en-US Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:38:49 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 203200544 112 Vincenzo Latronico 1804271055 Yavor 0 to-read 3.84 2022
author: Vincenzo Latronico
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 11003233
In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.]]> 110 Steven L. Peck Yavor 0 to-read 4.24 2011
author: Steven L. Peck
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 208511270
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.

The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.

Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”]]> 160 Solvej Balle 0811237257 Yavor 0 to-read 3.90 2020
author: Solvej Balle
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
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]]> 36206591 The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You).]]> 432 Christina Lauren 1501190539 Yavor 4 4.23 2018
author: Christina Lauren
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
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]]> 199373500 An extraordinary debut novel in which the transforming love and friendship between two young men during one unforgettable teenage summer in rural New England haunts them into adulthood

It took three car crashes to kill Jake.

Theron David Alden is there for the first two: the summer they meet in rural New Hampshire, when he’s fifteen and anxious, and Jake’s seventeen and a natural; then six years later in New York City, those too-short, ecstatic, painful nights that change both their lives forever—the end of the dream and the longing for the dream and the dream itself, all at once.

Theron is not there for the third crash.

And yet, their story contains so much joy and the glorious, stupid simplicity of a boyhood joke; the devastation of insecurity; the way a great song can distill a universe; the limits of what we can know about each other; the mysterious, porous, ungraspable fault line between yourself and the person you love better than yourself; the beautiful, toxic elixir of need and hope and want.]]> 320 August Thompson 0593656563 Yavor 4 4.03 2024
author: August Thompson
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
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]]> 199392376 What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer: The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells that not only cure those afflicted but leave them virtually immortal. At the same time, literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning "Beloved," in honor of his husband. When Dr. Beeko, who holds the patent to the nano-therapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.]]> 256 Anton Hur 0063344483 Yavor 4 to-buy 3.82 2024
author: Anton Hur
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

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

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

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 382 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Yavor 3 4.67 2025
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> 216522629 A stunning debut novel from the acclaimed young Irish poet Seán Hewitt, reminiscent of Garth Greenwell and Douglas Stuart in the intensity of its evocation of sexual awakening.

Set in a remote village in the North of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two sixteen year old boys meet and transform each other’s lives.

James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle at their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him, like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.

Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.]]> 224 Seán Hewitt 0593802845 Yavor 0 to-read 4.24
author: Seán Hewitt
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.24
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]]> 59808381 From an electrifying new voice, a "stone-cold masterpiece" (Olivia Laing) of queer friendship, first love, and unbridled youth.

It's four in the morning, and our narrator is walking home from the club when they realize the date is February 29th-the birthday of the man who was something like their first love. Piecing together art, letters, and memory, they set about trying to write the story of a doomed affair that first sparked and burned a decade ago.

Ten years earlier, our young narrator and a boy named Thomas James fall into bed with one another over the summer of their graduation. Their ensuing affair, with its violent, animal intensity and its intoxicating and toxic power plays initiates a dance of repulsion and attraction that will cross years, span continents, drag in countless victims-and culminate in terrible betrayal.

At Certain Points We Touch is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco, and New York-a riotous, razor-sharp coming-of-age story that marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.]]> 384 Lauren John Joseph 152663130X Yavor 4 3.61 2022
author: Lauren John Joseph
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
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]]> 59316317 From literary sensation and International Booker Prize-shortlisted author Mieko Kawakami, the bestelling author of Breasts and Eggs and Heaven comes All The Lovers In The Night, an extraordinary, deeply moving and insightful story set in contemporary Tokyo.

Fuyuko Irie is a freelance proofreader in her thirties. Living alone in an overwhelming city and unable to form meaningful relationships, she has little contact with anyone other than her colleague, Hijiri. But a chance encounter with a man named Mitsutsuka awakens something new in her. Through their weekly meetings, Fuyuko starts to see the world in a different light and still, painful memories from her past begin to resurface. As Fuyuko realizes she exists in a small world of her own making she begins to push at her own boundaries. But will she find the strength to bring down the walls that surround her?

