en-US Wed, 07 May 2025 00:24:40 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 213870083 A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,�� a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,�� a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,�� Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.

Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.]]> 320 Curtis Sittenfeld 0593446739 Jeff 0 currently-reading 3.92 2025
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 52255586
Winona Cole, an orphaned child of the Lakota Indians, finds herself growing up in an unconventional household on a farm in West Tennessee. Raised by her adoptive father John Cole and his brother-in-arms Thomas McNulty, this odd little family scrapes a living on Lige Magan’s farm with the help two freed slaves, the Bougereau siblings. They try to keep the brutal outside world at bay, along with their memories of the past. But Tennessee is a state still riven by the bitter legacy of the civil war and when first Winona and then Tennyson Bouguereau are violently attacked by forces unknown, Colonel Purton raises the Militia to quell the rebels and night-riders who are massing on the outskirts of town. Armed with a knife, Tennyson’s borrowed gun and the courage of her famous warrior mother Winona decides to take matters into her own hands and embarks on a quest for justice which will uncover the dark secrets of her past and finally reveal to her who she really is. Exquisitely written and thrumming with the irrepressible spirit of a young girl on the brink of adulthood, A Thousand Moons is a glorious story of love and redemption.]]> 272 Sebastian Barry 0735223106 Jeff 4 read-fiction 3.78 2020
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/07
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: read-fiction
review:
Superb writing and characterization. Marevelous description of time and place.
]]> 208503280 She's looking for the perfect man. He's looking for the perfect victim.

Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.

Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming, handsome, and works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet.

Then the brutal murder of a young woman―the latest in a string of deaths across the coast―confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them.

Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can’t shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn’t get to the truth, she’ll be the killer’s next victim...

A dark story about obsession and the things we’ll do for love, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden proves that crimes of passion are often the bloodiest…]]> 368 Freida McFadden 1728296226 Jeff 3 read-fiction 3.95 2024
author: Freida McFadden
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: read-fiction
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]]> 209286331 In his most exhilarating novel yet, Britain’s greatest storyteller transports you from the vibrant streets of sixties London to the sun-soaked cobbles of Cadiz and the frosty squares of Warsaw, as an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession.

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy��, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story. .]]> 272 William Boyd 0241542073 Jeff 4 read-fiction 4.10 2024
author: William Boyd
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: read-fiction
review:
Master storyteller makes the characters real and interesting
]]> 56587382 A rich, magical new book on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love.

Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited -- her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.

A moving, beautifully written and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak’s best work yet.]]> 354 Elif Shafak 0241434998 Jeff 0 currently-reading 4.13 2021
author: Elif Shafak
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/07
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]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Jeff 0 borrow-library 3.86 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: borrow-library
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]]> 61272271 ‘In a crowded field of life advice and even life advice based on scientific research, Schulz and Waldinger stand apart�� Angela Duckworth, author of Grit

What is the key to a good life?

It is a question that preoccupies us all and one that the longest and most successful study of happiness ever conducted strives to answer. In this groundbreaking book, directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, bring together over 80 years of research to reveal the true components of a happy, fulfilled life.

The Good Life makes clear that what truly makes a rich and happy life is not synonymous with financial success and achievement, but is rather the result of our relationships. This remarkable work brings together scientific precision, traditional wisdom, incredible real-life stories and actionable insights to prove once and for all that our own wellbeing and ability to flourish is absolutely within our control.

'An outstanding book. It combines the longest and richest study of human lives anywhere with two remarkable authors of extraordinary breadth' Richard Layard, author of Can We Be Happier?

‘This captivating, powerful book shows us scientifically and practically how to define, create and most importantly live the good life�� Jay Shetty]]> 352 Robert Waldinger 1982166711 Jeff 0 currently-reading 4.13 2023
author: Robert Waldinger
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 202969855
Meet Augustus Berrycloth-Young - fop, flaneur, and Englishman abroad - as he chronicles the Jazz Age from his perch atop the city that never sleeps.

That is, until his old friend Thomas Nightingale arrives, pursuing a rather mysterious affair concerning an old saxophone - which will take Gussie from his warm bed, to the cold shores of Long Island, and down to the jazz clubs where music, magic, and madness haunt the shadows...]]> 165 Ben Aaronovitch 147322442X Jeff 3 4.15 2024
author: Ben Aaronovitch
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 61153739 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER �� A groundbreaking manifesto on living better and longer that challenges the conventional medical thinking on aging and reveals a new approach to preventing chronic disease and extending long-term health, from a visionary physician and leading longevity expert

Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.

For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of aging that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late to help, prolonging lifespan at the expense of healthspan, or quality of life. Dr. Attia believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalized, proactive strategy for longevity, one where we take action now, rather than waiting.

This is not “biohacking,�� it’s science: a well-founded strategic and tactical approach to extending lifespan while also improving our physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Dr. Attia’s aim is less to tell you what to do and more to help you learn how to think about long-term health, in order to create the best plan for you as an individual. In Outlive, readers will discover:

�� Why the cholesterol test at your annual physical doesn’t tell you enough about your actual risk of dying from a heart attack.
�� That you may already suffer from an extremely common yet underdiagnosed liver condition that could be a precursor to the chronic diseases of aging.
�� Why exercise is the most potent pro-longevity “drug”—and how to begin training for the “Centenarian Decathlon.��
�� Why you should forget about diets, and focus instead on nutritional biochemistry, using technology and data to personalize your eating pattern.
�� Why striving for physical health and longevity, but ignoring emotional health, could be the ultimate curse of all.

Aging and longevity are far more malleable than we think; our fate is not set in stone. With the right roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.]]> 496 Peter Attia 0593236599 Jeff 0 non-fiction-to-read 4.33 2023
author: Peter Attia
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: non-fiction-to-read
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]]> 62322008
Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don't always mean what they say.

But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally's life will be thrown into chaos once again . . .]]> 384 Liz Nugent 1844885968 Jeff 4 read-fiction 4.14 2023
author: Liz Nugent
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: read-fiction
review:
The very epitome of a page turner. Beautifully measured.
]]> 205363955 Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life �� one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves.

Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, it offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism��. How can we embrace our non-negotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? What if purposeful productivity were often about letting things happen, not making them happen?

Reflecting on ideas drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective. The result is a bracing challenge to much familiar advice, and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.

To be read either as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind�� or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.]]> 208 Oliver Burkeman 0374611998 Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 4.26 2024
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:
Very worthwhile, insightful, well written, gives great food for thought.
]]> 46231 610 Dorothy Parker 0140150749 Jeff 0 4.34 1944
author: Dorothy Parker
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1944
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: funny-books, got-these-non-fiction-to-read
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]]> 54564213
But numbers - in the right hands - have the power to change the world for the better. Contrary to popular belief, good statistics are not a trick, although they are a kind of magic. Good statistics are not smoke and mirrors; in fact, they help us see more clearly. Good statistics are like a telescope for an astronomer, a microscope for a bacteriologist, or an X-ray for a radiologist. If we are willing to let them, good statistics help us see things about the world around us and about ourselves - both large and small ­- that we would not be able to see in any other way.

In How to Make the World Add Up, Tim Harford draws on his experience as both an economist and presenter of the BBC's radio show 'More or Less'. He takes us deep into the world of disinformation and obfuscation, bad research and misplaced motivation to find those priceless jewels of data and analysis that make communicating with numbers worthwhile. Harford's characters range from the art forger who conned the Nazis to the stripper who fell in love with the most powerful congressman in Washington, to famous data detectives such as John Maynard Keynes, Daniel Kahneman and Florence Nightingale. He reveals how we can evaluate the claims that surround us with confidence, curiosity and a healthy level of scepticism.

