en-US Thu, 08 May 2025 18:05:57 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 176443441
It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.

Then the hives that’ve plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules’s uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls� mother—a newly devout Messianic Jew—starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’s online mommies. A trip home to Florida ends in disaster. Amy Klobuchar may or may not have rabies. And Jules struggles halfheartedly to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly coming to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, Jules and Poppy—comrades, competitors, permanent fixtures in each other’s lives—must ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they’ll spend them together or apart.

Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 304 Alexandra Tanner 1668018616 em 0 to-read 3.32 2024
author: Alexandra Tanner
name: em
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
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]]> 10060326 Madness and Civilization�Madness offers an invaluable lens through which to observe the seminal social critic’s philosophical evolution. Previously published as Mental Illness and Psychology, this exciting and accessible new edition offers unique insight into both Foucault’s early engagement with the psychoanalytic tradition and his critical break from Freud, giving readers a crucial look at the thinking that prefigured The History of Sexuality, The Archeology of Knowledge, and more.
]]> 160 Michel Foucault 0062007181 em 0 to-read 3.67 1954
author: Michel Foucault
name: em
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1954
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]]> 63017297 In this suspenseful and darkly funny debut novel, a sophisticated French woman spends her life obsessing over her perfect husband--but can their marriage survive her passionate love?

At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she's never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated. After all, would a truly infatuated man ever let go of his wife's hand when they're sitting on the couch together?

Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, charting every mistake and punishing him accordingly to help him improve. And she tests him--setting traps to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met.

Until one day she realizes she may have gone too far . . .

The winner of France's First Novel Prize in 2021, My Husband builds on the premise of hits like Gone Girl and Fates and Furies--how well can you really know your spouse?--and adds the tension and creepy obsession of You. The result is an irresistible read--compelling, tense, and engaging, infused with sly subversive humor, and told in an utterly original voice that makes it unforgettable.

Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan]]> 272 Maud Ventura 0063274825 em 0 to-read 3.67 2021
author: Maud Ventura
name: em
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
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]]> 61121126 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn’t yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend’s house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 256 Han Kang em 0 to-read 4.02 2021
author: Han Kang
name: em
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
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]]> 14578407 Penpal began as a series of short and interconnected stories posted on an online horror forum. Before long, it was adapted into illustrations, audio recordings, and short films; and that was before it was revised and expanded into a novel!

How much do you remember about your childhood?

In Penpal, a man investigates the seemingly unrelated bizarre, tragic, and horrific occurrences of his childhood in an attempt to finally understand them. Beginning with only fragments of his earliest years, you'll follow the narrator as he discovers that these strange and horrible events are actually part of a single terrifying story that has shaped the entirety of his life and the lives of those around him. If you've ever stayed in the woods just a little too long after dark, if you've ever had the feeling that someone or something was trying to hurt you, if you remember the first friend you ever made and how strong that bond was, then Penpal is a story that you won't soon forget, despite how you might try.]]> 243 Dathan Auerbach 098554550X em 0 to-read 3.84 2012
author: Dathan Auerbach
name: em
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/02
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]]> 123282567 A specter is haunting the Atlantic!

After growing up together on the luxurious SS Lark, Neeta Pandey and Emery Botwright are ready to start their lives. Emery wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and sail the Lark forever, while Neeta yearns to travel the world. But neither will have any future at all if the Lark’s new owner, Mr. Honeycutt, has his way.

Mr. Honeycutt . . . The first-class passengers adore him, while he makes the ship a nightmare for the crew. Twisted by unnatural appetites, the rich are actually transforming into something less than human, and their insatiable demands soon push the staff toward a—quite literal� burnout.

Something otherworldly is undeniably aboard the SS Lark, something horribly hungry. But it’s not Wick Farley: vampire, secret agent, and paranormal investigator. Alone and at sea, with only Neeta and Emery to help him, he must uncover the truth about Mr. Honeycutt. And fast—before a ravenous craving for power consumes them all.

Taylor Robin’s debut graphic novel is a thrilling supernatural adventure told in crackling, vibrant colors.]]> 272 Taylor Robin 1454950242 em 0 to-read 4.35 2025
author: Taylor Robin
name: em
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
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]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 em 0 to-read 4.50 2025
author: John Green
name: em
average rating: 4.50
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]]> 51654 A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death & Mystical Experiences.
A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT: A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research.

From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted US DEA-approved clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected 60 volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical that is also manufactured by the human brain, consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many volunteers reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, especially "aliens." Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives.

Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by René Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that alien abduction experiences are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul.]]> 363 Rick Strassman 0892819278 em 0 to-read 4.15 2000
author: Rick Strassman
name: em
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 4605546 296 John Webster 1405118776 em 0 to-read 4.20 2005
author: John Webster
name: em
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 43517806
The text of Wage Labour and Capital came from lectures Marx delivered to the German Workmen's Club of Brussels in 1847, a time of great political upheaval. The relationship between wage-labour to capital is a core concept in Marx's analysis of political economy and its relationship with capitalism. This book is an essential for anyone attempting to understand the development of Marxist theory.

This edition of Wage Labour and Capital is specially formatted with a Table of Contents.]]> 32 Karl Marx 1978461232 em 0 to-read 4.41 1891
author: Karl Marx
name: em
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1891
rating: 0
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]]> 226933409 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang em 0 to-read 4.05 2025
author: R.F. Kuang
name: em
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
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date added: 2025/04/30
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]]> 60784614 The revelatory New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award.

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation―and the moral implications that affect us all.

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo―because we are all implicated.]]> 288 Siddharth Kara 1250284309 em 0 to-read 4.36 2023
author: Siddharth Kara
name: em
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
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]]> 45458448 King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust.

Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo—too long forgotten—onto the conscience of the West.]]> 400 Adam Hochschild 1509882200 em 0 to-read 4.50 1998
author: Adam Hochschild
name: em
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1998
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]]> 71620 291 Jack Herer 1878125028 em 0 to-read stoners rise up 4.48 1992
author: Jack Herer
name: em
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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stoners rise up
]]> 57540 But why is it denied, and by whom? The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine offers an investigation of this mystery.]]> 320 Ilan Pappé 1851684670 em 0 to-read, history 4.54 2006
author: Ilan Pappé
name: em
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> 61420116 Killing Thatcher is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet � an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot.

In this fascinating and compelling book, veteran journalist Rory Carroll retraces the road to the infamous Brighton bombing in 1984 � an incident that shaped the political landscape in the UK for decades to come. He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 � for which the IRA took full responsibility � before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the ‘Troubles� in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. From that moment on Thatcher became an enemy of the IRA � and the organisation swore revenge.

Opening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt � with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks. On one side, an elite IRA team aided by a renegade priest, US-raised funds and Libya’s Qaddafi and on the other, intelligence officers, police detectives, informers and bomb disposal officers. An exciting narrative that blends true crime with political history, this is the first major book to investigate the Brighton attack.]]> 397 Rory Carroll 0593419499 em 0 to-read, history 4.24 2023
author: Rory Carroll
name: em
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
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]]> 53054943 The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States.

In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful.

In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.]]> 320 Vincent Bevins 1541742400 em 0 to-read, history 4.62 2020
author: Vincent Bevins
name: em
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2020
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]]> 51686708
In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines.