Pulsing and poetic, modern and shocking, this is an unforgettable novel from Japan’s most exciting writer.]]> 219 Mieko Kawakami 1509898263 Yavor 0 to-read 3.75 2011
author: Mieko Kawakami
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> 58416952 At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic �� the Hierarchy �� may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus �� what they call Will �� to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.]]> 639 James Islington 1982141190 Yavor 0 to-read 4.61 2023
author: James Islington
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/20
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]]> 217587065 A radiant novel of longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer—about family, desire, and what we inherit—from celebrated author Tash Aw.

When his grandfather dies, a boy named Jay travels south with his family to the property he left them, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.

Still, Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the local son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.

Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members confront their own regrets, and begin to drift apart. Like the land around them, they are powerless to resist the global forces that threaten to render their lives obsolete.

At once sweeping and intimate, The South is a story of what happens when private and public lives collide. It is the first in a quartet of novels that form Tash Aw’s masterful portrait of a family navigating a period of great change—a reimagined epic for our times.]]> 304 Tash Aw 0008637601 Yavor 0 to-read 4.01 2025
author: Tash Aw
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/13
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]]> 10504688 256 Costas Montis 9543360049 Yavor 0 to-read 4.51 2005
author: Costas Montis
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 Yavor 3 4.14 2021
author: Claire Keegan
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> 199635125
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.

In “The Feminist,�� a young man’s passionate allyship turns to furious nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that it isn’t getting him laid. A young woman’s unrequited crush in “Pics�� spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of her sense of self. And in “Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,�� a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship leads to a life-upending mistake. As the characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways our delusions can warp our desire for connection.

These brilliant satires explore the underrated sorrows of rejection with the authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a manifesto. Audacious and unforgettable, Rejection is a stunning mosaic that redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society, and oneself.]]> 272 Tony Tulathimutte 0063337878 Yavor 0 to-read 3.89 2024
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
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]]> 63945340 From the author of the acclaimed novel Temporary, an intimate exploration of time, a fable about love, an epic daydream for a broken-hearted world

Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn't there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller's dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world.

Terrace Story follows the characters who suffer these repercussions and reverberations: the little family of three, their future now deeply uncertain, and those who orbit their fragile universe. The distance and love between these characters expands limitlessly, across generations. How far can the mind travel when it's looking for something that is gone? Where do we put our loneliness, longing, and desire? What do we do with the emotions that seem to stretch beyond the body, beyond the boundaries of life and death?

Based on the National Magazine Award-winning story, Hilary Leichter's profound second novel asks how we nurture love when death looms over every moment. From one of our most innovative and daring writers, Terrace Story is an astounding meditation on loss, a reverie about extinction, and a map for where to go next.]]> 208 Hilary Leichter 0063265818 Yavor 3 3.55 2023
author: Hilary Leichter
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Yavor 4 3.57 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
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]]> 25658482 this cocktail!'

From this moment of inspiration, Sartre will create his own extraordinary philosophy of real, experienced life–of love and desire, of freedom and being, of cafés and waiters, of friendships and revolutionary fervour. It is a philosophy that will enthral Paris and sweep through the world, leaving its mark on post-war liberation movements, from the student uprisings of 1968 to civil rights pioneers.

At the Existentialist Café tells the story of modern existentialism as one of passionate encounters between people, minds and ideas. From the ‘king and queen of existentialism'–Sartre and de Beauvoir–to their wider circle of friends and adversaries including Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Iris Murdoch, this book is an enjoyable and original journey through a captivating intellectual movement. Weaving biography and thought, Sarah Bakewell takes us to the heart of a philosophy about life that also changed lives, and that tackled the biggest questions of all: what we are and how we are to live.]]> 440 Sarah Bakewell 0701186585 Yavor 0 to-read 4.23 2016
author: Sarah Bakewell
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 123938160
For centuries, evidence of queer love in the ancient world has either been ignored or suppressed. Even today, only a few narratives are widely the wild romance of Achilles and Patroclus; the yearning love of Sappho's lyrics; and the three genders introduced in Plato's Symposium . Yet there is a rich literary tradition of queer Greek and Roman love that extends far beyond the prudish translations of these familiar handful of stories.