Using ten simple rules for understanding numbers - plus one golden rule - this extraordinarily insightful book shows how if we keep our wits about us, thinking carefully about the way numbers are sourced and presented, we can look around us and see with crystal clarity how the world adds up.]]> 352 Tim Harford 1408712245 Jeff 0 got-these-non-fiction-to-read 4.14 2020
author: Tim Harford
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: got-these-non-fiction-to-read
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]]> 11468377 Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.]]> 499 Daniel Kahneman 0374275637 Jeff 0 got-these-non-fiction-to-read 4.17 2011
author: Daniel Kahneman
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/24
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]]> 38374795 318 E.M. Forster 1984295292 Jeff 0 got-these-fiction-to-read 3.97 1910
author: E.M. Forster
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1910
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: got-these-fiction-to-read
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]]> 1736739
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life �� sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.]]> 270 Elizabeth Strout Jeff 0 read-fiction 3.85 2008
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: read-fiction
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]]> 323208 224 Magnus Mills 0684865114 Jeff 3 read-fiction 3.92 1998
author: Magnus Mills
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/02
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 199820684
In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley—aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless—is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.�� She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.

As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer with Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly, what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government—and will alter the course of political history.

An unrivaled master of seamlessly weaving fact and fiction, Precipice is another electrifying thriller from the brilliant imagination of Robert Harris.]]> 464 Robert Harris 0063248050 Jeff 4 read-fiction A masterful storyteller 3.86 2024
author: Robert Harris
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: read-fiction
review:
A masterful storyteller
]]> 199926394 A New Gut-Brain Method to Superpower the Second Brain and Feel Your Absolute Best

Ever experienced ‘gut feelings�� or ‘butterflies in your stomach��? Turns out there’s real science behind them. Your gut isn’t just a digestive system, it’s a powerhouse - your second brain.
Join the Gut-Brain Revolution
Microbiome scientist and registered dietitian Dr Emily Leeming explains the ground-breaking evidence on the relationship between food and mood, unveiling the powerful gut-brain connection…and exciting new links to your gut bacteria.
A Healthy Gut, A Healthy Mind
Understand how the food you eat and the habits surrounding it can elevate your memory, sharpen your focus, and make you feel amazing through the Genius Gut method.
No More Diet BS
Say goodbye to food-related stress. No more cutting out foods, feeling hungry, or worrying about what you ‘should�� or ‘shouldn’t�� eat. Genius Gut cuts through the nutritional noise to get you to achieve a healthy balance - without restriction and with plenty of science-backed tips.
Simple Hacks That Work
Dr Emily has translated complex science into 10 actionable gut-brain hacks to boost your health, mood, and brainpower. Packed with ready-to-go tips and expert advice, Genius Gut is your ultimate ally for everyday gut (and brain) health that will make the world of difference.
Tune into your genius gut and transform your health, mood and brainpower from the inside out

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

PRAISE FOR GENIUS GUT

"The gut is the gateway to the brain �� and this is the go-to guide" - Dr Tara Swart, neuroscientist and author of The Source

"Apart from being an exceptional academic, Emily’s talent and passion for disseminating the science into digestible nuggets is second to none. I devoured this book." - Alana Macfarlane, author of The Gut Stuff

"Dr Emily Leeming masterfully distils emerging and complex science into easy and actionable reading, dispelling common myths along the way. Everyone should own a copy!" - Angela Foster, High Performance Health Podcast

"An essential and refreshing read about an important topic" - Joshua Fletcher, the Anxiety Therapist (@anxietyjosh, the author of And How Does That Make You Feel?)

"In an ocean of much need books on health, I’m so glad I’ve got Dr Emily’s Genius Gut. As a fellow ex private chef, I love how she writes practically and deliciously on food. Congrats Emily. Thank you from me and my gut." - Melissa Hemsley

"This truly is a gut health bible" - Kaitlin Colucci, gut health dietitian

]]> 358 Dr Emily Leeming 140596443X Jeff 3 read-non-fiction 3.97
author: Dr Emily Leeming
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.97
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: read-non-fiction
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]]> 2158116
"Eating for England" is Nigel Slater's personal portrait of the British and their food. A celebration of the glories, humour, eccentricities and embarrassments that make up that extraordinary thing that is the British at table.]]> 280 Nigel Slater 0007199465 Jeff 0 got-these-non-fiction-to-read 3.75 2007
author: Nigel Slater
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: got-these-non-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 203256972 0 Joseph O�connor Jeff 4 3.87
author: Joseph O�connor
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 59365151 In the busy, information-filled world in which we live, it’s often easy to forget things and hard to keep track of how details get stored in our brain. The Complete Guide to Memory�� serves to provide a one-stop resource that covers the essentials on memory.�� World-renowned memory expert, Dr. Richard Restak, addresses the following topics in With tips and tricks to manage memory well for people of all ages and personal examples of the techniques used, this book leaves no stone unturned. ��
���ձ�> 216 Richard Restak 1510770275 Jeff 0 3.58
author: Richard Restak
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.58
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: currently-reading, read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 25265587 304 Phil Hammond 1848664524 Jeff 0 got-these-non-fiction-to-read 3.93 2014
author: Phil Hammond
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: got-these-non-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 531262 308 Evelyn Waugh 0316926051 Jeff 3 read-fiction 3.91 1934
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 167302
"Trevor was our twentieth century Chekov." —Wall Street Journal

The stunning novel from highly acclaimed author William Trevor is a brilliant, subtle, and moving story of love, guilt, and forgiveness. The Gault family leads a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland, but the threat of violence leads the parents of nine-year-old Lucy to decide to leave for England, her mother's home. Lucy cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane, their country house with its beautiful land and nearby beach, and a dog she has befriended. On the day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away, hoping to convince her parents to stay. Instead, she sets off a series of tragic misunderstandings that affect all of Lahardane's inhabitants for the rest of their lives.]]> 240 William Trevor 014200331X Jeff 4 read-fiction 3.77 2002
author: William Trevor
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 58536046 Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith provides the skills you need to navigate common life challenges and take charge of your emotional and mental health in her debut book.

Filled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health, even in the most trying of times. Dr Julie Smith's expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself. The book tackles everyday issues and offers practical solutions in bite-sized, easy-to-digest entries which make it easy to quickly find specific information and guidance.

Your mental well-being is just as important as your physical well-being. Packed with proven strategies, Dr Smith's empathetic guide offers a deeper understanding of how your mind works and gives you the insights and help you need to nurture your mental health every day. Wise and practical, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? might just change your life.]]> 368 Julie Smith 0063227932 Jeff 3 read-non-fiction 3.85 2022
author: Julie Smith
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 41723505 310 Joseph O'Connor 1787300846 Jeff 5 read-fiction 3.77 2019
author: Joseph O'Connor
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: read-fiction
review:
Extremely well written: beautiful, interesting , a sheer joy.
]]> 61737307
The food system is no longer simply a means of sustenance. It is one of the most successful, most innovative and most destructive industries on earth. It sustains us, but it is also killing us. Diet-related disease is now the biggest cause of preventable illness and death in the developed world - far worse than smoking. The environmental damage done by the food system is also changing climate patterns and degrading the earth, risking our food security.

