and be offended. Their militaries play a dangerous game of chicken, corporations steal intellectual property, intelligence satellites peer, and AI technicians plot. The capacity for either country to cross a fatal line grows daily.

Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who has studied, lived in, and worked with China for more than forty years, is one of the very few people who can offer real insight into the mindsets of the leadership whose judgment will determine if a war will be fought. The Avoidable War demystifies the actions of both sides, explaining and translating them for the benefit of the other. Geopolitical disaster is still avoidable, but only if these two giants can find a way to coexist without betraying their core interests through what Rudd calls “managed strategic competition.� Should they fail, down that path lies the possibility of a war that could rewrite the future of both countries, and the world.]]> 432 Kevin Rudd 1541701291 Jodie 0 to-read 4.21 2022 The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China
author: Kevin Rudd
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Art of Catching Feelings 199926335 A professional baseball player and his heckler prove that true love is worth going to bat for in the next swoony romance.

Daphne Brink doesn’t follow baseball, but watching “America’s Snoozefest� certainly beats sitting at home in the days after she signs her divorce papers. After one too many ballpark beers, she heckles Carolina Battery player Chris Kepler, who quickly proves there might actually be a little crying in baseball. Horrified, Daphne reaches out to Chris on social media to apologize . . . but forgets to identify herself as his heckler in her message.

Chris doesn’t usually respond to random fans on social media, but he’s grieving and fragile after an emotionally turbulent few months. When a DM from “Duckie� catches his eye, he impulsively messages back. Duckie is sweet, funny, and seems to understand him in a way no one else does.

Daphne isn’t sure how much longer she can keep lying to Chris, especially as she starts working with the team in real life and their feelings for each other deepen. When he finds out the truth, will it be three strikes, she’s out?]]> 380 Alicia Thompson 0593640942 Jodie 0 to-read 3.82 2024 The Art of Catching Feelings
author: Alicia Thompson
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[DallerGut Dream Department Store (DallerGut Dream Department Store, #1)]]> 194036469
For Penny, an enthusiastic new hire, working at the store is the opportunity of a lifetime. As she uncovers the workings of this whimsical world, she bonds with a cast of unforgettable characters, including DallerGut, the flamboyant and wise owner, Babynap Rockabye, a famous dream designer, Maxim, a nightmare producer, and the many customers who dream to heal, dream to grow, and dream to flourish.

A captivating story that will leave a lingering magical feeling in readers' minds, this is the first book in a bestselling duology for anyone exhausted from the reality of their daily life.]]> 243 Lee Mi-ye 1035412748 Jodie 0 to-read 3.66 2020 DallerGut Dream Department Store (DallerGut Dream Department Store, #1)
author: Lee Mi-ye
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 665 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Jodie 0 to-read 4.56 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)]]> 154488299 The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives�. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories � dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.]]> 201 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717716 Jodie 4 3.70 2013 The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves:
review:
The last story added an extra star for me. It was a very cosy foodie story
]]> <![CDATA[Magic Ramen: The Story of Momofuku Ando]]> 40539203 Magic Ramen tells the true story behind the creation of one of the world's most popular foods.

Every day, Momofuku Ando would retire to his lab—a little shed in his backyard. For years, he'd dreamed about making a new kind of ramen noodle soup that was quick, convenient, and tasty for the hungry people he'd seen in line for a bowl on the black market following World War II. Peace follows from a full stomach, he believed.

Day after day, Ando experimented. Night after night, he failed. But Ando kept experimenting.