In 300,000 Kisses , award-winning poet Seán Hewitt and renowned designer Luke Edward Hall collect these stories—including some of the most beautiful and moving in the classical canon—and bring them to vivid life. Alongside celebrated works by Homer, Sappho, Ovid and Catullus, they include a wide range of rarely anthologized raunchy poems, thoughtful dialogues, philosophical treatises, and even a graffiti text salvaged from the ruins of Pompeii.

Through Hewitt's contemporary translations and Hall's vibrant illustrations, we encounter relationships that are by turns heartfelt and nourishing, unrequited and lustful, toxic and crude, tender and fulfilling. A groundbreaking anthology that seeks to change the way we see the ancient world, 300,000 Kisses is a fascinating journey through love in all its forms.]]> 208 Seán Hewitt 0593582446 Yavor 5 3.80
author: Seán Hewitt
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 5
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]]> 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yōko Ogawa 1101870605 Yavor 4 3.72 1994
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 211003759 In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most �� love and work, community and knowledge �� will survive.]]> 304 Eiren Caffall 1250353521 Yavor 0 to-read 3.58 2025
author: Eiren Caffall
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

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

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

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

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Yavor 0 to-read 4.59 2024
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/10
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]]> 122762546 Mei loses her Japanese mother at age six. Growing up in suburban Surrey, she yearns to fit in, suppressing both her heritage and her growing love for her best friend Fran.

Yuki leaves the Japanese countryside to pursue her dream of becoming a concert violinist in London. Lonely and far from home, she finds herself caught up in the charms of her older teacher.

Haruka attempts to navigate Tokyo’s nightlife and all of its many vices, working as a hostess in seedy bars. She grieves a mother who hid so many secrets from her, until finally one of those secrets comes to light . . .

Shifting between three intertwining narratives, Mongrel reveals a tangled web of isolation, desire, love, and ultimately, hope.]]> 352 Hanako Footman 1804440434 Yavor 0 to-read 4.31 2024
author: Hanako Footman
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/10
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]]> 34204346
A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. He imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in the painting that obsesses him. Over and over again, each night in his private fantasies, the objects of his lust are tortured, killed and maimed. But, in the rigid world of imperial wartime Japan there is no place for such transgressive desires. He must wear a false mask and hide his true nature, whatever the cost.

'A terrific and astringent work of beauty' The Times Literary Supplement

'Mishima is lucid in the midst of emotional confusion, funny in the midst of despair' Christopher Isherwood

'Never has a "confession" been freer from self-pity' Sunday Times]]> 176 Yukio Mishima 024130119X Yavor 0 to-read 3.89 1949
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

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

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.�� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells Yavor 3 4.11 2017
author: Martha Wells
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> 525304
Even Stapledon's other great work, LAST AND FIRST MEN, pales in ambition next to STAR MAKER, which presents nothing less than an entire imagined history of life in the universe, encompassing billions of years.]]> 272 Olaf Stapledon Yavor 0 to-read 3.93 1937
author: Olaf Stapledon
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1937
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> 45011012 Temporary, a young woman's workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, "there is nothing more personal than doing your job."

This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.]]> 208 Hilary Leichter 1566895669 Yavor 0 to-read 3.80 2020
author: Hilary Leichter
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/21
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]]> 7723 The Metamorphosis,�� a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. ��The Judgment,�� which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and ��The Stoker,�� which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with ��The Metamorphosis,�� form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,�� and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.

Also included are ��In the Penal Colony,�� a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and ��A Hunger Artist,�� about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.]]> 224 Franz Kafka 1593080298 Yavor 0 to-read 4.08 1915
author: Franz Kafka
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1915
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> 62926938 An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.]]> 336 Ashley Poston Yavor 3 4.18 2023
author: Ashley Poston
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
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]]> 179455076
At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, literature, place and memory is about how reality is never made by realists and how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.]]> 280 Richard Flanagan 1761343467 Yavor 0 to-read 4.19 2023
author: Richard Flanagan
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 18283207 176 Hiromi Kawakami 1846275083 Yavor 0 to-read 3.63 2001
author: Hiromi Kawakami
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Yavor 0 to-read 3.54 2024
author: Miranda July
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

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

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Yavor 0 to-read 4.46 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 210085071
Always just on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie is never quite sure enough of herself to take centre stage. But the outsider holds certain advantages, sees things others don't, can influence without drawing attention. And when the map has been lost, it's anyone's guess where you may end up, or the accidental choices you find you have made. Frankie discovers that life is not always the one we hope for, or the one others expect of us.