Few people know the workings of the food system better than Henry Dimbleby, founder of the Leon restaurant chain, government adviser and author of the radical National Food Strategy. In Ravenous, he takes us behind the scenes to reveal the mechanisms that act together to shape the modern diet - and therefore the world. He explains not just why the food system is leading us into disaster, but what can be done about it.]]> 336 Henry Dimbleby 1800816510 Jeff 0 borrow-library 4.35
author: Henry Dimbleby
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: borrow-library
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]]> 19161888
Still, Nick has some very complex problems to deal with. Two local pimps have been sassing him, ruining his already tattered reputation. His girlfriend Rose is being terrorized by her husband. And then, there's his wife and her brother Lenny who won't stop troubling Nick's already stressed mind. Are they a little too close for a brother and a sister?

With an election coming up, Nick needs to fix his problems and fast. Because the one thing Nick does know is that he will do anything to stay sheriff. Because, as it turns out, Sheriff Nick Corey is not nearly as dumb as he seems.

In Pop. 1280 , widely regarded as a classic of mid-20th century crime, Thompson offers up one of his best, in a tale of lust, murder, and betrayal in the Deep South that was the basis for the critically acclaimed French film Coup de Torchon .]]> 231 Jim Thompson 0316403784 Jeff 0 borrow-library 4.08 1964
author: Jim Thompson
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: borrow-library
review:

]]> 219441325 THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER.

Killing Time is a wonderful surprise gift from Alan Bennett - a new story, set in a home for the elderly; a glorious, darkly comic treat.


'A mini-masterpiece.' THE TIMES

'Full of wit and style.' OBSERVER
'A terrific cast of characters, and secrets and chaos aplenty.' iNEWS
'A geriatric Lord of the Flies.' SPECTATOR

We have a choir and on special occasions a glass of dry sherry. It's less of a home and more of a club and very much a community.


Presided over by the lofty Mrs McBryde, Hill Topp House is a superior council home for the elderly. Among the unforgettable cast of staff and residents there's Mr Peckover the deluded archaeologist, Phyllis the knitter, Mr Cresswell the ex-cruise ship hairdresser, the enterprising Mrs Foss and Mr Jimson the chiropodist. Covid is the cause of fatalities and the source of darkly comic confusion, but it's also the key to liberation. As staff are hospitalised, protocol breaks down. Miss Rathbone reveals a lifelong secret, and the surviving residents seize their moment, arthritis allowing, to scamper freely in the warmth of the summer sun.

'Violet? She'll be having a little lie-down,' said Mrs McBryde. 'She likes to give her pacemaker a rest. I'll rout her out.'

Killing Time was a Sunday Times bestseller w/e 09/11/2024 to w/e 28/12/2024.]]> 69 Alan Bennett 0571394833 Jeff 0 borrow-library 3.52 2024
author: Alan Bennett
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: borrow-library
review:

]]> 199798044 In this dazzling thriller, New York Times bestselling author Joseph Kanon gives us his richest setting pre-World War II Shanghai, where glamour and squalor exist side by side and murder is just a cost of doing business. A love affair against all odds, a city dancing on the rim of a volcano��Shanghai is the story of a political haven that becomes a minefield of conflicting loyalties.

After the violence of Kristallnacht (1938), European Jews, now desperate to emigrate, found the consular doors of the world closed to them. Only one port required no entry Shanghai, a self-governing Western trading enclave in what was technically Chinese territory, a political anomaly that became an escape hatch—if you were lucky enough to afford a ticket on one of the great Lloyd liners sailing to the East and safety.

Daniel Lohr was one of the lucky ones—lucky enough to have escaped the Gestapo when his colleagues in the resistance were caught, lucky to have an uncle waiting in Shanghai, lucky to find a casual shipboard flirtation turn unexpectedly passionate. But even lucky refugees have to confront the reality of Shanghai. With all their assets, and passports confiscated by the Nazis, they arrive penniless and stateless in a tumultuous, nearly lawless city notorious for vice. When you can sink fast, how far are you willing to go to survive? What lines do you cross? As Daniel tries to navigate his way through his uncle’s world in Shanghai’s fabled nightlife, he finds himself increasingly ensnared in a maze where politics and crime are two sides of the same shiny coin. The trick, his uncle tells him, is to stay one step ahead. But how do you stay ahead of murder? How do you outrun your own past?]]> 304 Joseph Kanon 1668006421 Jeff 3 read-fiction 3.60 2024
author: Joseph Kanon
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 36064445 New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan, a bold new work that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility

In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one’s own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life.

As always both accessible and iconoclastic, Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military interventions, make financial investments, and propagate religious faiths. Among his insights:

�� For social justice,��focus on symmetry and risk sharing. You cannot make profits and transfer the risks to others, as bankers and large corporations do. You cannot get rich without owning your own risk and paying for your own losses. Forcing skin in the game corrects this asymmetry better than thousands of laws and regulations.
�� Ethical rules aren’t universal. You’re part of a group larger than you, but it’s still smaller than humanity in general.
�� Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others.
�� You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. “Educated philistines�� have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets.
�� Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). A simple barbell can build muscle better than expensive new machines.
�� True religion is commitment, not just faith. How much you believe in something is manifested only by what you’re willing to risk for it.

The phrase “skin in the game�� is one we have often heard but rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it’s also an astonishingly rich worldview that, as Taleb shows in this book, applies to all aspects of our lives. As Taleb says, “The symmetry of skin in the game is a simple rule that’s necessary for fairness and justice, and the ultimate BS-buster,�� and “Never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them.”]]> 272 Nassim Nicholas Taleb 0241300657 Jeff 0 non-fiction-to-read 3.88 2018
author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: non-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 60798868 0 Paul Dolan 0241003113 Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 3.69
author: Paul Dolan
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 51151753 Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic Michiko Kakutani shares 100 personal, thought-provoking essays about books that have mattered to her and that help illuminate the world we live in today—with beautiful illustrations throughout.

In the introduction to her new collection of essays, Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread, Michiko Kakutani writes: "In a world riven by political and social divisions, literature can connect people across time zones and zip codes, across cultures and religions, national boundaries and historical eras. It can give us an understanding of lives very different from our own, and a sense of the shared joys and losses of human experience."

Readers will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth reading or rereading; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation. There are essential works in American history (The Federalist Papers, The Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.); books that address timely cultural dynamics (Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale); classics of children's literature (the Harry Potter novels, Where the Wild Things Are); and novels by acclaimed contemporary writers like Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Ian McEwan.

With richly detailed illustrations by lettering artist Dana Tanamachi that evoke vintage bookplates, Ex Libris is an impassioned reminder of why reading matters more than ever.]]> 304 Michiko Kakutani 0525574972 Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 3.54 2020
author: Michiko Kakutani
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 196 Carys Davies 1668030667 Jeff 4 read-fiction Writes beautifully. 3.85
author: Carys Davies
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: read-fiction
review:
Writes beautifully.
]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?��

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,�� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 Jeff 0 borrow-library 3.98 2024
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: borrow-library
review:

]]> 61447882
September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. Gestapo boss Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. Hunger is widespread. Rumors fester. The war’s outcome is far from certain.

Diplomats, refugees, and escaped Allied prisoners flee for protection into Vatican City, at one fifth of a square mile the world’s smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome. A small band of unlikely friends led by a courageous Irish priest is drawn into deadly danger as they seek to help those seeking refuge.

Book 1 in the Rome Escape Line Trilogy, My Father’s House is a powerful, heartbreaking literary thriller based on the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who risked his life to smuggle thousands of Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy under the nose of his Nazi nemesis. A deadly high-stakes battle of wits ensues in this astonishing, unforgettable story of love, faith and sacrifice, exploring what it means to be truly human in the most extreme circumstances.]]> 276 Joseph O'Connor Jeff 4 3.98 2023
author: Joseph O'Connor
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/09/03
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]]> 38819868
My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water...]]> 226 Oyinkan Braithwaite 0385544235 Jeff 0 crime-humour 3.64 2018
author: Oyinkan Braithwaite
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: crime-humour
review:

]]> 51203181 The arrival of a meteorite in a small Finnish town causes chaos and crime in this poignant, chilling and hilarious new thriller from the King of Helsinki Noir

A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland, when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns about to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the unexpected treasure is temporarily placed in a neighbourhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel.