With persistence, creativity, and a little inspiration, Ando succeeded. This is the true story behind one of the world's most popular foods.]]> 40 Andrea Wang 1499807031 Jodie 0 to-read 4.32 2019 Magic Ramen: The Story of Momofuku Ando
author: Andrea Wang
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes, #8)]]> 754713 242 Arthur Conan Doyle 0755334434 Jodie 3 4.26 1917 His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes, #8)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1917
rating: 3
read at: 2020/10/06
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
The stories were a bit fresher in this book, although I was able to guess enough of one mystery to make it not such a mystery but also just compound my annoyance in Watson. That man is just such a bore. Does he have any personality apart from idolising Sherlock? Anyway, I still love Sherlock and his unabashed love for himself. (.....am I Watson
]]> <![CDATA[I Don't: The Case Against Marriage]]> 194785126
I want this book to end marriages. But more importantly, I want it to prevent marriages. Women are allowed to aspire to more than what we've been told we should want in order to be happy. Let yourself have a bigger dream than becoming the supporting role in someone else's story.

Why, when there is so much evidence of the detrimental, suffocating impact marriage has on women's lives, does the myth of marital bliss still prevail? If the feminist project has been so successful, why do so many women still believe that our value is intrinsically tied to being chosen by a man?

In her most incendiary and controversial book to date, Clementine Ford exposes the lies used to sell marriage to women to keep them in service to men and male power. From the roots of marriage as a form of property transaction to the wedding industrial complex, Clementine Ford explains how capitalist patriarchal structures need women to believe in marriage in order to maintain control over women's agency, ambitions and freedom.

I Don't presents an inarguable case against marriage for modern women. With the incisive attention to detail and razor-sharp wit that characterises her work, Ford dissects the patriarchal history of marriage; the insidious, centuries-long marketing campaign pop culture has conducted in marriage's favour; the illusion of feminist 'choice' in regard to taking men's names; and the physical and social cost that comes with motherhood.But most importantly, Clementine Ford shows us what a different kind of world could look like for women if we were allowed to be truly free.]]> 368 Clementine Ford 1761187988 Jodie 0 to-read 4.12 2023 I Don't: The Case Against Marriage
author: Clementine Ford
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Yoko's Diary 18655809 224 Paul Ham 0733331173 Jodie 3 3.93 2013 Yoko's Diary
author: Paul Ham
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/11
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:
A sad but sweet diary of good girl Yoko. Always out visiting family, doing her chores, and helping her mum. I borrowed this book from the library as it was short, which it was, but some of the diary entries repeat themselves - as it is a 13 year old's diary, no matter how mature she is. I learnt a little while reading this, but mostly about how busy children were during the war time
]]> <![CDATA[The Kaiju Preservation Society]]> 57693406
What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that's found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too--and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389126 Jodie 2
The dialogue was very meme-y, the action at the end didn't resonate with me (actually felt like stopping a few times through but pushed through the last pages) and the whole "they said this without a smile" after hearing about the incident was weird.

The author acknowledged that he wrote this book in 2 months to get over writers block, it shows. Although there was some cool science in there too.

I think I got most aggregated when the words "he did a thing, then another thing" were written. "Did a thing" is generally lazy in spoken language, but offensive when written in a book.

To be honest, for about 3/4 of this book I thought of it as 3/5 stars. The environment was interesting, even if the dialogue was overly sarcastic (did anyone actually like the main character? Were the band names actually good? Reminds me of that SNL sketch "fellow kids") and the words "I lift things" were said way too often. Then came the action and finishing this become a chore more than anything else.]]> 3.93 2022 The Kaiju Preservation Society
author: John Scalzi
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:
It had a diverse cast, lovely. The narrator was female too, but a really annoying one.

The dialogue was very meme-y, the action at the end didn't resonate with me (actually felt like stopping a few times through but pushed through the last pages) and the whole "they said this without a smile" after hearing about the incident was weird.

The author acknowledged that he wrote this book in 2 months to get over writers block, it shows. Although there was some cool science in there too.

I think I got most aggregated when the words "he did a thing, then another thing" were written. "Did a thing" is generally lazy in spoken language, but offensive when written in a book.