Travelling from post-war Ireland to the dazzling art scene of 1960s New York by way of London, Frankie is an immersive, decade-sweeping novel about love, bravery and what it means to live a significant life.]]> 291 Graham Norton Yavor 0 to-read 4.31 2024
author: Graham Norton
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 195430687 Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.]]> 342 Coco Mellors 0593723767 Yavor 0 to-read 3.94 2024
author: Coco Mellors
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 205363938 A medical crisis brings one man close to death—and to love, art, and beauty—in a profound and luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell.

A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind.

This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. Small Rain surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.]]> 306 Garth Greenwell 0374279543 Yavor 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Garth Greenwell
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57001545
As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parrot -- a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics -- he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.

With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a richly drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.]]> 464 Sarah Winman 0593330757 Yavor 0 to-read 4.08 2021
author: Sarah Winman
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 25334576
In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal.

In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.]]> 114 Max Porter 0571323766 Yavor 4 3.85 2015
author: Max Porter
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/27
date added: 2024/07/27
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]]> 34449
Tsuruko, the eldest sister, clings obstinately to the prestige of her family name even as her husband prepares to move their household to Tokyo, where that name means nothing. Sachiko compromises valiantly to secure the future of her younger sisters. The unmarried Yukiko is a hostage to her family’s exacting standards, while the spirited Taeko rebels by flinging herself into scandalous romantic alliances. Filled with vignettes of upper-class Japanese life and capturing both the decorum and the heartache of its protagonist, The Makioka Sisters is a classic of international literature.]]> 530 Jun'ichirō Tanizaki 0679761640 Yavor 0 to-read 4.03 1948
author: Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 3181564
She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper’s shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.]]> 180 Yōko Ogawa 0312427808 Yavor 0 to-read 4.04 2003
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 122780856 In this gripping historical novel, the internationally bestselling author of The Mercies weaves a spellbinding tale of fear, transformation, courage, and love in sixteenth-century France.

Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and when hundreds of other women join her, the men running the city declare a state of emergency and hire musicians to play the Devil out of the mob. Outside the city, pregnant Lisbet lives with her husband and mother-in-law, tending the bees that are the family's livelihood. Though Lisbet is removed from the frenzy of the dancing plague afflicting the city's women, her own quiet life is upended by the arrival of her sister-in-law. Nethe has been away for seven years, serving a penance in the mountains for a crime no one will name.

It is a secret Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand feet, Lisbet becomes caught in a dangerous web of deceit and clandestine passion. Like the women of Strasbourg, she too, is dancing to a dangerous tune. . . .

Set in an era of superstition, hysteria, and extraordinary change, and inspired by true events, The Dance Tree is an impassioned story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge.]]> 304 Kiran Millwood Hargrave Yavor 0 to-read 3.80 2022
author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 202102006 It's Natwest's last day before he leaves for university, and there's only one thing on his mind: the deeply embarrassing package he ordered to his house - which still hasn't arrived. He won't leave town without it. Any alternative is too distressing to consider ...

This is the story of twenty-four hours in the life of Natwest, and his small-town odyssey in pursuit of the missing package. And yet it's also the story of a middle-aged dentist who dreams of being a respected artist - but the only thing he can seem to paint is the human mouth. And it's the story of a tortured imam involved in a quasi-romantic entanglement with the local vicar; and an octogenerian mourning the death of her secretive husband; and a troubled teenager whose nudes have leaked on the internet. It's the story of Natwest's obnoxious ex-boyfriend, and his class-traitor mother and her childhood boyfriend, and the life-changing secrets he knows about Natwest's past.