Offering a counter-history of how mass popular change has occurred, from the democratic revolutions overthrowing dictators to the movement against apartheid and for women’s suffrage, Malm argues that the strategic acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the only route for revolutionary change. In a braided narrative that moves from the forests of Germany and the streets of London to the deserts of Iraq, Malm offers us an incisive discussion of the politics and ethics of pacifism and violence, democracy and social change, strategy and tactics, and a movement compelled by both the heart and the mind. Here is how we fight in a world on fire.]]> 208 Andreas Malm 1839760257 em 0 to-read, activism 3.94 2021
author: Andreas Malm
name: em
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
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]]> 13207029 Kropotkin criticizes the effects of feudalism and capitalism, noting that both systems exacerbate poverty and promote privilege, even in times of abundance. Citing the human propensity toward voluntary cooperation, he proposes the establishment of free, self-sufficient anarchic communesand outlines practical considerations of production and distribution. The author supports his theories with examples from the French rebellions of 1789, 1848, and 1871, and his reasoning anticipates aspects of twentieth-century revolutions in Russia, Germany, and Spain. At a time when many thinkers employed the new Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest" to justify their capitalist and imperialist goals, Kropotkin pointed out the historic patterns of humanity's best success under cooperative circumstances. A century later, his economic analysis remains fresh and relevant.]]> 281 Pyotr Kropotkin 0486478505 em 0 4.00 1892
author: Pyotr Kropotkin
name: em
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1892
rating: 0
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]]> 319810
A calm but unflinching realist, Catton suggests that we cannot stop this wave - for we have already overshot the Earth's capacity to support so huge a load. He contradicts those scientists, engineers, and technocrats who continue to write optimistically about energy alternatives. Catton asserts that the technological panaceas proposed by those who would harvest from the seas, harness the winds, and farm the deserts are ignoring the fundamental premise that "the principals of ecology apply to all living things." These principles tell us that, within a finite system, economic expansion is not irreversible and population growth cannot continue indefinitely. If we disregard these facts, our sagging American Dream will soon shatter completely.]]> 320 William R. Catton Jr. 0252009886 em 0 to-read, activism 4.45 1980
author: William R. Catton Jr.
name: em
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> 11717355 0 Gene Sharp em 0 to-read, activism 4.00 1973
author: Gene Sharp
name: em
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
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]]> 1434797 275 Anne Collins 1550139320 em 0 3.69 1988
author: Anne Collins
name: em
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> 216425370 Little Red Barns is a groundbreaking investigation of factory farms and the unprecedented measures being taken to hide their impact � on animals, public health, and the environment � from the public.

Will Potter had planned to write a book about a troubling form of censorship, namely, a host of new "ag-gag" laws that criminalize photographers and journalists as terrorists for their efforts to expose abuses on factory farms. But his work soon expanded into a much larger investigation of a nexus of political corruption and corporate power that works to silence protest and to obscure reality with propaganda. What emerges is a chilling account of the secret campaigns of weaponized storytelling being used to prevent us from seeing the ecological, public health, and authoritarian threats that these farms represent.

Potter's journalistic practice of bearing witness took him to places he had never expected, from factory farms to fascist groups, from whistleblowing to censorship laws, political corruption and propaganda campaigns, and the book is an immersive, engaging personal account of the ups and downs of his journey. A well-woven tale of investigative reporting, archival research, photography, and memoir, Little Red Barns is about how the biggest industries on the planet hide from the public and secretly campaign to silence protest. The little red barns are a case study, and a warning for anyone concerned about the right to protest and hold corporations accountable.]]> 384 Will Potter 0872869148 em 0 to-read, animal-liberation 5.00
author: Will Potter
name: em
average rating: 5.00
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]]> 16086852
In some ways, this is the equivalent of Nihilist Communism for a green anarchist audience.]]> 68 Anonymous em 0 to-read, anarchism 3.73 2011
author: Anonymous
name: em
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 51660 For the first time in paperback, the counterculture manifesto on mind-altering drugs & hallucinogens. Illustrated.]]> 311 Terence McKenna 0553371304 em 0 to-read 4.13 1992
author: Terence McKenna
name: em
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1992
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]]> 114867 Preface
1 The Call of the Secret
2 Into the Devil's Paradise
3 Along a Ghostly Trail
4 Camped by a Doorway
5 A Brush with the Other
6 Kathmandu Interlude
7 A Violet Psychofluid
8 The Opus Clarified
9 A Conversation Over Saucers
10 More on the Opus
11 The Experiment at La Chorrera
12 In the Vortex
13 At Play in the Fields of the Lord
14 Looking Backward
15 A Saucer Full of Secrets
16 Return
17 Waltzing the Enigma
18 Say What Does It Mean?
19 The Coming of the Strophariad
20 The Hawaiian Connection
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Further Reading]]> 256 Terence McKenna 0062506528 em 0 to-read 4.10 1993
author: Terence McKenna
name: em
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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]]> 6561790
The Assassination of Fred Hampton is Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Hampton’s assassins, ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy. Not only a story of justice delivered, the book puts Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.]]> 424 Jeffrey Haas 1556527659 em 0 4.46 2009
author: Jeffrey Haas
name: em
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> 551926 Emma Goldman is often depicted in current academic discourse, and the “Left� in particular, as a role model for feminists and a champion of the proletariat. Keith Preston however in reviewing each chapter of Goldman’s most famous work “Anarchism and Other Essays� reveals that Emma Goldman often expressed ideas which many of her present day admirers will find surprising and unsettling. He highlights the fact that Emma Goldman distrusted the proletariat, wrote disdainfully of the early feminists who were her contemporaries, and expressed scepticism of women’s suffrage.
Keith Preston maintains that Emma Goldman can only be really understood by recognising her admiration for the ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (an admiration that she shared with Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists). He argues that Emma Goldman (as with Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra�) represents a model of a “superior individual� who is capable of rising above the herd instincts of the masses - one who never hesitated to countenance both the ire of public authorities and the scorn of public opinion. Politically correct she was not.]]> 271 Emma Goldman 0486224848 em 0 4.06 1910
author: Emma Goldman
name: em
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1910
rating: 0
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]]> 181110030
Berlin 1945. Following the fall of the Third Reich, drug use—long kept under control by the Nazis� strict anti-drug laws—is rampant throughout the city. Split into four sectors, Berlin's drug policies are being enforced under the individual jurisdictions of each allied power—the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the US. In the American zone, Arthur J. Giuliani of the nascent Federal Bureau of Narcotics is tasked with learning about the Nazis� anti-drug laws and bringing home anything that might prove “useful� to the United States.

Five years later, Harvard professor Dr. Henry Beecher began work with the US government to uncover the research behind the Nazis psychedelics program. Begun as an attempt to find a “truth serum� and experiment with mind control, the Nazi study initially involved mescaline, but quickly expanded to include LSD. Originally created for medical purposes by Swiss pharmaceutical Sandoz, the Nazis coopted the drug for their mind control military research—research that, following the war, the US was desperate to acquire. This research birthed MKUltra, the CIA's notorious brainwashing and psychological torture program during the 1950s and 1960s, and ultimately shaped US drug policy regarding psychedelics for over half a century.

Based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Tripped is a wild, unconventional postwar history, a spiritual sequel to Norman Ohler’s New York Times bestseller Blitzed. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis and the early days of drugs in America, Ohler shares how this secret history held back therapeutic research of psychedelic drugs for decades and eventually became part of the foundation of America’s War on Drugs.]]> 226 Norman Ohler 0358646502 em 0 3.84
author: Norman Ohler
name: em
average rating: 3.84
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]]> 970488
Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after September 11th, 2001.

Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported� and “immensely entertaining� in The New York Times.

The Wall Street Journal called it “truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.� Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.]]> 514 Tim Weiner 038551445X em 0 3.93 2007
author: Tim Weiner
name: em
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
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]]> 8791 232 Albert Hofmann 0966001982 em 0 to-read 4.24 1979
author: Albert Hofmann
name: em
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 342573 264 John D. Marks 0393307948 em 0 4.09 1979
author: John D. Marks
name: em
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read, casefiles-wip-research
review:

]]> 7442 416 Tom Wolfe 0553380648 em 0 to-read 3.93 1968
author: Tom Wolfe
name: em
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30841980 The definitive history of the military's decades-long investigation into mental powers and phenomena, from the author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Pentagon's Brain and international bestseller Area 51

This is a book about a team of scientists and psychics with top secret clearances.