But Joel has a lot more on his mind than simply protecting the riches that have apparently rained down from heaven. His wife has just revealed that she is pregnant. Unfortunately Joel has strong reason to think the baby isn’t his. As Joel tries to fend off repeated and bungled attempts to steal the meteorite, he must also come to terms with his own situation, and discover who the father of the baby really is.

Transporting the reader to the culture, landscape and mores of northern Finland Little Siberia is both a crime novel and a hilarious, blacker-than-black comedy about faith and disbelief, love and death, and what to do when bolts from the blue �� both literal and figurative �� turn your life upside down.

]]> 278 Antti Tuomainen 1912374528 Jeff 0 crime-humour 3.70 2018
author: Antti Tuomainen
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: crime-humour
review:

]]> 2999282 304 Jeff Lindsay 0752885170 Jeff 0 crime-humour 3.77 2008
author: Jeff Lindsay
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: crime-humour
review:

]]> 2279538 352 Joseph Wambaugh 0316025283 Jeff 0 crime-humour 3.76 2008
author: Joseph Wambaugh
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: crime-humour
review:

]]> 85207 387 Elmore Leonard 0060724234 Jeff 0 crime-humour 3.74 2005
author: Elmore Leonard
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: crime-humour
review:

]]> 62897692
Humane, hilarious, and heart-breaking, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here is an enlightening and darkly comic window into the world of psychiatry.

A woman with bipolar flies from America in a wedding dress to marry Harry Styles.

A lorry driver with schizophrenia believes he’s got a cure for coronavirus.

A depressed psychiatrist hides his profession from his GP due to stigma.

Most of the characters in this book are his patients. Some of them are family. One of them is him.

Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality.

Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures?

You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here explores these complicated questions from both sides of the doctor’s desk. This is the perfect read for fans of This Is Going to Hurt, Unnatural Causes and The Prison Doctor.

‘The Adam Kay of mental healthcare�� (THE TIMES, BOOK OF THE WEEK)

'Humane, hilarious, eye-opening' (THE GUARDIAN)

‘Fearlessly honest, funny... and uplifting�� JO BRAND

'Very funny and deeply sympathetic. Really excellent' HENRY MARSH

'This is honestly my dream book. Both fascinating and bleakly funny' FERN BRADY]]> 336 Benji Waterhouse 1787333183 Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 4.43
author: Benji Waterhouse
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.43
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/11
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 57933306 Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening--and how to get our attention back.

In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions--even abandoning his phone for three months--but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention--and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers' productivity.

Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus--as individuals, and as a society--if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.]]> 357 Johann Hari 0593138511 Jeff 4 4.22 2022
author: Johann Hari
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> 43268939
'Sometimes, before we can move forward, we have to make our way back - back to those truths that are foundational to our walk with God.'

This issue explores some key areas of faith that may have been crowded out by the pressures of life. In our ever-changing world, let's recapture the unchanging truths of the gospel to enable us to steadfastly cling to what we know to be true, and hold the line at the beginning of this new year.]]> 154 Selwyn Hughes Jeff 0 to-read 4.57
author: Selwyn Hughes
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2991270 144 Selwyn Hughes 0805423230 Jeff 0 faith-to-read 4.67 2000
author: Selwyn Hughes
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: faith-to-read
review:

]]> 123727738
But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. Now the administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, the investigation is a total bust—and Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as their career prospects are washed away by the pounding London rain.

Until the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, when an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin—an operation that ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.

The��Secret��Hours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron’s body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtaking��secret��history that Slough House fans have been waiting for.]]> 384 Mick Herron 164129521X Jeff 3 4.08 2023
author: Mick Herron
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/06/28
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]]> 9850375 257 P.G. Wodehouse 0393339785 Jeff 5 4.29 1934
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 56495 336 Rick Warren 0310276993 Jeff 0 faith-to-read 3.97 2002
author: Rick Warren
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: faith-to-read
review:

]]> 35128889
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Mosley takes us on a revelatory journey through the gut, showing how junk food and overuse of antibiotics have wiped out many “good�� gut bacteria leading to a modern plague of allergies, food intolerances, and obesity. Drawing from the latest cutting-edge research, Dr. Mosley provides scientifically proven ways to control your cravings, boost your mood, and lose weight by feeding the “good�� bacteria that keep you healthy and lean, while staving off “bad�� bacteria that contribute to weight gain and disease.

Dr. Mosley also shares a simple two-phase healing program, an effective way to repair and replenish the microbiome and to ease intestinal distress. Discover how foods like chocolate, red wine, and cheese can be part of a gut-healthy diet; how fasting can strengthen the gut and boost “good�� bacteria; how changing your microbiome can undo the damage of yo-yo dieting; and how opening a window (and other simple acts) can improve gut health.

Packed with delicious, healing recipes, meal plans, checklists, and tips, The Clever Gut Diet includes all the tools you need to transform your gut and your health for the rest of your life.]]> 288 Michael Mosley 1925596044 Jeff 0 read-non-fiction 3.87 2017
author: Michael Mosley
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 16071656
Life is already strange enough for Patrick - being a medical student with Asperger's Syndrome doesn't come without its challenges. And that's before he is faced with solving a possible murder, especially when no one believes a crime has even taken place. Now he must stay out of danger long enough to unravel the mystery. But as Patrick learns one truth from a dead man, he discovers there have been many other lies closer to home.]]> 313 Belinda Bauer 0593066928 Jeff 4 4.06 2013
author: Belinda Bauer
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: spy-and-crime-read, read-fiction
review:

]]> 36992516 Life-changing opportunities pass us by every day �� now we can train our minds to seize them.

Self-help books like The Secret promise that we can tap into the 'law of attraction' to control our destiny, simply by changing our thoughts. If we strip away the mystique, at the heart of this idea is a fundamental truth that is backed up by the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience: most of the things we want from life �� health, happiness, wealth, love - are governed by our ability to think, feel and act; in other words, by our brain.

Dr Tara Swart, a neuroscientist and executive coach with a background in psychiatry, is convinced beyond all doubt of our ability to alter how our brains work - and transform our lives. In The Source, she draws on the latest cognitive science and her experience coaching highly successful people to reveal the secret to mastering our minds.

With a four-step plan to awaken the power of your brain, this unique guide to life combines science and spirituality in a way that is open-minded and practical. Discover how to:
- Challenge 'autopilot' thinking and rewire your brain's pathways to fulfil your potential
- Manifest the things you want by directing your energy towards your deepest values and ambitions
- Harness the power of visualisation to prime your brain to grab opportunities and take control of your future
- Attack life with confidence, dispel fear and avoid negative thinking

Unlock your potential today �� you are just four steps away from building a new confident you.]]> 288 Tara Swart 1785041991 Jeff 4 3.79 2019
author: Tara Swart
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves:
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]]> 3690
In his introduction, John Updike calls The Power and the Glory, "Graham Greene's masterpiece��. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist."]]> 222 Graham Greene 0142437301 Jeff 0 got-these-fiction-to-read 3.99 1940
author: Graham Greene
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves: got-these-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 40611069 Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents �� an odd brother and sister �� extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late...