Alternating between Natwest's idiosyncratic inner world and the perspectives of the other characters - and dazzling in its energy, imagination and originality - this is an outrageously funny and tenderly moving story about being connected to everyone and everything at all times; about love, friendship, and the lies we tell ourselves; about unhappy endings, happy endings - and whether anything really is as simple as one or the other.]]> 320 Nathan Newman 0593654900 Yavor 0 to-read, to-buy 3.01 2024
author: Nathan Newman
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: to-read, to-buy
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]]> 203642579
Newly single Meadow Liu is house-sitting for his friend, artist Selma Shimizu, when he stumbles upon The Masquerade, a translated novel about a masked ball in 1930s Shanghai. The author’s name is the same as Meadow’s own in Chinese, Liu Tian—a coincidence that proves to be the first of many strange happenings. Over the course of a single summer, Meadow must contend with a possibly haunted apartment, a mirror that plays tricks, a stranger speaking in riddles at the bar where he works, as well as a startling revelation about a former lover. And when Selma vanishes from her artist residency, Meadow is forced to question everything he knows as the boundaries between real and imagined begin to blur. Exploring social, cultural, and sexual identities in New York, Shanghai, and beyond, Mike Fu’s Masquerade is a skillfully layered, brilliantly interwoven debut novel of friendship, queer longing, and worlds on the brink, asking how we can find ourselves among ghosts of all kinds, and who we can trust when nothing—and no one—is as it seems.]]> 352 Mike Fu Yavor 0 to-read 3.62 2024
author: Mike Fu
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 43398196
Akutagawa-award-winning author Yū Miri uses her outsider’s perspective as a Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japan’s most vulnerable people.]]> 168 Yū Miri 1911284169 Yavor 3 3.46 2014
author: Yū Miri
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
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]]> 49203397 The Secret History meets Call Me by Your Name in Micah Nemerever's compulsively enjoyable debut novel - a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

When Paul and Julian meet as university freshmen in early 1970s Pittsburgh, they are immediately drawn to one another. A talented artist, Paul is sensitive and agonizingly insecure, incomprehensible to his working-class family, and desolate with grief over his father's recent death. Paul sees his wealthy, effortlessly charming Julian as his sole intellectual equal - an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. He idolizes his friend for his magnetic confidence. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian also is volatile and capriciously cruel. An admiration isn't the same as trust.

As their friendship spirals into an all-consuming intimacy, Paul is desperate to protect their precarious bond, even as it becomes clear that pressures from the outside world are nothing compared with the brutality they are capable of inflicting on one another. Separation is out of the question. But as their orbit compresses and their grip on one another tightens, they are drawn to an act of irrevocable violence that will force the young men to confront a shattering truth at the core of their relationship.

Exquisitely plotted, unfolding with propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is a novel of escalating dread and an excavation of the unsettling depths of human desire.]]> 460 Micah Nemerever 0062963635 Yavor 0 to-read 3.96 2020
author: Micah Nemerever
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 50269327
Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?]]> 247 Sayaka Murata 1783785675 Yavor 0 to-read 3.59 2018
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54814676
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band �� and meeting the man who would become her husband �� her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

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

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 243 Michelle Zauner 0525657746 Yavor 0 to-read 4.25 2021
author: Michelle Zauner
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]> 352 Oisín McKenna 0063319977 Yavor 0 to-read 3.78 2024
author: Oisín McKenna
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 181110014 Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, this suspenseful queer YA romance from critically acclaimed author K. Ancrum reimagines the tale of Icarus as a star-crossed love story between a young art thief and the son of the man he’s been stealing from.

Icarus Gallagher is a thief.

He steals priceless art and replaces it with his father’s impeccable forgeries. For years, one man—the wealthy Mr. Black—has been their target, revenge for his role in the death of Icarus’s mother. To keep their secret, Icarus adheres to his own strict rules to keep people, and feelings, at bay: Don’t let anyone close. Don’t let anyone touch you. And, above all, don’t get caught.

Until one night, he does. Not by Mr. Black, but by his mysterious son, Helios, now living under house arrest in the Black mansion. Instead of turning Icarus in, Helios bargains for something even more dangerous—a friendship that breaks every single one of Icarus’s rules.