For more than forty years, the U.S. government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to national security. The intelligence agencies and military services involved include CIA, DIA, NSA, DEA, the Navy, Air Force, and Army-and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Now, for the first time, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen tells the story of these radical, controversial programs, using never before seen declassified documents as well as exclusive interviews with, and unprecedented access to, more than fifty of the individuals involved. Speaking on the record, many for the first time, are former CIA and Defense Department scientists, analysts, and program managers, as well as the government psychics themselves.

Who did the U.S. government hire for these top secret programs, and how do they explain their military and intelligence work? How do scientists approach such enigmatic subject matter? What interested the government in these supposed powers and does the research continue? Phenomena is a riveting investigation into how far governments will go in the name of national security.]]> 544 Annie Jacobsen 0316349364 em 0 3.89 2017
author: Annie Jacobsen
name: em
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, casefiles-wip-research
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]]> 62816349 488 Zoe Baker 1849354987 em 0 to-read, poli-ed-reading-list 4.55 2023
author: Zoe Baker
name: em
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read, poli-ed-reading-list
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]]> 52893935
Why communism? The greater the triumph of global capitalism, the more its dangerous antagonisms multiply: climate collapse, the digital manipulation of our lives, the explosion in refugee numbers - all need a radical solution. That solution is a Left that dares to speak its name, to get its hands dirty in the real world of contemporary politics, not to sling its insults from the sidelines or to fight a culture war that is merely a fig leaf covering its political and economic failures. As the crises caused by contemporary capitalism accumulate at an alarming rate, the Left finds itself in crisis too, beset with competing ideologies and prone to populism, racism, and conspiracy theories.

A Left that Dares to Speak Its Name is ?i?ek's attempt to elucidate the major political issues of the day from a truly radical Leftist position. The first three parts explore the global political situation and the final part focuses on contemporary Western culture, as ?i?ek directs his polemic to topics such as wellness, Wikileaks, and the rights of sexbots. This wide-ranging collection of essays provides the perfect insight into the ideas of one of the most influential radical thinkers of our time.]]> 290 Slavoj Žižek 1509541187 em 0 to-read, poli-ed-reading-list 3.90 2020
author: Slavoj Žižek
name: em
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 41943878
Cora was born in a prison. But is this where she belongs?

Birmingham, 1885.

Born in a gaol and raised in a workhouse, Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside her.

Haunted by memories of a terrible crime, she seeks a new life working as a servant in the house of scientist Thomas Jerwood.

Here, Cora befriends a young girl, Violet, who seems to be the subject of a living experiment. But is Jerwood also secretly studying Cora�?

With the power and intrigue of Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions and Sarah Schmidt’s See What I Have Done, Carolyn Kirby’s stunning debut takes the reader on a heart-breaking journey through Victorian Birmingham and questions where we first learn violence: from our scars or from our hearts.]]> 320 Carolyn Kirby 0857302949 em 0 3.74 2019
author: Carolyn Kirby
name: em
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 43868109 The highly anticipated portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing.

The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions: Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing OxyContin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis.

Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.]]> 535 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385545681 em 0 4.54 2021
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: em
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 53398728 In the depths of war, she would defy the odds to help liberate a nation...a gripping historical novel based on a remarkable true story from the bestselling author of Hemingway's Girl

France, March 1944. Virginia Hall wasn't like the other young society women back home in Baltimore--she never wanted the debutante ball or silk gloves. Instead, she traded a safe life for adventure in Europe, and when her beloved second home is thrust into the dark days of war, she leaps in headfirst.

Once she's recruited as an Allied spy, subverting the Nazis becomes her calling. But even the most cunning agent can be bested, and in wartime trusting the wrong person can prove fatal. Virginia is haunted every day by the betrayal that ravaged her first operation, and will do everything in her power to avenge the brave people she lost.

While her future is anything but certain, this time more than ever Virginia knows that failure is not an option. Especially when she discovers what--and whom--she's truly protecting.

Listening length: 10 hours, 30 minutes]]> 353 Erika Robuck 0593102142 em 0 4.15 2021
author: Erika Robuck
name: em
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X em 0 3.71 2021
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: em
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 53152636
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 320 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0525620788 em 0 3.66 2020
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: em
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 22571552 290 Jon Ronson 1594487138 em 0 tbr-nonfiction 3.91 2015
author: Jon Ronson
name: em
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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shelves: tbr-nonfiction
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]]> 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

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

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

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles em 0 4.28 2016
author: Amor Towles
name: em
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee em 0 4.35 2017
author: Min Jin Lee
name: em
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> 40389527
Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.]]> 455 A.J. Finn em 0 3.94 2018
author: A.J. Finn
name: em
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> 375802
But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.]]> 324 Orson Scott Card 0812550706 em 0 4.31 1985
author: Orson Scott Card
name: em
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> 3109 What should we have for dinner? For omnivore like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma. When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffered by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.]]> 450 Michael Pollan 1594200823 em 0 4.18 2006
author: Michael Pollan
name: em
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
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]]> 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 em 0 wtf in a reading slump right now and the weird sexual fantasies in this book are creeping me out too much to finish. bruh]]> 4.14 2002
author: Haruki Murakami
name: em
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: wtf
review:
shelved: dnf-or-paused
in a reading slump right now and the weird sexual fantasies in this book are creeping me out too much to finish. bruh
]]> 10644930
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...]]> 849 Stephen King 1451627289 em 0 4.33 2011
author: Stephen King
name: em
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 20821029
With vivid descriptions of the battle of Towton, where 28,000 men died in a single morning, to Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was hacked down, this is the real story behind Shakespeare's famous history plays.]]> 392 Dan Jones 0670026670 em 0 tbr-nonfiction 4.25 2014
author: Dan Jones
name: em
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
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]]> 34484
And the Word was: "Hey, you!"

For Brutha the novice is the Chosen One. He wants peace and justice and brotherly love.

He also wants the Inquisition to stop torturing him now, please...]]> 389 Terry Pratchett 0552152978 em 0 atheism-humanism 4.32 1992
author: Terry Pratchett
name: em
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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shelves: atheism-humanism
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]]> 1097
Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.
(back cover)]]> 383 Eric Schlosser 0060838582 em 0 animal-liberation 3.75 2001
author: Eric Schlosser
name: em
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: animal-liberation
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]]> 393199 213 George Orwell 015626224X em 0 4.10 1933
author: George Orwell
name: em
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1933
rating: 0
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Is this fiction or nonfiction?? Help
]]> 216363
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.]]> 259 Philip K. Dick 0679740678 em 0 3.64 1962
author: Philip K. Dick
name: em
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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]]> 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 304 Ursula K. Le Guin em 0 4.11 1969
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: em
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X em 0 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: em
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> 248596 Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.

For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.

Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.]]> 293 Ray Bradbury 0380729407 em 0 3.91 1962
author: Ray Bradbury
name: em
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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my English teacher recommended me to read this
]]> 18521 A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.]]> 112 Virginia Woolf em 0 tbr-nonfiction 4.22 1929
author: Virginia Woolf
name: em
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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]]> 1566053
�ομίζω λοιπόν ότι ισχ�ει αυτό που ο ποιητής Σέλεϋ αποκαλο�σε αναγκαιότητα του αθεϊσμο�. Α�γά ή γ�ήγο�α θα π�έπει να πά�εις θέση. Είτε αποδίδεις την πα�ουσία σου εδώ στους νόμους της βιολογίας και της φυσικής είτε την αποδίδεις σε ένα θείο σχέδιο. (Μπο�είς να διακ�ίνεις τον φίλο από τον εχθ�ό από το πώς απαντο�ν σε αυτό το αναπόδ�αστο ε�ώτημα και από το πώς αντιμετωπίζουν τις επιπτώσεις του.) Κι ωστόσο, όπως και οι πιστοί, άπαξ και αποφασίσουμε, έχουμε ακόμη πολλή δουλειά μπ�οστά μας.»