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.]]> 241 David Mitchell 0812998693 Jeff 0 got-these-fiction-to-read 3.79 2015
author: David Mitchell
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves: got-these-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 121232398
'50 Shades of Grey meets Prime Minister's Questions' Anita Rani on Woman's Hour, Radio 4

Westminster in the 2020s, where the business of governing is the last thing on the agenda for anyone worth their salt. In the SW1 bubble, politics moves fast, schemes are hatched and foiled - through both accident and conspiracy - within hours, and sex and power preside.

When Bobby Cliveden decides to campaign against the closure of her local mental health unit, she scarcely thought it would take her straight to the heart of the UK's bustling political centre. She heads to London to work for her local MP, the ambitious Simon Daly, and moves in with her two old university friends, Jess, a new lobby journalist, and Eva, a junior Downing Street adviser. The three of them quickly become wrapped up in the political circus of glamorous parties, insufferable bosses and demanding workloads - and the desire to win. Beneath the headline-grabbing battle of a male-dominated leadership contest, they discover the secret, soft-skilled machinery behind so much political change at the very highest level of women.

Riotous and all too believable, Whips is a timely satire on politics and Party people. Watson takes us behind the doors of Number 10 and delivers a gripping tale of modern government, filled with intrigue and scandal and written with insight and verve. Whips delivers on every promise.]]> 389 Cleo Watson 1472157265 Jeff 3 read-fiction 3.40 2023
author: Cleo Watson
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 12228097 346 Steve Peters 009193558X Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 3.97 2012
author: Steve Peters
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/19
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 40697523
Forget everything you think you know about your body and food, and discover the new science of how the body heals itself. Learn how to identify the strategies and the dosages for using food to transform your resilience and health in EAT TO BEAT DISEASE.

We have radically underestimated our body's power to transform and restore our health. Pioneering physician scientist, Dr. William Li, empowers readers by showing them the evidence behind over 200 health-boosting foods that can starve cancer, reduce your risk of dementia, and beat dozens of avoidable diseases. EAT TO BEAT DISEASE isn't about what foods to avoid, but rather is a life-changing guide to the hundreds of healing foods to add to your meals that support the body's defense systems, including:


Plums
Cinnamon
Jasmine tea
Red wine and beer
Black Beans
San Marzano tomatoes
Olive oil
Pacific oysters
Cheeses like Jarlsberg, Camembert and cheddar
Sourdough bread

The book's plan shows you how to integrate the foods you already love into any diet or health plan to activate your body's health defense systems-Angiogenesis, Regeneration, Microbiome, DNA Protection, and Immunity-to fight cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, and autoimmune diseases, and other debilitating conditions.

Both informative and practical, EAT TO BEAT DISEASE explains the science of healing and prevention, the strategies for using food to actively transform health, and points the science of well-being and disease prevention in an exhilarating new direction.
]]> 496 William W. Li 1538714620 Jeff 0 spotify-audio 3.97 2019
author: William W. Li
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves: spotify-audio
review:

]]> 96177657
'An instant classic' MARINA HYDE
'At last a politician who can write' SEBASTIAN FAULKS
'Candid, angry, funny, and self-revelatory' JONATHAN DIMBLEBY
'Exceptional' RAFAEL BEHR

The Times pick for *The Biggest Books of the Autumn*

Over the course of a decade from 2010, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister - before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise.

Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow our democracy and government had become.

Cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence ran rampant. Around him, individual politicians laid the foundations for the political and economic chaos of today. Stewart emerged battered but with a profound affection for his constituency of Penrith and the Border, and a deep direct insight into the era of populism and global conflict.

Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, Politics On the Edge is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life and a remarkable portrait of our age.]]> 436 Rory Stewart Jeff 4 4.33 2023
author: Rory Stewart
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/02
date added: 2024/03/02
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review:

]]> 62926962 An illuminating exploration of how to maintain a happy sex life in a long-term relationship, from the New York Times bestselling author of Come as You Are and co-author of Burnout.

In Come as You Are, Emily Nagoski, PhD, provided science-backed lessons that revolutionized the way we think about women’s sexuality. Now, in Come Together, Nagoski takes on a fundamentally misunderstood subject: sex in long-term relationships.

Nagoski breaks down the myths many of us have been taught about sex—for instance, the belief that sexual satisfaction and desire are highest at the beginning of a relationship and that they will inevitably decline the longer that relationship lasts. Nagoski assures us that’s not true.

So, what is true? Come Together isn’t about how much we want sex, or how often we’re having it; it’s about whether we like the sex we’re having. Nagoski breaks down the obstacles that impede us from enjoying sex—from stress and body image, to relationship difficulties and gendered beliefs about how sex “should�� be—and presents the best ways to overcome them. You'll learn:
�� that “spontaneous desire�� is not the kind of desire to strive for if you want to have great sex for decades
�� vocabulary for talking with partners about ways to get in “the mood�� and how to not take it personally when “the mood�� is nowhere to be found
�� how to understand your own and your partner’s “emotional floorplan,�� so that you have a blueprint for how to get to a sexy state of mind

With her signature insight, humor, and empathy, Nagoski shows us what great sex can look like, how to create it in our own lives, and what to do when struggles arise.]]> 368 Emily Nagoski 0593500822 Jeff 0 to-read 4.13 2024
author: Emily Nagoski
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59998121
But when a young woman is found strangled at Barnabas Hall, they’re forced to.

Rich Oxford is not Ryan’s natural habitat. St Barnabas’s irascible Provost does not appreciate his forceful line of questioning. But what was the dead woman doing in the Provost’s study? Is it just a coincidence that on the night of her murder the college was entertaining Sheik al-Medina, a Gulf state ruler linked to human-rights abuses in his own country and acts of atrocity in others?

As tensions rise, things aren’t going well. Ray is in despair. Ryan is in disciplinary measures. But their investigation gradually disentangles the links between a Syrian refugee lawyer now working in the college kitchens, a priceless copy of the Koran in the college collection and the identity of the dead woman.


A Killing in November introduces an unlikely duo from different sides of the tracks in Oxford in a deftly plotted murder story full of dangerous turns, troubled pasts and unconventional detective work.]]> 352 Simon Mason 1529415683 Jeff 3 read-fiction 4.11 2022
author: Simon Mason
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/22
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 171857939
We have entered a new 'age of eating' where most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food, food which is industrially processed and designed and marketed to be addictive. But do we really know what it's doing to our bodies?

Join Chris in his travels through the world of food science and a UPF diet to discover what's really going on. Find out why exercise and willpower can't save us, and what UPF is really doing to our bodies, our health, our weight, and the planet ( nothing good).

For too long we've been told we just need to make different choices, when really we're living in a food environment that makes it nigh-on impossible. So this is a book about our rights. The right to know what we eat and what it does to our bodies and the right to good, affordable food.]]> 115 Chris van Tulleken Jeff 0 read-non-fiction 4.52 2023
author: Chris van Tulleken
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 61358640 From the two-time Booker Prize finalist author, a dazzlingly written novel exploring love, memory, grief, and long-buried secrets

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe.

But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God's Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.]]> 261 Sebastian Barry 0593296109 Jeff 4 3.76 2023
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> 74951746
Marianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon's plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.

Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne's telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth. We begin to believe that - in the end, supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella - she will find the life she never stops craving. But what we can't envisage is that beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst has been nursing a secret which will alter everything.]]> 177 Rose Tremain Jeff 5 3.87 2023
author: Rose Tremain
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/24
date added: 2023/12/24
shelves:
review:
Masterful story telling, terrific characterisation, great humour .
]]> 1271104
On the coach, Lev chose a seat near the back and he sat huddled against the window, staring out at the land he was leaving. . . . Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to Eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter.