As reluctance and distrust become closeness and something more, they uncover the bars of the gilded cage that has trapped both of their families for years. One Icarus is determined to escape. But his father’s thirst for revenge shows no sign of fading, and soon it may force Icarus to choose: the escape he’s dreamed of, or the boy he’s come to love. Reaching for both could be his greatest triumph—or it could be his downfall.]]> 382 K. Ancrum 0063285789 Yavor 0 to-read 4.02 2024
author: K. Ancrum
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> 124100147
2002. Danny arrives at Manchester University determined not to hide from the world any longer. This is the year his life will begin. He locks eyes with a handsome stranger across the hall at the Fresher's Fair. It starts with a wink and soon Danny and Guy are best friends.

2022. Now, both single for the first time in years, Danny and Guy return to the confetti-covered streets of the Gay Village for Manchester Pride. After years of shared adventures and lost dreams, Danny finally plans to share the secret he has been keeping for two decades. He has always been in love with Guy. Could this weekend be the end of a twenty-year friendship - or the start of something new and even more beautiful?]]> 440 Matt Cain 147229193X Yavor 3 3.73
author: Matt Cain
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.73
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/02
date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> 57758746
Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who left the country because he thought he was making Valdin sad. Greta is in love with fellow English tutor Holly, who only seems to be using her for admin support. But perhaps all is not lost. Valdin is coming to realize that he might not be so unlovable, and Greta, that she might be worth more than the papers she can mark.

Helping the siblings navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the tendency of their love interests to either leave the country or not love them back, is the whole Vladisavljevic family: Māori-Russian-Catalonian, and as passionate and loving as they are eccentric and over-emotional.

Rebecca K Reilly's exploration of love, family, karaoke, and the generational reverberations of colonialism will make you laugh, might make you cry, and will certainly make you fall in love with Greta, Valdin and all of the Vladisavljevics.]]> 352 Rebecca K. Reilly 1776564197 Yavor 0 to-read 4.30 2021
author: Rebecca K. Reilly
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 182108722 Henry Henry is a queer reimagining of Shakespeare's Henriad, transposing the legend of Henry V's wayward youth into 21st-century Britain in the years leading up to the Brexit referendum.

Henry Henry follows Hal Lancaster��22, gay, Catholic—as he spends his first years out of Oxford floating between internships, drinking with his actor friends, struggling through awkward hook-ups, and occasionally going to confession to be absolved of his sins.

When a grouse shooting accident-—funny in retrospect—makes a romance out of Hal's rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, to be himself. But his father Henry is an Englishman: he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family's past.]]> 336 Allen Bratton 196188402X Yavor 0 to-read 3.60 2024
author: Allen Bratton
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> 57164200 Featuring over 60 illustrations, Earthflown is a love story that tries – and fails – to leave the water crisis behind. Set in post-flood London, futuristic medicine meets a bit of magic in Frances Wren's bittersweet debut.

When Ethan saves the life of a firestarter, it's nothing unusual. He's the only healer on call at the hospital – and that gunshot wound isn't going to regenerate itself. But his patient turns out to be Corinna Arden, heiress to a pharmaceutical empire controlling Britain's water supply. Her twin, Javier, is a man who (a) starts sending Ethan flowers at work, (b) seems terrified of a secret, and (c) has the cheekbones and earnestness to make up for both.

Ethan indulges in (what he thinks will be) a brief, harmless romance �� but is swept up in a deadly collusion over Project Earthflown: the largest reconstruction tender since London clawed its way out of the rising sea.

Determined to follow the money, Ollie is a journalist who finds a corpse at the end of a too-convenient tip. The fate of water – and who profits – might depend on the perennial question: has Ethan lost his mind, or is he just an idiot?

Please see author's comment below for content-warnings!]]> 455 Frances Wren Yavor 0 to-read 3.98 2024
author: Frances Wren
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> 197511201 Patrick O'Hara is called back to his guncle duties . . . This time for a big family wedding in Italy.

Patrick O’Hara is back. It’s been five years since his summer as his niece Maisie and nephew Grant’s caretaker after their mother’s passing. The kids are back in Connecticut with their dad, and Patrick has relocated to New York to remain close by and relaunch his dormant acting career. After the run of his second successful sit-com comes to a close, Patrick feels on top of the world . . . professionally. But some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single again after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has a family to lean on. Until that family needs to again lean on him.