Ο Κ�ίστοφε� Χίτσενς, που πέθανε τον Δεκέμβ�η του 2011, μας οδηγεί μες από την αγνωστικιστική και αντιθ�ησκευτική σκέψη πολλών αιώνων. Ο τόμος πε�ιλαμβάνει 45 κείμενα που συνιστο�ν τον κανόνα του αθεϊσμο�. Από τον Λουκ�ήτιο στον �τέιβιντ Χιουμ, από τον Τόμας Χομπς και τον Σπινόζα ως τον Σέλλεϋ και τον Κα�λ Μα�ξ, και από τον Δα�βίνο και τον Φ�όυντ ως τους νεότε�ους και σ�γχ�ονους μαχητικο�ς συνήγο�ους του αθεϊσμο�, τον Ρίτσα�ντ �τώκινς, τον �τάνιελ �τένετ, τον Μάικλ Σέ�με�, τον Σαμ Χά�ις, τον Ίαν Μακιο�αν, και πολλο�ς άλλους. Τα διαφωτιστικά όσο και απολαυστικά κείμενα της ανθολογίας, εμπλουτισμένα με τα εξαι�ετικά σχόλια του Κ�ίστοφε� Χίτσενς, ενδιαφέ�ουν όχι μόνο τον άθεο, τον αγνωστικιστή και τον πανθεϊστή, αλλά διεγεί�ουν την πε�ιέ�γεια ακόμη και του μονοθεϊστή αναγνώστη.]]> 525 Christopher Hitchens 0306816083 em 0 atheism-humanism, antitheism 4.02 2007
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: em
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: atheism-humanism, antitheism
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]]> 22245430
Williams argues that Operation Gladio soon gave rise to the toppling of governments, wholesale genocide, the formation of death squads, financial scandals on a grand scale, the creation of the mujahideen, an international narcotics network, and, most recently, the ascendancy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit cleric with strong ties to Operation Condor (an outgrowth of Gladio in Argentina) as Pope Francis I.

Sure to be controversial, Operation Gladio connects the dots in ways the mainstream media often overlooks.]]> 381 Paul L. Williams 1616149744 em 0 to-read 4.04 2015
author: Paul L. Williams
name: em
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 18617616
But there was a dark side to that scene as well.

Many didn't make it out alive, and many deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day. Far more integrated into the scene than most would like to admit was a guy by the name of Charles Manson, along with his murderous entourage. Also floating about the periphery were various political operatives, up-and-coming politicians and intelligence personnel—the same sort of people who gave birth to many of the rock stars populating the canyon. And all the canyon's colorful characters—rock stars, hippies, murderers and politicos—happily coexisted alongside a covert military installation.

Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon is the very strange, but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a hippie utopia.]]> 319 David McGowan 1909394122 em 0 to-read 3.58 2014
author: David McGowan
name: em
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read
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]]> 221057810 The New York Times bestselling author of The War on the West explains how no less than the future of the Western World is at stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Douglas Murray, #1 international bestselling author and renowned cultural commentator, confronts arguably the most pressing question of our Why are Western supporters of Palestine unwittingly aligning with an evil empire?

The campus left frames the violent hostilities as white colonialists committing genocide. Yet only a third of Israelis are Ashkenazi Jews of European ancestry. Murray argues that the conflict is not a simple tale of oppressor versus oppressed, but a clash between a thriving multi-racial democracy and a death cult bent on its destruction.

Drawing from intensive on-the-ground reporting in Israel and Gaza, Murray presents a compelling case that places the latest violence in its proper historical context. He takes readers on a harrowing journey through the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, piecing together the exclusive accounts from victims, survivors, and even the terrorists responsible for the atrocities.

On Democracies and Death Cults illustrates how Israel's commitment to fundamental Western values—capitalism, individual rights, democracy, and reason—has made it a beacon of progress in a region dominated by authoritarianism and extremism. Murray contrasts Israel’s principles with the ideology of Hamas, which openly proclaims its love of death over life. If left unchecked, Murray argues, this misplaced Western sympathy could embolden forces that seek to undermine democratic values and perpetuate a culture of violence.

Deeply reasoned, clear-eyed, and grounded in fact, On Democracy and Death Cults is a gripping and essential read for all who seek to understand the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its implications for the future of democracy both here and abroad—and for the world itself.]]> 240 Douglas Murray 0063437139 em 1 4.31 2025
author: Douglas Murray
name: em
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 1
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What kind of person, upon seeing the charred bodies of children, journalists burning alive, people thrown in the air from shelling, upon seeing the death toll of 52,000+ Palestinians vs less than 2000 Israelis, thinks: "Well, since college kids scare me I just have to read this book by a smarmy racist about how actually the country which every independent human rights organization accuses of genocide, can actually do no wrong, and also, those dead kids deserved it"
]]> 55835474
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.

Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...

With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.]]> 256 Rachel Yoder 0385546815 em 0 currently-reading 3.46 2021
author: Rachel Yoder
name: em
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 39216527 A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery

Jo is in a strange new country for university, and having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive. Jo’s sensitivity, and all her senses, become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, and dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.

This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval, presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.]]> 160 Jenny Hval em 0 to-read 3.49 2009
author: Jenny Hval
name: em
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61324696
We would not be born out of sweetness, we were born out of rage, we felt it in our bones.

In Falls Landing, Florida—a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers—something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they see will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Through a darkly beautiful and brutally compelling lens, Dizz Tate captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood. Brutes is a novel about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the "we" of young friendship, and the moment it is broken forever.]]> 304 Dizz Tate 1646221672 em 0 to-read 3.16 2023
author: Dizz Tate
name: em
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever�

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]> 352 Oisín McKenna 0063319977 em 0 to-read 3.77 2024
author: Oisín McKenna
name: em
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 203579085 From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world

It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.

More estranged than ever, the sisters� lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters� lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.]]> 291 Julia Armfield 125034431X em 0 to-read 3.58 2024
author: Julia Armfield
name: em
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 224070664
For fans of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and Lisa Taddeo's Animal, Shy Girl is a harrowing tale of girlhood, survival, autonomy, and revenge.]]> 247 Mia Ballard em 0 to-read 3.97 2025
author: Mia Ballard
name: em
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 412732 On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums is sparked by Kerouac's expansiveness, humor, and a contagious zest for life.]]> 244 Jack Kerouac em 0 to-read 3.94 1958
author: Jack Kerouac
name: em
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6870 Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in de-familiarisation. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye. --Alex Freeman

]]> 245 Ian McEwan 0099481243 em 0 to-read 3.65 1997
author: Ian McEwan
name: em
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53146675 From National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Ariel Sabar, the gripping true story of a sensational religious forgery and the scandal that engulfed Harvard.

In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star professor at Harvard Divinity School, announced a blockbuster discovery at a scholarly conference just steps from the Vatican: She had found an ancient fragment of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene "my wife." The tattered manuscript made international headlines. If early Christians believed Jesus was married, it would upend the 2,000-year history of the world's predominant faith, threatening not just the celibate, all-male priesthood but sacred teachings on marriage, sex and women's leadership. Biblical scholars were in an uproar, but King had impeccable credentials as a world-renowned authority on female figures in the lost Christian texts from Egypt known as the Gnostic gospels. "The Gospel of Jesus's Wife"--as she provocatively titled her discovery--was both a crowning career achievement and powerful proof for her arguments that Christianity from its start embraced alternative, and far more inclusive, voices.