To be honest, for about 3/4 of this book I thought of it as 3/5 stars. The environment was interesting, even if the dialogue was overly sarcastic (did anyone actually like the main character? Were the band names actually good? Reminds me of that SNL sketch "fellow kids") and the words "I lift things" were said way too often. Then came the action and finishing this become a chore more than anything else.
]]> <![CDATA[Principles of Anatomy and Physiology]]> 45839 1248 Gerard J. Tortora 0471689343 Jodie 5 4.16 1942 Principles of Anatomy and Physiology
author: Gerard J. Tortora
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1942
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves:
review:
I have the 3rd Asia Pacific edition and it's so good. Quite easy to follow and there are a lot of great videos within. I'm using the digital edition. Ill be continuing to use this textbook throughout my course, but have read whole chapters and taken information from others
]]> <![CDATA[Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens]]> 152034931 A rollicking historyof England's earliest kings and queens, a story ofnarcissists, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars,and more, fromaward-winning British actor and comedian David Mitchell

Think you know the kings and queens of England? Think again.

In Unruly , David Mitchell explores how early England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects� destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky bastards who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

Taking us right back to King Arthur ( he didn’t exist), Mitchell tells the founding story of post-Roman England right up to the reign of Elizabeth I ( she dies), as the monarchy began to lose its power. It’s a tale of bizarre and curious ascensions, inadequate self-control, and at least one total Cnut, as the English evolved from having their crops stolen by the thug with the largest armed gang to bowing and paying taxes to a divinely anointed King.

How this happened, who it happened to, and why the hell it matters are all questions Mitchell answers with brilliance, wit, and the full erudition of a man who once studied history—and is damned if he’ll let it off the hook for the mess it’s made of everything.

A funny book that takes history seriously, Unruly is for anyone who has ever wondered how the monarchy came to be—and who is to blame.]]> 433 David Mitchell 0593728491 Jodie 0 to-read 4.13 2023 Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens
author: David Mitchell
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[60 Songs That Explain the '90s]]> 123204507 Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.]]> 288 Rob Harvilla 1538759462 Jodie 0 to-read 3.88 2023 60 Songs That Explain the '90s
author: Rob Harvilla
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Convenience Store Woman 36739755 Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,� she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal� person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action�

A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata 0802128254 Jodie 4
So I felt this book. It's definitely not a phenomenon unique to Japan.

The conbini life and products was a big part of the 5 stars, I could hear the chimes.]]> 3.65 2016 Convenience Store Woman
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves:
review:
I'm 35 single woman working in retail. This hit hard. Just last night I had to justify not being married, people seem happier with my work when I tell them we do sometimes take naps on the beds, and ask way more about what I'm studying and saying how good it is I'm doing it.

So I felt this book. It's definitely not a phenomenon unique to Japan.

The conbini life and products was a big part of the 5 stars, I could hear the chimes.
]]> My Love Story 38657798 In this New York Times bestseller, Tina Turner—the long-reigning queen of rock & roll—reveals personal stories she’s never told before in print or film, about her complicated relationship with her mother, the tragic death of her son, and finally finding true love with Erwin, setting the record straight about her illustrious career in this eye-opening and compelling memoir.

From her early years in Nutbush, Tennessee to her rise to fame alongside Ike Turner to her phenomenal success in the 1980s and beyond, Tina candidly examines her personal history, from her darkest hours to her happiest moments and everything in between.

My Love Story is an explosive and inspiring story of a woman who dared to break any barriers put in her way. Emphatically showcasing Tina’s signature blend of strength, energy, heart, and soul, this is a gorgeously wrought memoir as enthralling and moving as any of her greatest hits.]]> 272 Tina Turner 1501198246 Jodie 5 I love Tina Turner. 4.05 2018 My Love Story
author: Tina Turner
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
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I love Tina Turner.
]]> Beautiful Country 56461570
In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly "shopping days," when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center � confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all.

But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.

Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world � an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent]]> 320 Qian Julie Wang 0385547218 Jodie 0 to-read 4.16 2021 Beautiful Country
author: Qian Julie Wang
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)]]> 62047992 The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.]]> 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 Jodie 5 3.67 2010 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves:
review:
Cute slice of life in Jimbocho. I find translated Japanese books often come out a bit whimsical but it overall suited this book.
]]> <![CDATA[State of the Union: A Marriage in Ten Parts]]> 45152561 A heartbreaking, funny, and honest look inside of a marriage falling apart and the lengths a couple would go to in order to fix it from the bestselling author of About a Boy and High Fidelity.

Tom and Louise meet in a pub before their couple's therapy appointment. Married for years, they thought they had a stable home life--until a recent incident pushed them to the brink.

Going to therapy seemed like the perfect solution. But over drinks before their appointment, they begin to wonder: what if marriage is like a computer? What if you take it apart to see what's in there, but then you're left with a million pieces?

Unfolding in the minutes before their weekly therapy sessions, the ten-chapter conversation that ensues is witty and moving, forcing them to look at their marriage--and, for the first time in a long time, at each other.]]> 132 Nick Hornby 0593087348 Jodie 4
In my library copy someone had written M and F to figure out who was speaking on various pages]]> 3.55 2019 State of the Union: A Marriage in Ten Parts
author: Nick Hornby
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves:
review:
It's very short, I'm glad I borrowed it from the library. It was a nice read though, kind of feel like it should have just been a script. On one hand, writing that much dialogue is a feat, but on the other this short a book, with the theme, is one that only an existing author could get published.

In my library copy someone had written M and F to figure out who was speaking on various pages
]]> <![CDATA[Tinder Translator: An AZ of Modern Misogyny]]> 60420553
Ten years after the introduction of Tinder, dating apps have changed the terrain of human interaction and healthy relationships, but many feel like they’ve been sent into the wilderness without a guide. For those dating cis-het men especially, the blatant misogyny encountered during every swipe session is depressing and enraging in equal measure. And then there is the not-so-blatant stuff. Scrolling through profile after profile, you’ll see the same stock phrases: Good vibes only. Must have banter. Just ask. But what do they actually mean?

Through her Instagram account, Aileen has heard from thousands of people on their dating experiences, in addition to her own years spent on dating apps. This dictionary of douchebaggery is part reference, part rant and part rallying cry for anyone navigating the sometimes gross and exhausting experience of dating, but also just for everyone who is sick of the patriarchy, whatever their relationship status. A fun small hardback, Tinder Translator is the perfect gift for friends (or for yourself) � whether they're dating or not. It will make you laugh, sigh, think, and leave you feeling empowered and resilient.]]> 208 Aileen Barratt 1743798520 Jodie 5
The pink printing is beautiful]]> 4.22 2022 Tinder Translator: An AZ of Modern Misogyny
author: Aileen Barratt
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/11
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves:
review:
The He's Just Not That Into You for the modern generation.

The pink printing is beautiful
]]> Men Who Hate Women 48635408
Men Who Hate Women examines the rise of secretive extremist communities who despise women and traces the roots of misogyny across a complex spider web of groups. It includes eye-opening interviews with former members of these communities, the academics studying this movement, and the men fighting back.

Women's rights activist Laura Bates wrote this book as someone who has been the target of many hate-fueled misogynistic attacks online. At first, the vitriol seemed to be the work of a small handful of individual men... but over time, the volume and consistency of the attacks hinted at something bigger and more ominous. As Bates went undercover into the corners of the internet, she found an unseen, organized movement of thousands of anonymous men wishing violence (and worse) upon women.
In the book, Bates explores:

Extreme communities like incels, pick-up artists, MGTOW, Men's Rights Activists and more
The hateful, toxic rhetoric used by these groups
How this movement connects to other extremist movements like white supremacy
How young boys are targeted and slowly drawn in
Where this ideology shows up in our everyday lives in mainstream media, our playgrounds, and our government