When Patrick's brother, Greg, announces he’s getting remarried in Italy, Maisie and Grant are not thrilled. Patrick feels drawn to take the two back under his wing. As they travel through Europe on their way to the wedding, Patrick tries his best to help them understand love, much as he once helped them comprehend grief. But when they arrive in Italy, Patrick is overextended managing a groom with cold feet; his sister, Clara, flirting with guests left and right; a growing rivalry with the kids�� charming soon-to-be-launt (lesbian aunt), and two moody young teens trying to adjust to a new normal, all culminating in a disastrous rehearsal dinner.

Can Patrick save the day? Will teaching the kids about love help him repair his own love life? Can the change of scenery help Patrick come to terms with finally growing up?

Gracing the work with his signature blend of humor and heart, Steven Rowley charms with a beloved story about the complicated bonds of family, love, and what it takes to rediscover yourself, even at the ripe age of fifty.]]> 320 Steven Rowley 0593540468 Yavor 0 to-read 3.90 2024
author: Steven Rowley
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 63264550
While classic war films played, Old Second and his fellow countrymen found intimacy in the privacy of the Workers' Cinema's screening rooms. Elsewhere, in the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men - guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when secrets are unveiled, they set in motion a series of haunting events that propel Old Second and Bao Mei towards an uncertain future in America.

Spanning three timelines - post-socialist China, 1980s Chinatown, and contemporary New York - Cinema Love is a tender epic about men and women who find themselves in forbidden and frustrated relationships as they grapple with the past and their unspoken desires.


'A tender and enrapturing feat of storytelling' Vanessa Chan, author of The Storm We Made


Jiaming Tang is a queer immigrant writer based in Brooklyn, NY. He is an Emerging Writer Fellow at The Center for Fiction, and his stories and essays have been published in AGNI, Lit Hub, Joyland Magazine, and elsewhere. CINEMA LOVE is his first book.]]> 320 Jiaming Tang 1399810251 Yavor 0 to-read 3.88 2024
author: Jiaming Tang
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Yavor 0 to-read 4.46 2018
author: Tara Westover
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/19
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]]> 199378930 An introverted English professor falls for an enigmatic sophomore and is lured into a web of chaos and deceit.

Mark Lausson, a professor stuck in the middle of Ohio, is smart enough to get a job at an elite liberal arts college but not smart enough to know better when he meets charismatic sophomore Tyler Cunningham. In Tyler, Mark sees another way of being in the world—he finds Tyler’s self-possession both compelling and unsettling. Caught in the rush of sex and secrets, Mark ignores the increasing evidence that Tyler can’t be trusted. But by the time Mark comes to his senses, the irreparable damage is done. Providence shows how feeling trapped in our own lives can lead us to make choices we otherwise would not and the ways in which sexual desire can distort our senses of self and other, right and wrong.]]> 320 Craig Willse 1454951990 Yavor 0 to-read 3.23 2024
author: Craig Willse
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/10
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]]> 61718053
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

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

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

A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.]]> 400 Emily Henry 0593441273 Yavor 3 3.95 2023
author: Emily Henry
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/07
date added: 2024/04/07
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]]> 122897406 A moving story about love, AIDS, grief, and memory by one of the most adventurous writers to come out of San Francisco's LGBTQ+ scene.Bob Glück met Ed Aulerich-Sugai in 1970. Ed was an aspiring artist; Bob wanted to write. They were young men in San Francisco at the high tide of sexual liberation and soon, and for eight years, they were lovers, after which they were friends. Ed was an explorer in the realms of sex. He was beautiful, fragile, exasperating, serious, unassuaged. In 1994 he died of HIV. His dream notebooks became a touchstone for this book, which Glück has been working on for some two decades, while also making  his name as a proponent of New Narrative writing and as one of America’s most unusual, venturesome, and lyrical authors. About Ed is about Ed, who remains, as our dead do, both familiar and unknowable, faraway and close. It is about Bob too. The book is a hybrid, at once fiction and fact, like memory, and it takes in many things through tales of political activism and domestic comedy and fury to questions of art and love and experiences of  longing and horror. The book also shifts in register, from the delicate  to the analytic, to funny and explicit and heartbroken. It begins in the  San Francisco of the early 1980s, when Ed and Bob have been broken up for a while. aIds is spreading, but Ed has yet to receive his diagnosis.  It follows him backward through his life with Bob in the 1970s and forward through the harrowing particulars of death. It holds on to him and explores his art. It ends in his dreams.]]> 254 Robert Glück 1681377772 Yavor 0 to-read 3.65
author: Robert Glück
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.65
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date added: 2024/03/16
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]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Yavor 0 to-read 3.98 1962
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/15
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]]> 61365289
Well-intended, curious, and wielding a stunning vocabulary, Tristan loves to listen to the subversive theories spouted by his older brother, Dylan, a drug-addicted satellite hacker. He also wants to prove his independence to his mother, Helena, a powerful population control-extremist. Meanwhile, all around him, the survivors of the environmental collapse are just working toward a better tomorrow. But when a slew of violent acts befalls Canland, Tristan must confront certain truths about the community he loves—including his family’s secrets, his own involvement in the horrors enacted by WORLD, and the debts that are owed to the orphans of Canland.