As debates over the manuscript's authenticity raged, award-winning journalist Ariel Sabar set out to investigate a baffling mystery: where did this tiny scrap of papyrus come from? His search for answers is an international detective story--leading from the factory districts of Berlin to the former headquarters of the East German Stasi before winding up in rural Florida, where he discovered an internet pornographer with a prophetess wife, a fascination with the Pharaohs and a tortured relationship with the Catholic Church.]]> 416 Ariel Sabar 0385542585 em 0 to-read 4.09 2020
author: Ariel Sabar
name: em
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 48890225 A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.]]> 337 Torrey Peters 0593133374 em 0 to-read 3.94 2021
author: Torrey Peters
name: em
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62898932 Do you know what happened already?
Did you know her?
Did you see it on the internet?
Did you listen to a podcast?
Did the hosts make jokes?

Did you see the pictures of the body?

Did you look for them?

It's been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time.

That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the 'definitive account' of the murder - and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.

The only question is: how much of it is true?]]> 336 Eliza Clark 0571371795 em 4 disturbing, lit-fic, wtf
]]> 3.87 2023
author: Eliza Clark
name: em
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: disturbing, lit-fic, wtf
review:
Wow, I have a lot to say... so I wrote a blog review for the first time in for fucking ever:


]]> 201033505
A woman welcomes a parasite into her body.

A teenager longs for perfect skin.

A scientist tends to fragile alien flora.

A young man takes the night into his own hands.

Unsettling, revelatory, and laced with her signature dark humor, Eliza Clark’s debut short story collection plumbs the depths of that most basic human feeling: hunger.]]> 240 Eliza Clark 0063393263 em 0 to-read 3.80 2024
author: Eliza Clark
name: em
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 45289222 Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

Blindsided by her mother's sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she's been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey's fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

Writers & Lovers follows Casey--a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist--in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King's trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.]]> 320 Lily King em 0 to-read 3.98 2020
author: Lily King
name: em
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33586715
With his trademark wicked wit, Vonnegut addresses memory, suicide, the Great Depression, the loss of American eloquence, and the obsolescent thrill of reading books.]]> 276 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0795318642 em 0 to-read 3.80 1997
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: em
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 46000520
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

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

Alternate cover edition can be found here .]]> 382 Richard Osman em 4 3.86 2020
author: Richard Osman
name: em
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
review:
This was like the pinnacle of "cozy mystery". A ragtag bunch of british old people using their free time to solve murders.
]]> 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 em 0 to-read 4.11 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: em
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 9913 “Impeccable . . . cold and pitiless and modern.� �The Village Voice

“Compelling and scary. A political thriller bursting with conspiracies, double agents and international terrorism. Glamorama is like a Semtex attack on our superficialities.� �The Face

The author of American Psycho continues to shock and haunt us with his incisive and brilliant dissection of the modern world. In his most ambitious and gripping book yet, Bret Easton Ellis delivers a gripping and brilliant dissection of our celebrity-obsessed culture.

Victor Ward, a twenty-something model in fashion- and celebrity-obsessed Manhattan, is gradually, imperceptibly drawn into a shadowy looking-glass of that society, there and in London and Paris, and then finds himself trapped on the other side, in a much darker place where fame and terrorism and family and politics are inextricably linked and sometimes indistinguishable. At once implicated and horror-stricken, his ways of escape blocked at every turn, he ultimately discovers—back on the other, familiar side—that there was no mirror, no escape, no world but this one in which hotels implode and planes fall from the sky.]]> 546 Bret Easton Ellis 0375703845 em 3 3.55 1998
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: em
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: lit-fic, nihilism-absurdism-existentialism, wtf, writing-inspo, disturbing
review:
he described a plane crash so beautifully ? + wtf
]]> 36373223 The Middlesteins), about a cleaning lady on a quest for self-acceptance after her relationship with a loveable junkie goes awry.

Jen Beagin’s quirky, moving, “frank and unflinching� (Josh Ferris) debut novel introduces an unforgettable character, Mona—almost twenty-four, emotionally adrift, and cleaning houses to get by. Handing out clean needles to drug addicts, she falls for a recipient she calls Mr. Disgusting, who proceeds to break her heart in unimaginable ways.

In search of healing, Mona decamps to Taos, New Mexico, for a fresh start, where she finds a community of seekers and cast-offs, all of whom have one or two things to teach her—the pajama-wearing, blissed-out New Agers, the slightly creepy client with peculiar tastes in controlled substances, the psychic who might really be psychic. But always lurking just beneath the surface are her memories of growing up in a chaotic, destructive family from which she’s trying to disentangle herself, and the larger legacy of the past she left behind.

The story of Mona’s journey to find her place in this working-class American world is at once hilarious and wonderfully strange, true to life and boldly human, and introduces a stunningly one-of-a-kind new voice in American fiction.]]> 240 Jen Beagin 1501183931 em 4 very ottessa mossfegh -esque 3.72 2015
author: Jen Beagin
name: em
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: disturbing, wtf, writing-inspo
review:
very ottessa mossfegh -esque
]]> 17286725 A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today's world

During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.

John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?

The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies—many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country's role in the world.

Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran.

The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013]]> 416 Stephen Kinzer 0805094970 em 0 to-read 4.08 2013
author: Stephen Kinzer
name: em
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43565322 The bestselling author of All the Shah's Men and The Brothers tells the astonishing story of the man who oversaw the CIA's secret drug and mind-control experiments of the 1950s and '60s.

The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA's master magician and gentlehearted torturer--the agency's "poisoner in chief." As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace--including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs. His experiments spread LSD across the United States, making him a hidden godfather of the 1960s counterculture. For years he was the chief supplier of spy tools used by CIA officers around the world.



Stephen Kinzer, author of groundbreaking books about U.S. clandestine operations, draws on new documentary research and original interviews to bring to life one of the most powerful unknown Americans of the twentieth century. Gottlieb's reckless experiments on "expendable" human subjects destroyed many lives, yet he considered himself deeply spiritual. He lived in a remote cabin without running water, meditated, and rose before dawn to milk his goats.

During his twenty-two years at the CIA, Gottlieb worked in the deepest secrecy. Only since his death has it become possible to piece together his astonishing career at the intersection of extreme science and covert action. Poisoner in Chief reveals him as a clandestine conjurer on an epic scale.]]> 355 Stephen Kinzer 1250140439 em 0 4.09 2019
author: Stephen Kinzer
name: em
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: casefiles-wip-research, currently-reading
review:

]]> 5128 The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell , both of which became essential for the counterculture during the 1960s and influenced a generation's perception of life.]]> 187 Aldous Huxley 0060595183 em 0 currently-reading 3.95 1956
author: Aldous Huxley
name: em
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 4031 Lunar Park, is a writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed, he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father. After a decade of decadence, a chance for salvation arrives; the chance to reconnect with an actress he was once involved with, and their son. But almost immediately his new life is threatened by a freak sequence of events and a bizarre series of murders that all seem to connect to Ellis’s past.

Reality, memoir, and fantasy combine to create not only a fascinating version of this most controversial writer but also a deeply moving novel about love and loss, parents and children, and ultimately forgiveness.]]> 404 Bret Easton Ellis 0375727272 em 0 to-read 3.65 2005
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: em
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32279524
The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives to German soldiers.

In fact, troops were encouraged, and in some cases ordered, to take rations of a form of crystal meth—the elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Hitler himself became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs—ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin—administered by his personal doctor.

Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows.]]> 306 Norman Ohler em 4 tbr-immediate 4.06 2015
author: Norman Ohler
name: em
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: tbr-immediate
review:

]]> 46347
Operation Ajax, as the plot was code-named, reshaped the history of Iran, the Middle East, and the world. It restored Mohammad Reza Shah to the Peacock Throne, allowing him to impose a tyranny that ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Islamic Revolution, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection."It is not far-fetched," Kinzer asserts in this book, "to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."Drawing on research in the United States and Iran, and using material from a long-secret CIA report, Kinzer explains the background of the coup and tells how it was carried out. It is a cloak-and-dagger story of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents. There are accounts of bribes, staged riots, suitcases full of cash, and midnight meetings between the Shah and CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, who was smuggled in and out of the royal palace under a blanket in the back seat of a car. Roosevelt,the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, was a real-life James Bond in an era when CIA agents operated mainly by their wits. After his first coup attempt failed, he organized a second attempt that succeeded three days later.The colorful cast of characters includes the terrified young Shah, who fled his country at the first sign of trouble; General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, father of the Gulf War commander and the radio voice of "Gang Busters," who flew to Tehran on a secret mission that helped set the coup in motion; and the fiery Prime Minister Mossadegh, who outraged the West by nationalizing the immensely profitable Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The British, outraged by the seizure of their oil company, persuaded President Dwight Eisenhower that Mossadegh was leading Iran toward Communism. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain became the coup's main sponsors.

Brimming with insights into Middle Eastern history and American foreign policy, this book is an eye-opening look at an event whose unintended consequences - Islamic revolution and violent anti-Americanism--have shaped the modern world. As the United States assumes an ever-widening role in the Middle East, it is essential reading.]]> 272 Stephen Kinzer 0471678783 em 0 to-read 4.28 2003
author: Stephen Kinzer
name: em
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55165263 4 Hernando Téllez em 0 3.79
author: Hernando Téllez
name: em
average rating: 3.79
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 50997978
Within these pages, she reveals the extremists hiding in plain sight online: Incels. White nationalists. White supremacists. National Socialists. Proud Boys. Christian extremists. In order to showcase them in their natural habitat, Talia assumes a range of identities, going undercover as a blonde Nazi babe, a forlorn incel, and a violent Aryan femme fatale. Along the way, she discovers a whites-only dating site geared toward racists looking for love, a disturbing extremist YouTube channel run by a fourteen-year-old girl with over 800,000 followers, the everyday heroes of the antifascist movement, and much more.

By combining compelling stories chock-full of catfishing and gate-crashing with her own in-depth, gut-wrenching research, she also turns the lens of anti-Semitism, racism, and white power back on itself in an attempt to dismantle and decimate the online hate movement from within. Culture Warlords explores some of the vilest subcultures on the Web-and shows us how we can fight back.]]> 288 Talia Lavin 0306846438 em 3
I also was left unsatisfied because I think that the book could have done a lot more delving into the psychology of racism, political extremism, and how people become radicalized. There is a section about the much spoken about alt-right pipeline (which as a teen I made it partway down, regretfully, but fortunately I had enough of a moral compass and sanity to not follow it all the way to its horrendous endpoint. I disembarked somewhere around the realm of Ben Shapiro). I wanted more exploration of how hateful viewpoints are laundered by "centrists" and "sane conservatives" of the variety I used to watch in my more naive years, because it is a pernicious and pervasive force that we can see the effects of in the 2024 election. (of course, I know this book was written before that)

Overall though, this book demonstrated remarkable resilience on Lavin's part-- honestly, I don't think I would be able to handle reading such horrendous statements about myself in these unsavorable telegram channels. I also liked the connections she drew between the incel and tradcath movements and how these ideologies usually lead towards the gravitational pull of white supremacy.

I also appreciated the discussion of the paradox of tolerance-- the idea that intolerant ideas should not be tolerated by a tolerant society, because their ability to spread jeopradizes the very tolerance of that society-- since it is part of the reason my former "free speech absolutist" standpoint dissolved. Frankly, humans just aren't fundamentally rational enough for the best idea to always win out in the "marketplace of ideas." It's never the best idea that people believe; it's the one with the best rhetoric, the one that appeals to their psychological hangups. And as we have seen time and time again, tribalist and violent ideologies are like catnip to humans in large groups. ]]> 3.85 2020
author: Talia Lavin
name: em
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: tbr-nonfiction, politics, disturbing
review:
A short but heavy read. Lavin's investigative journalism into the seedy corners of the white supremacist internet is disturbing and eye-opening at once. Her prose is cutting and clever, but the book also could have used more editing as there were certain statements that were repeated in different places, such as the definition of the term incel, the backstory of one of the white supremacist websites, etc.

I also was left unsatisfied because I think that the book could have done a lot more delving into the psychology of racism, political extremism, and how people become radicalized. There is a section about the much spoken about alt-right pipeline (which as a teen I made it partway down, regretfully, but fortunately I had enough of a moral compass and sanity to not follow it all the way to its horrendous endpoint. I disembarked somewhere around the realm of Ben Shapiro). I wanted more exploration of how hateful viewpoints are laundered by "centrists" and "sane conservatives" of the variety I used to watch in my more naive years, because it is a pernicious and pervasive force that we can see the effects of in the 2024 election. (of course, I know this book was written before that)

Overall though, this book demonstrated remarkable resilience on Lavin's part-- honestly, I don't think I would be able to handle reading such horrendous statements about myself in these unsavorable telegram channels. I also liked the connections she drew between the incel and tradcath movements and how these ideologies usually lead towards the gravitational pull of white supremacy.

I also appreciated the discussion of the paradox of tolerance-- the idea that intolerant ideas should not be tolerated by a tolerant society, because their ability to spread jeopradizes the very tolerance of that society-- since it is part of the reason my former "free speech absolutist" standpoint dissolved. Frankly, humans just aren't fundamentally rational enough for the best idea to always win out in the "marketplace of ideas." It's never the best idea that people believe; it's the one with the best rhetoric, the one that appeals to their psychological hangups. And as we have seen time and time again, tribalist and violent ideologies are like catnip to humans in large groups.
]]> 194803883 The riveting story of five families shattered by pernicious, pervasive conspiracy theories, and how we might set ourselves free from a crisis that could haunt American life for generations.

“SHED MY DNA�: three excruciating words uttered by a QAnon-obsessed mother, once a highly respected lawyer, to her only son, once the closest person in her life. QAnon beliefs and adjacent conspiracy theories have had devastating political consequences as they’ve exploded in popularity. What’s often overlooked is the lasting havoc they wreak on our society at its most basic and intimate level—the family.

In The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter Jesselyn Cook paints a harrowing portrait of the vulnerabilities that have left so many of us susceptible to outrageous falsehoods promising order, purpose, and control. Braided throughout are the stories of five American families: an elderly couple whose fifty-year romance takes a heartbreaking turn; millennial sisters of color who grew up in dire poverty—one to become a BLM activist, the other, a hardcore conspiracy theorist pulling her little boy down the rabbit hole with her; a Bay Area hippie-type and her business-executive fiancé, who must decide whether to stay with her as she turns into a stranger before his eyes; evangelical parents whose simple life in a sleepy suburb spirals into delusion-fueled chaos; and a rural mother-son duo who, after carrying each other through unspeakable tragedy, stop speaking at all as ludicrous untruths shatter a bond long thought unbreakable.