By turns fascinating and horrifying, Men Who Hate Women is a broad, unflinching account of the deep current of loathing toward women and anti-feminism that underpins our society and is a must-read for parents, educators, and anyone who believes in equality for women.]]> 366 Laura Bates Jodie 0 to-read 4.34 2020 Men Who Hate Women
author: Laura Bates
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

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

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells Jodie 5 4.11 2017 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
author: Martha Wells
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves:
review:
Short and sweet adventure story about a depressed Murderbot
]]> <![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]> 151 Becky Chambers Jodie 0 to-read 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> Fix the System, Not the Women 59493858
This distracts us from the real problem: the failings and biases of a society that was not built for women. In this explosive book, feminist writer and activist Laura Bates exposes the systemic prejudice at the heart of five of our key institutions.

Education
Politics
Media
Policing
Criminal justice

Combining stories with shocking evidence, Fix the System, Not the Women is a blazing examination of sexual injustice and a rallying cry for reform.]]> 208 Laura Bates 1398515418 Jodie 0 to-read 4.50 2022 Fix the System, Not the Women
author: Laura Bates
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future]]> 63334778
Broadcaster Tracey Spicer had an epiphany when her young son uttered these six words.

Suddenly, her life’s work fighting inequality seemed futile. What’s the point in agitating to change the present, if bigotry is being embedded into our futures?

And so began a quest to uncover who was responsible and hold them to account.

Who is the ultimate villain? Big Tech, whose titans refuse to spend money to fix the problem? The world’s politicians, who lack the will to legislate? Or should we all be walking into a hall of mirrors and taking a good, hard look at ourselves�?

This is a deeply researched, illuminating and gripping ride into an uncertain future, culminating in a resounding call to action that will shake the tech sector to its foundations.]]> 298 Tracey Spicer 1761106376 Jodie 3 3.56 2023 Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future
author: Tracey Spicer
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves:
review:
There were parts I loved; the inclusiveness, the pitchforks, and the overall idea behind the book. I'd say this was aimed at older people as some of the explanations were unnecessary. The content was a lot of doomsday stuff, but something to think about. Just found it to be quite jumpy and a little hard to follow, also there were huge chunks of quotes here and there, which I thought was a no-no? At the end, some parts were interesting and I have found myself taking about it to people, it's just long and feels like parts were either too fleshed out or not enough.
]]> The Good Girl Stripped Bare 31847625
Tracey Spicer was always the good girl. Inspired by Jana Wendt, this bogan from the Brisbane backwaters waded through the 'cruel and shallow money trench' of television to land a dream role: national news anchor for a commercial network. But the journalist found that, for women, TV was less about news and more about helmet hair, masses of makeup and fatuous fashion, in an era when bosses told you to 'stick your tits out', 'lose two inches off your arse', and 'quit before you're too long in the tooth'. Still, Tracey plastered on a smile and did what she was told. But when she was sacked by email after having a baby, this good girl turned 'bad', taking legal action against the network for pregnancy discrimination. In this frank and funny 'femoir' - part memoir, part manifesto - Tracey 'sheconstructs' the structural barriers facing women in the workplace and encourages us all to shake off the shackles of the good girl. "Glows with the wisdom of a woman who has learned essential truths about love, life and happiness" - Caroline Overington "Wickedly witty and wonderfully wise" - Wendy Harmer "Fiercely smart and ferociously funny" - Benjamin Law]]> 352 Tracey Spicer 0733335632 Jodie 0 to-read 3.82 The Good Girl Stripped Bare
author: Tracey Spicer
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.82
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality]]> 176443264 Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.

Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant� first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.

“Magical thinking� can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.