Readers will become totally involved with his story, as he struggles with the mysterious rituals of “Englishness,�� and the fashions and fads of the London scene. We see the road Lev travels through Lev’s eyes, and we share his the intimacy of his friendships, old and new; his joys and sufferings; his aspirations and his hopes of finding his way home, wherever home may be.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 365 Rose Tremain 0701177934 Jeff 0 borrow-library 3.86 2007
author: Rose Tremain
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/21
shelves: borrow-library
review:

]]> 7456085 253 Rose Tremain 0701177942 Jeff 0 got-these-fiction-to-read 3.55 2010
author: Rose Tremain
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/20
shelves: got-these-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 6344964 Oxford private detective Zoë Boehm turns up dead in Newcastle, launching her friend Sarah Tucker into an investigation with several leads—but no one she can��trust.

When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as private detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Why was she wearing the jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what’s brought Sarah’s former sparring partner Gerard Inchon to the same broken-down hotel where she’s staying? Coincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.]]> 288 Mick Herron 1569475644 Jeff 3 read-fiction 3.81 2009
author: Mick Herron
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/16
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 43904017 Nat is not only a spy, he is a passionate badminton player. His regular Monday evening opponent is half his age: the introspective and solitary Ed. Ed hates Brexit, hates Trump and hates his job at some soulless media agency. And it is Ed, of all unlikely people, who will take Prue, Florence and Nat himself down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all.

]]> 282 John Le Carré 1984878875 Jeff 4 read-fiction 3.75 2019
author: John Le Carré
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 62887166
Risk everything, trust no one.

Jen Shaw is climbing in the mountains near Alajar, Spain. And it's nothing to do with the fact that an old acquaintance suggested that she meet him there...

But when things don't go as planned and her brother calls to voice concerns over the whereabouts of their mother, Morwenna, Jen finds herself travelling to a refugee camp on the south coast of Malta.

Free-spirited and unpredictable as ever, Morwenna is working with a small NGO, helping her Libyan friend, Nahla, seek asylum for her family. Jen is instantly out of her depth, surrounded by stories of unimaginable suffering and increasing tensions within the camp.

Within hours of Jen's arrival, Nahla is killed in suspicious circumstances, and Jen and Morwenna find themselves responsible for the safety of her daughters. But what if the safest option is to leave on a smuggler's boat?

The second instalment in the action-packed, 'pulse-pounding' Jen Shaw series, following Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month On the Edge.]]> 346 Jane Jesmond Jeff 0 borrow-library 4.26
author: Jane Jesmond
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: borrow-library
review:

]]> 6200 Youth has long been plotting an escape-from the stifling love of his overbearing mother, a father whose failures haunt him, and what he is sure is an impending revolution in his native country of South Africa. Arriving at last in London in the 1960s, however, he finds neither poetry nor romance and instead begins a dark pilgrimage into adulthood. Youth is a remarkable portrait of a consciousness, isolated and adrift, turning in on itself, of a young man struggling to find his way in the world, written with tenderness and a fierce clarity.]]> 176 J.M. Coetzee 0142002003 Jeff 0 got-these-fiction-to-read 3.80 2002
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/05
shelves: got-these-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Jeff 0 borrow-library 4.12 2022
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/04
shelves: borrow-library
review:

]]> 75673428
On an isolated beach set against a lonely, windswept coastline, a pale figure sits serenely against a sand dune staring out to sea. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed and there is a faint smile on his otherwise lifeless face.

Months later, after a fruitless investigation, the nameless stranger is buried in an unmarked grave. But the mystery of his life and death lingers on, drawing the nearby villagers into its wake. From strandings to shipwrecks, it is not the first time that strangeness has washed up on their shores.

Told through a chorus of voices, Falling Animals follows the crosshatching threads of lives both true and imagined, real and surreal, past and present. Slowly, over great time and distance, the story of one man, alone on a beach, begins to unravel. Elegiac and atmospheric, dark and disquieting, Sheila Armstrong’s debut novel marks her arrival as one of the most uniquely gifted writers at work in literary fiction today.]]> 238 Sheila Armstrong 1526635836 Jeff 0 borrow-library 3.81 2023
author: Sheila Armstrong
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves: borrow-library
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]]> 51020316 'One of the most influential doctors in the country' Chris Evans
_______

It only takes 5 minutes to start changing your life. For good.

Feel Better in 5 is the first daily 5-minute plan that is easy to maintain, easy-to-follow and requires only the smallest amount of willpower.

Top tips include:

· A strength workout that you can do anywhere
· Gut-boosting snacks you can eat on the go
· Yoga moves to relax and stay supple
· Breathing exercises to calm the mind

Drawing on Dr Rangan Chatterjee's twenty years of experience and real-life case studies from his GP practice, Feel Better in 5 is your daily plan for a happier, healthier you at no extra cost.]]> 288 Rangan Chatterjee Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 4.06 2019
author: Rangan Chatterjee
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/05
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 61354037
From one of the most engaging and brilliant writers of our time comes a “not to be missed�� ( LitHub ) collection of eleven essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes, homosexuality, and literature.

�� IT ALL STARTED WITH MY BALLS .�� So begins Colm Tóibín’s fabulously compelling essay, laced with humor, about his diagnosis and treatment for cancer. Tóibín survives, but he has entered, as he says, “the age of one ball.�� The second essay in this seductive collection is a memoir about growing up in the 1950s and ��60s in the small town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford, the setting for many of Tóibín’s novels and stories, including Brooklyn, The Blackwater Lightship , and Nora Webster . Tóibín describes his education by priests, several of whom were condemned years later for abuse. He writes about Irish history and literature, and about the long, tragic journey toward legal and social acceptance of homosexuality.

In Part Two, Tóibín profiles three complex and vexing popes—John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. And in Part Three, he writes about a trio of authors who reckon with religion in their fiction. The final essay, “Alone in Venice,�� is a gorgeous account of Tóibín’s journey, at the height of the pandemic, to the beloved city where he has set some of his most dazzling scenes. The streets, canals, churches, and museums were empty. He had them to himself, an experience both haunting and exhilarating.

“A tantalizing glimpse into Tóibín’s full fictional powers,�� ( The Sunday Times , London) A Guest at the Feast is both an intimate encounter with a supremely creative artist and a glorious celebration of writing.]]> 336 Colm Tóibín 1476785201 Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 3.66 2022
author: Colm Tóibín
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/11/05
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 62325806 Booker Prize winner and “Irish master����(The New Yorker)��John Banville’s most ambitious crime novel yet brings two detectives together to solve a globe-spanning mystery

In 1950s Dublin, Rosa Jacobs, a young history scholar, is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case.

One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case, and the lives of everyone involved, in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.

Spanning the mountaintops of Italy, the front lines of World War II Bavaria, the gritty streets of Dublin and other unexpected locales,��The Lock-Up��is an ambitious and arresting mystery by one of the world’s most celebrated authors.]]> 320 John Banville 1335449639 Jeff 4 read-fiction 3.50 2023
author: John Banville
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/05
date added: 2023/11/05
shelves: read-fiction
review:
Master storyteller of crime fiction. . Informative , beautifully written , atmospheric.
]]> 28815
You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.]]> 320 Robert B. Cialdini 006124189X Jeff 0 got-these-non-fiction-to-read 4.21 1984
author: Robert B. Cialdini
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/01
shelves: got-these-non-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 40121378 Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
-��Make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
-��Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
- Design your environment to make success easier;
- Get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.]]> 319 James Clear Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 4.34 2018
author: James Clear
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/01
date added: 2023/11/01
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:
Well worth your time . Interesting ,well laid out . Could well be very useful to you.
]]> 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Jeff 4 funny-books 3.88 1993
author: Annie Proulx
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/05
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves: funny-books
review:

]]> 41817486 A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess’s introduction, “A Clockwork Orange Resucked.”]]> 240 Anthony Burgess 0393341763 Jeff 0 got-these-fiction-to-read 4.04 1962
author: Anthony Burgess
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: got-these-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 37969723
When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis's people but also of the ancient world at large.

Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war—the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead—all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis's perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker's latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives—and it is nothing short of magnificent.]]> 325 Pat Barker Jeff 0 got-these-fiction-to-read 3.88 2018
author: Pat Barker
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: got-these-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 8664368 307 Howard Jacobson 1408808870 Jeff 4 read-fiction 2.81 2010
author: Howard Jacobson
name: Jeff
average rating: 2.81
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 7919168 When at last Zac became aware, he found himself in a place that had been stripped of every shred of colour. Some pain was like that, so intense, so personal, that it tore away all subtlety from the world and left nothing but obliterating darkness and flashes of blinding, impenetrable light.... The pain they had inflicted had been, literally, unimaginable. The sort of pain that makes a man do anything, say anything, to make it stop.

Zac Kravitz has upset someone. Someone very important. He has been tortured and cast, barely alive, into an ancient prison deep in the republic of Ta’argistan. Bordering Russia, China and Afghanistan and ringed by high mountains, the country is a land of deep snows and still deeper suspicions, and it’s about to swallow Zac, to drag him from his cell and execute him. But he has a friend. Harry Jones is a former soldier, now a politician, a man of extraordinary skills and an enduring sense of guilt. He owes Zac. The debt must be repaid, no matter what the cost.

Harry is forced to team up with a tough-talking American-born MP, Martha Riley. She doesn’t much like Harry, the feeling is mutual, yet Harry needs her, more than he could ever realize. Theirs is a journey that takes them not only to Ta’argistan but also into their fractured pasts, where they must confront old obsessions. Theirs is a story of honour and love that will push them to the limits of their endurance, and then beyond.

To have any chance of success, Harry must once again become the man he thought he had left behind many years ago—a desperate, utterly ruthless fighter, ready to eliminate anyone who gets in his way. It will take him to a place of immense and almost unendurable suffering, where dying becomes the easy option. Yet Harry Jones is not a man who has ever taken the easy option. He doesn’t know when to stop fighting, even when he’s standing on a trapdoor with an executioner’s noose around his neck.]]> Michael Dobbs Jeff 3 spy-and-crime-read 3.45 2010
author: Michael Dobbs
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: spy-and-crime-read
review:

]]> 17707488
Added to it is a new name: a terrorist of frightening effectiveness called the Preacher, who radicalizes young Muslims abroad to carry out assassinations. Unfortunately for him, one of the kills is a retired Marine general, whose son is TOSA’s top hunter of men.

He has spent the last six years at his job. He knows nothing about his target’s name, face, or location. He realizes his search will take him to places where few could survive. But the Preacher has made it personal now. The hunt is on.

An extraordinary cutting-edge suspense novel from the master of international intrigue and #1 New York Times–bestselling author.]]> 332 Frederick Forsyth 0399165274 Jeff 3 spy-and-crime-read 3.66 2013
author: Frederick Forsyth
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: spy-and-crime-read
review:

]]> 425029 Presumed Innocent brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes. It's the stunning portrayal of one man's all-too-human, all-consuming fatal attraction for a passionate woman who is not his wife, and the story of how his obsession puts everything he loves and values on trial—including his own life. It's a book that lays bare a shocking world of betrayal and murder, as well as the hidden depths of the human heart. And it will hold you and haunt you ... long after you have reached its shattering conclusion.]]> 421 Scott Turow 0446350982 Jeff 3 spy-and-crime-read 4.10 1987
author: Scott Turow
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: spy-and-crime-read
review:

]]> 92557 Whitbread Novel of the Year and a Booker Prize finalist.

Two thousand years ago four travellers enter the Judean desert to fast and pray for their lost souls. In the blistering heat and barren rocks they encounter the evil merchant Musa �� madman, sadist, rapist, even a Satan �� who holds them in his tyrannical power. Yet there is also another, a faint figure in the distance, fasting for forty days, a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles... Here, trapped in the wilderness, their terrifying battle for survival begins...]]> 242 Jim Crace 0312199511 Jeff 4 read-fiction 3.70 1997
author: Jim Crace
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: read-fiction
review:

]]> 18296833
It is a sweltering July in the mid-1970s, and for Will Flemyng, foreign office minister, the temperature is rising with each passing hour. A mysterious death has exposed secret passions in government, bringing on a political crisis that will draw him back into a familiar world of danger and deceit.

For Flemyng has a past. He was trained as a spy for a life behind enemy lines and now he’s compelled to go back. In the course of one long weekend he must question all his loyalties �� to his friends, his rivals and to his own two brothers.

Only then can he expose the truth in London and Washington. When he has walked through the fire.]]> 400 James Naughtie 1781856001 Jeff 3 2.68 2014
author: James Naughtie
name: Jeff
average rating: 2.68
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: read-fiction, spy-and-crime-read
review:

]]> 3588825
O ano é 63 AC. A expansão do Império segue estável, mas uma ameaça interna pode atrapalhar os planos de Roma. Um grupo de ricos conspiradores quer transformar a república numa ditadura. Com fabuloso talento oratório e muita esperteza, Cícero descobre e fulmina a insurreição, se expondo a grande perigo e, possivelmente, tentativas de assassinato. Motins, traição e perfídia são seu legado político, resultando em uma batalha com Julio César. Mas Tiro se mantém leal e astuto, ajudando o mestre em suas maquinações.

Autor do thriller O fantasma �� transformado em filme por Roman Polanski ��, Harris conhece como poucos o universo político: participou do projeto do Novo Trabalhismo, mas rompeu com o líder após o alinhamento da Inglaterra à guerra contra o Iraque levada a cabo por George W. Bush. É com essa visão afiada do funcionamento dos mecanismos do poder que Harris consegue recriar o universo de conspirações e intrigas de Roma enquanto República, décadas antes do nascimento Jesus.]]> 419 Robert Harris 8501090425 Jeff 0 got-these-fiction-to-read 4.21 2009
author: Robert Harris
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: got-these-fiction-to-read
review:

]]> 62586003 A manifesto to change how you eat and how you think about the human body.

It’s not you, it’s the food.

We have entered a new age of eating. For the first time in human history, most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food. There’s a long, formal scientific definition, but it can be boiled down to this: if it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, it’s UPF.

These products are specifically engineered to behave as addictive substances, driving excess consumption. They are now linked to the leading cause of early death globally and the number one cause of environmental destruction. Yet almost all our staple foods are ultra-processed. UPF is our food culture and for many people it is the only available and affordable food.

In this book, Chris van Tulleken, father, scientist, doctor, and award-winning BBC broadcaster, marshals the latest evidence to show how governments, scientists, and doctors have allowed transnational food companies to create a pandemic of diet-related disease. The solutions don’t lie in willpower, personal responsibility, or exercise. You’ll find no diet plan in this book―but join Chris as he undertakes a powerful self-experiment that made headlines around the world: under the supervision of colleagues at University College London he spent a month eating a diet of 80 percent UPF, typical for many children and adults in the United States. While his body became the subject of scientific scrutiny, he spoke to the world’s leading experts from academia, agriculture, and―most important―the food industry itself. But more than teaching him about the experience of the food, the diet switched off Chris’s own addiction to UPF.