Charting the arc of each believer’s path from their first intersection with conspiracy theories to the depths of their cultish conviction, to—in some cases—their rejection of disinformation and the mending of fractured relationships, Cook offers a rare, intimate look into the psychology of how and why ordinary people come to believe the unbelievable. Profound, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, The Quiet Damage lays bare how we have been taken hostage by grifters peddling lies built on false hope—and how we might release our loved ones, and ourselves, from their grasp.]]> 250 Jesselyn Cook 059344325X em 0 to-read 4.46 2024
author: Jesselyn Cook
name: em
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199798813 This tour de force of investigative journalism—in the vein of The Next Civil War and Why We’re Polarized—depicts the United States of America as a country at a crossroads with the battle between the right and left spilling out from the darkest corners of the internet into the real world with often tragic consequences. Award-winning journalist and CNN correspondent Elle Reeve was not surprised by the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With years of in-depth research and probing interviews under her belt, Reeve was aware of the preoccupations of the online far right and their journey from the computer to QAnon, militias, and racist groups. At the same time, Reeve saw a parallel growth of counterforces, with citizen vigilantes using new tools and tactics to take down the far right. This ongoing battle, long fought mainly on the internet, has spilled out into the real world with greater and greater frequency, culminating in the attempted coup on January 6th. Combining her years of on-the-ground reporting, Reeve clearly illustrates this shocking sweep of violence, where this cultural shift came from, and where it is going. She also introduces us to a shocking but powerful cast of characters, such as the creator of 8chan—an online hub for conspiracies and misogynistic rhetoric—and the white power leader who is still pulling the strings from a prison cell. Uncovering the hidden links between these events and how we can prevent further upheavals of this nature, Black Pill is a necessary read for any supporter of democracy.]]> 304 Elle Reeve 1982198885 em 0 to-read 4.18 2024
author: Elle Reeve
name: em
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61986136 A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.

With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline's The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.]]> 304 Emma Cline 0812998626 em 3 lit-fic, sad-girl-reads 3.29 2023
author: Emma Cline
name: em
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: lit-fic, sad-girl-reads
review:
meandering, mundane, a woman who wanders around leeching off rich people, before having a fling with a *child*
]]> 45754981 From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events–a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients� accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.]]> 307 Emily St. John Mandel 0525521143 em 4 lit-fic 3.66 2020
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: em
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: lit-fic
review:
meandering yet gripping... Emily St. John Mandel's talent is weaving together multiple people and stories whose intersection create an emergent tapestry of a narrative
]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 em 5
Doppelganger tackles a wide variety of topics-- it is an ambitious book, and I wasn't sure where it was going for a while. Klein uses the motif of the doppelganger, the double, to expand upon several concepts relevant to our society. The literal doppelganger for Klein is another journalist named Naomi-- Naomi Wolfe, who believe it or not I did not know existed. (So if it's any consolation, Naomi Klein, you were the only journalist Naomi that I was personally aware of!).

Unlike Klein, who is a leftist journalist who writes about corporate misuse of power, Wolfe has in recent years become a public conspiracy theorist and general right wing nutjob, both qualities which made being mistaken for Wolfe very embarassing.

Klein uses the doppleganger motif to make several extremely well-explained points about our current society, such as:

- the misplaced anger of conspiracy theorists. Their grievances, in many cases, are shared amongst many, but the people they blame-- the "deep state", the demonic democrats, and, the perennial scapegoats, Jewish people-- are entirely the wrong targets. They are so close to getting it, to realizing that there is a "conspiracy" under foot, a conspiracy to consolidate power and wealth, at the expense of the people and the planet, but the conspiracy is planned and executed by those with the true power in society. Not minorities, not the Jews, but large corporations, shadowy oligarchs, and the general interests of capital. This realization, actually, was what drew me out from under the spell of capitalism-- the realization that money is power in our system, and the age-old adage to "follow the money" is how the source of real power can be located.

"Shit", I thought at 18, finally extricating myself from the youtube feed full of Ben Shapiro and reacting to woke tiktoks that had lobotomized my younger self, "all of this stuff is a nonissue isn't it... all of these people are funded by Big Oil... it's all a distraction." And so began my radicalization into the commie hippie I am today.

“In the Mirror World, conspiracy theories detract attention from the billionaires who fund the networks of misinformation and away from the economic policies—deregulation, privatization, austerity—that have stratified wealth so cataclysmically in the neoliberal era. They rile up anger about the Davos elites, at Big Tech and Big Pharma—but the rage never seems to reach those targets. Instead it gets diverted into culture wars about anti-racist education, all-gender bathrooms, and Great Replacement panic directed at Black people, nonwhite immigrants, and Jews. Meanwhile, the billionaires who bankroll the whole charade are safe in the knowledge that the fury coursing through our culture isn’t coming for them.�

In "the mirror world", as Klein calls it, this is not the case. No, it's not capitalism, it's the communists, the Jews, the satanist cabal of politicians. They're so close to getting it, until they go off the deep end into unfounded conspiracy theories.

- the "diagonalist" alliance between alternative health gurus and the far-right, particularly around the topic of COVID, and how the sentiment of allowing the pandemic to run its course with no consideration for those with weakened immune systems holds parallels to eugenics

- the commercialization of everything personal coinciding with the birth of the "influencer"

- the ways in which we turn a blind eye to the "shadow world", the sinister flip side to western capitalism-- the exploitation of workers and the global south, the suffering of animals in factory farms, and the destruction of the only planet we call home.

Though the book covers an astounding amount of territory and cultural, political and economic commentary, it manages to end on a note of hope, of optimism for humanity's ability to shake off the blinders and create a better world. I can only hope we take up the mantel.

“Our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives. It’s to maximize (protect, regenerate) all of life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to make sure that life survives; not to chase clout, but to chase life.�



]]> 4.21 2023
author: Naomi Klein
name: em
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: anarchism, politics, socialism-leftism
review:
I listened to this book while on a bus to New York City (at least until Spotify informed me I ran out of free audiobook listening hours, which was interesting since I literally pay that service $10 a month, but I digress). Fortunately I was able to finish it using the services of the good old-fashioned library.

Doppelganger tackles a wide variety of topics-- it is an ambitious book, and I wasn't sure where it was going for a while. Klein uses the motif of the doppelganger, the double, to expand upon several concepts relevant to our society. The literal doppelganger for Klein is another journalist named Naomi-- Naomi Wolfe, who believe it or not I did not know existed. (So if it's any consolation, Naomi Klein, you were the only journalist Naomi that I was personally aware of!).

Unlike Klein, who is a leftist journalist who writes about corporate misuse of power, Wolfe has in recent years become a public conspiracy theorist and general right wing nutjob, both qualities which made being mistaken for Wolfe very embarassing.

Klein uses the doppleganger motif to make several extremely well-explained points about our current society, such as:

- the misplaced anger of conspiracy theorists. Their grievances, in many cases, are shared amongst many, but the people they blame-- the "deep state", the demonic democrats, and, the perennial scapegoats, Jewish people-- are entirely the wrong targets. They are so close to getting it, to realizing that there is a "conspiracy" under foot, a conspiracy to consolidate power and wealth, at the expense of the people and the planet, but the conspiracy is planned and executed by those with the true power in society. Not minorities, not the Jews, but large corporations, shadowy oligarchs, and the general interests of capital. This realization, actually, was what drew me out from under the spell of capitalism-- the realization that money is power in our system, and the age-old adage to "follow the money" is how the source of real power can be located.

"Shit", I thought at 18, finally extricating myself from the youtube feed full of Ben Shapiro and reacting to woke tiktoks that had lobotomized my younger self, "all of this stuff is a nonissue isn't it... all of these people are funded by Big Oil... it's all a distraction." And so began my radicalization into the commie hippie I am today.