In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “Halo effect� cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the “Sunk Cost Fallacy� can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.]]> 259 Amanda Montell 1668007975 Jodie 0 to-read 3.45 2024 The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
author: Amanda Montell
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good Material 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story�

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 Jodie 4
I get the premise, but there was a lot of pages on Andy and his tears. No offense to Andy, but he was quite frustrating but Dolly still has a knack for writing so it wasn't all bad. The last 100 pages really brought it all in together, a nice ending.]]> 3.85 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars rounded up

I get the premise, but there was a lot of pages on Andy and his tears. No offense to Andy, but he was quite frustrating but Dolly still has a knack for writing so it wasn't all bad. The last 100 pages really brought it all in together, a nice ending.
]]> <![CDATA[For the Love of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics]]> 26636310 497 Kate Burridge 1107618835 Jodie 0 to-read 3.91 2015 For the Love of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics
author: Kate Burridge
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Red, White & Royal Blue 41150487
As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?]]> 448 Casey McQuiston 1250316774 Jodie 0 to-read 4.06 2019 Red, White & Royal Blue
author: Casey McQuiston
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Happy Place 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

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

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

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 Jodie 3
But I didn't pick it up for the friends aspect. I picked it up for the romance and easy reading, the feels at the end were good.]]> 3.95 2023 Happy Place
author: Emily Henry
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves:
review:
I wanted a cheesy, romance and I got that, which I finished in 2 days because I had to know why. This would have been a higher rating but we get this whole insight into this group, but the majority of them feel like cut-out characters. Also, they have that weird of talking which makes me wonder if people actually talk like that or if I always meet the 50% of people who don't.

But I didn't pick it up for the friends aspect. I picked it up for the romance and easy reading, the feels at the end were good.
]]> The Love Hypothesis 56732449
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.]]> 356 Ali Hazelwood 0593336828 Jodie 3 4.11 2021 The Love Hypothesis
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/11
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves:
review:
It was an excellent chic-lit, except minus one star for too much talking during the steamy parts and another for the lack of contraception, even if they're inexperienced. I'd minus another for the self doubt but I know imposter syndrome is all too real. Typical chic-lit in that this man does not exist; she cried like a hundred times and he was like "come here baby". But it was easy reading, I liked the research parts, and I didn't put it down
]]> <![CDATA[It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)]]> 55659629
Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face.

Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.

Tessa Bailey is back with a Schitt’s Creek-inspired rom-com about a Hollywood “It Girl� who is cut off from her wealthy family and exiled to a small Pacific Northwest beach town... where she butts heads with a surly, sexy local who thinks she doesn’t belong.]]> 397 Tessa Bailey 0063045656 Jodie 0 to-read 3.91 2021 It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)
author: Tessa Bailey
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Maiden & The Unseen (Love and Fate, #1)]]> 61753813
Zeus has finally decreed that the gods may leave Olympus and mingle - anonymously - with the mortals of the present. With zero warning or waiting for him to consent to this arrangement, Hades is placed in charge of not only helping the gods assimilate but also financing them. Unlike the other gods, Hades never withdrew from the mortal world. Instead he spent six months of every year among them, building a fortune befitting one of his many names. As long as the gods follow his strict rules for living among mortals, they have access to a generous monthly stipend. Break the rules, lose the privileges. No allowances. Ever.


Goddess of Spring. The Maiden. The Mistress. The Venerable One...The Social Media Manager.

For the last two years, Persephone has lived among the mortals, enjoying everything the world she was so sheltered from has to offer. It took years of begging since Zeus's decree to get her mother to allow her to go, and she imparted some strict rules to follow. Rule 1: No fraternizing with other gods. As far as Demeter is aware, Persephone's closest friend is definitely not Helios, the Titan of the Sun. Rule 2: No men. The mortal she's casually dating doesn't even know the gods exist. Rule 3: Every six months, Demeter comes by for a visit. This one Persephone can't get out of, and if it keeps her mother from investigating Persephone's life, what's the harm?


Destiny. Fate. Fortune. Kismet...An absolute bitch.