In a fast-paced and eye-opening narrative he explores the origins, science, and economics of UPF to reveal its catastrophic impact on our bodies and the planet. And he proposes real solutions for doctors, for policy makers, and for all of us who have to eat. A book that won’t only upend the way you shop and eat, Ultra-Processed People will open your eyes to the need for action on a global scale.]]> 384 Chris van Tulleken 1324036729 Jeff 3 audible 4.40 2023
author: Chris van Tulleken
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/27
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: audible
review:

]]> 10266875
A first-person narrative of Lilly Bere’s life, On Canaan’s Side opens as the eighty-five-year-old Irish émigré mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly, the daughter of a Dublin policeman, revisits her eventful past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland at the end of the First World War. She continues her tale in America, where—far from her family—she first tastes the sweetness of love and the bitterness of betrayal.

Spanning nearly seven decades, Sebastian Barry’s extraordinary fifth novel explores memory, war, family ties, love, and loss, distilling the complexity and beauty of life into his haunting prose.]]> 256 Sebastian Barry 0571226531 Jeff 5 read-fiction 3.83 2011
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/13
date added: 2023/10/13
shelves: read-fiction
review:
Beautiful and skilled writing. A wonderful and evocative story.
]]> 92780 233 Stella Gibbons 0143039598 Jeff 5 funny-books, read-fiction Unique and funny 3.89 1932
author: Stella Gibbons
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1932
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/28
date added: 2023/09/28
shelves: funny-books, read-fiction
review:
Unique and funny
]]> 61030680
WHAT IS HISTORY, NOW? covers topics such as the history of racism and anti-racism, queer history, the history of faith, the history of disability, environmental history, escaping imperial nostalgia, hearing women's voices and 'rewriting' the past. The list of contributors includes: Justin Bengry, Leila K Blackbird, Emily Brand, Gus Casely-Hayford, Sarah Churchwell, Caroline Dodds Pennock, Peter Frankopan, Bettany Hughes, Dan Hicks, Onyeka Nubia, Islam Issa, Maya Jasanoff, Rana Mitter, Charlotte Riley, Miri Rubin, Simon Schama, Alex von Tunzelmann and Jaipreet Virdi.]]> 352 Suzannah Lipscomb 147462247X Jeff 0 to-read 3.87 2021
author: Suzannah Lipscomb
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56755487 New York Times bestselling author of the brilliantly inventive The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death returns with his third literary whodunit featuring intrepid detectives Hawthorne and Horowitz.

When Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they don’t expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation—or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer in a remote place with a murky, haunted past.

Arriving on Alderney, Hawthorne and Horowitz soon meet the festival’s other guests—an eccentric gathering that includes a bestselling children’s author, a French poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic, and a war historian—along with a group of ornery locals embroiled in an escalating feud over a disruptive power line.

When a local grandee is found dead under mysterious circumstances, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in the case. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who?

Both a brilliant satire on the world of books and writers and an immensely enjoyable locked-room mystery, A Line to Kill is a triumph—a riddle of a story full of brilliant misdirection, beautifully set-out clues, and diabolically clever denouements.]]> 375 Anthony Horowitz 0062938169 Jeff 3 spy-and-crime-read 3.87 2021
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/28
date added: 2023/08/28
shelves: spy-and-crime-read
review:

]]> 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 Jeff 4 4.28 1813
author: Jane Austen
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 43984883 San Francisco Chronicle).��The��New Yorker��has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,�� and she has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire��us—in Strout’s words—“to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”]]> 289 Elizabeth Strout 0812996542 Jeff 4 4.06 2019
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/24
date added: 2023/08/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 43945 Portnoy’s Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1969, and is perhaps Roth’s best-known book.

Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. 'The Puzzled Penis', Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) it is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.]]> 274 Philip Roth Jeff 4 funny-books, to-read 3.71 1969
author: Philip Roth
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/21
shelves: funny-books, to-read
review:

]]> 45734834
A stand alone practice companion and beautiful coffee table book, A Manual for Life is for anyone interested in yoga, mindful movement and meditation, and exploring how these practices fit within the modern world.

As well as an extensive guide to poses, this book features a number of picture-led sequences with specific targets in to combat stress and fatigue, to ground, to uplift, to inspire creativity and to sleep better. These sequences are underpinned with essays on yoga's relationship with different aspects of life, such as yoga and discipline, yoga and self-care, and yoga and difficulty. Peppered throughout the book are mindful "life hacks"--simple ways to take yoga's message of radical self-care off the mat and into daily life.

In recent times there has been a great rush in the yoga world to embrace the digital with online classes, apps and web-guides to the practice. Increasingly, though, people are starting to realize the practice isn't particularly compatible with the screen, and that digital guides stop them from being mindful and present in the moment. A Manual for Life is an opportunity for people to turn off their laptops, put away their phones and follow simple, clearly laid out sequences that will help them disengage from technology and hone their concentration and focus.]]> 224 Naomi Annand 1472963210 Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 4.43
author: Naomi Annand
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.43
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/01
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 16248196
Have you ever:
�� Invested time in something that, with hindsight, just wasn't worth it?
�� Overpayed in an Ebay auction?
�� Continued doing something you knew was bad for you?
�� Sold stocks too late, or too early?
�� Taken credit for success, but blamed failure on external circumstances?
�� Backed the wrong horse?

These are examples of cognitive biases, simple errors we all make in our day-to-day thinking. But by knowing what they are and how to spot them, we can avoid them and make better choices-whether dealing with a personal problem or a business negotiation; trying to save money or make money; working out what we do or don't want in life: and how best to get it.

Simple, clear and always surprising, this indispensable book will change the way you think and transform your decision-making-work, at home, every day. It reveals, in 99 short chapters, the most common errors of judgment, and how to avoid them.]]> 384 Rolf Dobelli 0062219685 Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 3.83 2011
author: Rolf Dobelli
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/01
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 60764306 528 Tim Spector 1787334260 Jeff 4 read-non-fiction 4.24 2022
author: Tim Spector
name: Jeff
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/07/01
shelves: read-non-fiction
review:

]]> 51764686 The groundbreaking speeches of Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist who has become the voice of a generation, including her historic address to the United Nations

In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference brings you Greta in her own words, for the first time. Collecting her speeches that have made history across the globe, from the United Nations to Capitol Hill and mass street protests, her book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. Our future depends upon it.]]> 112 Greta Thunberg 014313356X Jeff 0 to-read 3.81 2019
author: Greta Thunberg
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30212107
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.]]> 259 Sebastian Barry 0525427368 Jeff 4 3.93 2016
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/20
date added: 2023/05/20
shelves:
review:
Evokes amazingly well the period and the characters
]]> 62209647
It's the other people around you, says Michael Frayn, who make you what you are. So he would like to say a brief word, looking back on life from his ninetieth year, about a few of the people who have formed his own particular world.

Some were friends; some not; some more than friends. Some have had a profound effect; some only a passing one. Some you may know yourself; some you certainly won't. Some he now wonders if he ever really knew himself. The last of his subjects in this selection, and the longest and closest acquaintance of all, is his own body, a companion on life's road at least as idiosyncratic and puzzling as everyone and everything around it.

Among Others is a patchwork memoir of a lifetime's encounters. Truthful and loving, sometimes elegiac, sometimes comic, it is a celebration of the endlessly intriguing otherness of others.]]> 272 Michael Frayn 0571378609 Jeff 0 borrow-library 3.51
author: Michael Frayn
name: Jeff
average rating: 3.51
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/08
shelves: borrow-library
review:

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