“In the Mirror World, conspiracy theories detract attention from the billionaires who fund the networks of misinformation and away from the economic policies—deregulation, privatization, austerity—that have stratified wealth so cataclysmically in the neoliberal era. They rile up anger about the Davos elites, at Big Tech and Big Pharma—but the rage never seems to reach those targets. Instead it gets diverted into culture wars about anti-racist education, all-gender bathrooms, and Great Replacement panic directed at Black people, nonwhite immigrants, and Jews. Meanwhile, the billionaires who bankroll the whole charade are safe in the knowledge that the fury coursing through our culture isn’t coming for them.�

In "the mirror world", as Klein calls it, this is not the case. No, it's not capitalism, it's the communists, the Jews, the satanist cabal of politicians. They're so close to getting it, until they go off the deep end into unfounded conspiracy theories.

- the "diagonalist" alliance between alternative health gurus and the far-right, particularly around the topic of COVID, and how the sentiment of allowing the pandemic to run its course with no consideration for those with weakened immune systems holds parallels to eugenics

- the commercialization of everything personal coinciding with the birth of the "influencer"

- the ways in which we turn a blind eye to the "shadow world", the sinister flip side to western capitalism-- the exploitation of workers and the global south, the suffering of animals in factory farms, and the destruction of the only planet we call home.

Though the book covers an astounding amount of territory and cultural, political and economic commentary, it manages to end on a note of hope, of optimism for humanity's ability to shake off the blinders and create a better world. I can only hope we take up the mantel.

“Our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives. It’s to maximize (protect, regenerate) all of life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to make sure that life survives; not to chase clout, but to chase life.�




]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 em 0 to-read inner teenage me is losing her shit ]]> 4.60 2025
author: Suzanne Collins
name: em
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:
um, i've fallen off-- how did i not know that this is coming out?
inner teenage me is losing her shit
]]> 24723229
America’s greatest untold story: the United States� rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on revelatory new materials—including newly discovered U.S. government documents, U.S. and European intelligence sources, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles’s wife and mistress, and exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials—Talbot reveals the underside of one of America’s most powerful and influential figures.

Dulles’s decade as the director of the CIA—which he used to further his public and private agendas—were dark times in American politics. Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly countries,� Dulles saw himself as above the elected law, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy elite he counted as his friends and clients—colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Mafiosi in the process. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

An exposé of American power that is as disturbing as it is timely, The Devil’s Chessboard is a provocative and gripping story of the rise of the national security state—and the battle for America’s soul.]]> 704 David Talbot 0062276166 em 0 to-read 4.32 2015
author: David Talbot
name: em
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43015073
In 1999, when Tom O'Neill was assigned a magazine piece about the thirtieth anniversary of the Manson murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Weren't the facts indisputable? Charles Manson had ordered his teenage followers to commit seven brutal murders, and in his thrall, they'd gladly complied. But when O'Neill began reporting the story, he kept finding holes in the prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's narrative, long enshrined in the best-selling Helter Skelter. Before long, O'Neill had questions about everything from the motive to the manhunt. Though he'd never considered himself a conspiracy theorist, the Manson murders swallowed the next two decades of his career. He was obsessed.

Searching but never speculative, CHAOS follows O'Neill's twenty-year effort to rebut the "official" story behind Manson. Who were his real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement act on their many chances to stop him? And how did he turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's hunt for answers leads him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from the Summer of Love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with cover-ups and coincidences.

Featuring hundreds of new interviews and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. In those two dark nights in Los Angeles, O'Neill finds the story of California in the sixties: when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia-or dystopia-was just an acid trip away.



]]> 504 Tom O'Neill 0316477575 em 0 to-read 4.04 2019
author: Tom O'Neill
name: em
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 86147 Bright Lights, Big City in 1984, Jay McInerney became a literary sensation, heralded as the voice of a generation. The novel follows a young man, living in Manhattan as if he owned it, through nightclubs, fashion shows, editorial offices, and loft parties as he attempts to outstrip mortality and the recurring approach of dawn. With nothing but goodwill, controlled substances, and wit to sustain him in this anti-quest, he runs until he reaches his reckoning point, where he is forced to acknowledge loss and, possibly, to rediscover his better instincts. This remarkable novel of youth and New York remains one of the most beloved, imitated, and iconic novels in America.]]> 208 Jay McInerney em 0 to-read 3.80 1984
author: Jay McInerney
name: em
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207567756 An investigation into the rise of the Christian right over the last half-century that lays out the grim vision Evangelicals are enforcing on our democracy.

All across America, a storm is gathering: from book bans in school libraries to anti-trans laws in state legislatures; firebombings of abortion clinics and protests against gay rights. The Christian Right, a cunning political force in America for more than half a century, has never been more powerful than it is right now—it propelled Donald Trump to power, and it won’t stop until it’s refashioned America in its own image.

In Wild Faith, critically acclaimed author Talia Lavin goes deep into what motivates the Christian Right, from its segregationist past to a future riddled with apocalyptic ideology.

Using primary sources and firsthand accounts, Lavin introduces you to “deliverance ministers� who carry out exorcisms by the hundreds; modern-day, self-proclaimed prophets and apostles; Christian militias, cults, zealots, and showmen; and the people in power who are aiding them to achieve their goals.

Along the way, she explores anti-abortion terrorists, the Christian Patriarchy movement, with its desire to place all women under absolute male control; the twisted theology that leads to rampant child abuse; and the ways conspiracy theorists and extremist Christians influence each other to mutual political benefit.

From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.]]> 304 Talia Lavin 0306829193 em 0 to-read 4.25
author: Talia Lavin
name: em
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 128713530 The Simple Art of Killing a Woman vividly conjures the epidemic of femicide in Brazil, the power women can hold in the face of overwhelming male violence, the resilience of community despite state-sponsored degradation, and the potential of the jungle to save us all.

To escape her newly aggressive lover, a young lawyer accepts an assignment in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. There, she meets Carla, a local prosecutor, and Marcos, the son of an indigenous woman, and learns about the rampant attacks on the region’s women, which have grown so commonplace that the cases quickly fill her large notebook. What she finds in the jungle is not only persistent racism, patriarchy, and deforestation, but a deep longing for answers to her enigmatic past. Through the ritual use of ayahuasca, she meets a chorus of Icamiabas, warrior women bent on vengeance―and gradually, she recovers the details of her own mother’s early death.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman resists categorization: it is a series of prose poems lamenting the real-life women murdered by so many men in Brazil; a personal search for history, truth, and belonging; and a modern, exacting, and sometimes fantastical take on very old problems that, despite our better selves, dog us the world over.]]> 272 Patrícia Melo 1632063468 em 0 to-read 4.22 2019
author: Patrícia Melo
name: em
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61774690
Combining elements of neo-noir, speculative fiction, and '80s detective shows, FLUX is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

In FLUX, a brilliant debut in the vein of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Ling Ma’s Severance, Jinwoo Chong introduces us to three characters —Bo, Brandon and Blue� who are tortured by these questions as their lives spin out of control.

* After 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, his white father, attempting to hold their lives together, begins to gradually retreat from the family.

* 28-year-old Brandon loses his job at a legacy magazine publisher and is offered a new position. Confused to find himself in an apartment he does not recognize, and an office he sometimes cannot remember leaving, he comes to suspect that something far more sinister is happening behind the walls.

* 48-year-old Blue participates in a television exposé of Flux, a failed bioelectric tech startup whose fraudulent activity eventually claimed the lives of three people and nearly killed him. Blue, who can only speak with the aid of cybernetic implants, stalks his old manager while holding his estranged family at arms-length.

Intertwined with the saga of a once-iconic '80s detective show, Raider, whose star has fallen after decades of concealed abuse, the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue intersect with each other, to the extent that it becomes clear that their lives are more interconnected and interdependent than the reader could have ever imagined.

Can we ever really change the past, or the future? What truth do we owe our families? What truth do we owe ourselves?]]> 341 Jinwoo Chong 1685890342 em 0 to-read 3.33 2023
author: Jinwoo Chong
name: em
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>