Fate has other ideas for Hades and Persephone, and it does not take lightly to being denied. Struggle and fight all they want. But the threads of destiny have wrapped tightly around them and tugs them tighter and tighter, no matter what the gods themselves have to say about it.]]> 431 Alexis Rune Jodie 0 to-read 3.41 The Maiden & The Unseen (Love and Fate, #1)
author: Alexis Rune
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.41
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Queen of Roses (Blood of a Fae, #1)]]> 63342028 A cast-off princess�

Born into a life of duty and sacrifice, Morgan Pendragon’s destiny has never been her own. Rumored to carry the tainted blood of the fae in her veins, her birthright is stolen from her when she is a mere child. Growing up in the shadow of her brother the king, she has been promised to the goddesses when she comes of age. So, when her brother commands that she seek out a fae weapon of legendary power, Morgan seizes the chance to break free from the chains of her fate.

A dangerous temptation�

As she travels, Morgan finds herself drawn into a strange group of outcasts, led by a dark and enigmatic warrior whose sharp wit and fierce beauty set her heart ablaze. But while Morgan struggles to reconcile her desires with her duty, she and her new comrades discover dangers that await them beyond anything in their wildest nightmares.

A slumbering kingdom awoken by blood�

Believed to have vanished generations ago, a fae kingdom dreaded by mortals is ascending once more, bound to reclaim what was lost by violence and bloodshed. As the fae world, with its intricate web of lies and mysteries, is slowly revealed to Morgan, she is led to the terrible realization that the secrets she carries in her blood make her a greater threat than she could ever have imagined.

The first in an action-packed new series brimming with magic, danger, and spellbinding slow-burn romance, Queen of Roses is perfect for fans of Holly Black, Jennifer L. Armentrout, and Sarah J. Maas.]]> 361 Briar Boleyn Jodie 0 to-read 3.85 2023 Queen of Roses (Blood of a Fae, #1)
author: Briar Boleyn
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Midwich Cuckoos 203198400 241 John Wyndham Jodie 0 to-read 4.17 1957 The Midwich Cuckoos
author: John Wyndham
name: Jodie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4)]]> 75293479
Deeply introverted Catriona lives for her work at Oxford and her fight for women's suffrage. She dreams of romance, too, but since all her attempts at love have ended badly, she now keeps her desires firmly locked inside her head--until she climbs out of a Scottish loch after a good swim and finds herself rather exposed to her new colleague.

Elias Khoury has wheedled his way into Professor Campbell's circle under false pretenses: he did not come to Oxford to classify ancient artefacts, he is determined to take them back to his homeland in the Middle East. Winning Catriona's favor could be the key to his success. Unfortunately, seducing the coolly intense lady scholar quickly becomes a mission in itself and his well-laid plans are in danger of derailing...

Forced into close proximity in Oxford's hallowed halls, two very different people have to face the fact that they might just be a perfect match. Soon, a risky new game begins that asks Catriona one more time to put her heart and wildest dreams at stake.]]> 432 Evie Dunmore 0593334663 Jodie 3 3.63 2023 The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4)
author: Evie Dunmore
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves:
review:
I'm not going to say I was disappointed, but it also took me a few days to read it. Just wasn't into the love story, and were the "his eye flashed dark" and stuff - were they not red flags??
]]> <![CDATA[Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things]]> 91540 Teeming with undead samurais, man-eating goblins, and other terrifying demons, these 20 classic ghost stories inspired the Oscar®-nominated 1964 film of the same name.]]> 256 Lafcadio Hearn 0804836620 Jodie 4 3.91 1904 Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
author: Lafcadio Hearn
name: Jodie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1904
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
review:
3.5 rounded up. I think this would be a great read for anyone not familiar with Japanese folk stories buuuut be wary that they do abruptly end. Loved his enthusiasm for these stories and the need to tell them accurately
]]>