In this work of literary fiction, set against the backdrop of a frighteningly plausible dystopia, Daniel Vitale explores the fate of our planet, the nature of family, and the duty of science, as Orphans of Canland asks: What does it mean to belong on Earth?]]> 347 Daniel Vitale Yavor 0 to-read 4.22
author: Daniel Vitale
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/04
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]]> 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 Yavor 0 to-read 3.90 2018
author: Ling Ma
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/04
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]]> 59536836 A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own...

“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.��

And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding.

With this bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured debut, author Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Propulsive, darkly funny, and wildly entertaining, Vladimir perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.]]> 241 Julia May Jonas 1529080487 Yavor 0 to-read 3.71 2022
author: Julia May Jonas
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/03
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]]> 60852190
Hayes is taken to a top-secret research facility where he discovers his alternate self from an alternate universe created the Envisioner and sent it to his reality. Hayes studies footage of the other him, he discovers a self he doesn’t recognize, angry and obsessive, and footage of Yusuf�� as his husband.

As Hayes finds himself falling for Yusuf, he studies the parallel universe and imagines the perfect life they will live together. But their lives are inextricably linked to the other reality, and when that couple's story ends in tragedy Hayes realises he must do anything he can to save Yusuf's life. Because there are infinite realities, but only one Yusuf.

With the fate of countless realities and his heart in his hands, Hayes leads Yusuf on the run, tumbling through a kaleidoscope of universes trying to save it all. But even escaping into infinity, Hayes is running out of space - soon he will have to decide how much he’s willing to pay to save the love of his life.]]> 368 Nathan Tavares 1803360380 Yavor 0 to-read 3.56 2022
author: Nathan Tavares
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/02
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]]> 6350026 783 John Gehlmann Yavor 0 to-read 3.89 1952
author: John Gehlmann
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 157431656 783 Mary Rives Bowman Yavor 0 to-read 0.0
author: Mary Rives Bowman
name: Yavor
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 166863440 772 John Gehlman Yavor 0 to-read 0.0
author: John Gehlman
name: Yavor
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 125643465 0 Yavor 0 to-read 0.0
author: Mary Rives Bowman and Rewey Belle Inglis John Gehlman
name: Yavor
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/17
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]]> 58891551
As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.]]> 390 Douglas Stuart 0802159559 Yavor 3 4.38 2022
author: Douglas Stuart
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/04
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As much as I loved Mungo (though his character wasn’t my favourite), I disliked the stylistic approach of the author. There was a lot of noise. 3,5*
]]> 52693863 Some stories are universal. They play out across human history. And time is the river which will flow through them.

It starts with a family, a family which will mutate. For now, it is a father, mother and two sons. One with his father’s violence in his blood. One who lives his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will change their fate. It is a beginning.

Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of two thousand years �� they will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From distant Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium to a life amongst the stars in the third. While the world will change around them, their destinies will remain the same. It must play out as foretold. It is written.

A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom is the extraordinary new novel from acclaimed writer John Boyne. Ambitious, far-reaching and mythic, it introduces a group of characters whose lives we will come to know and will follow through time and space until they reach their natural conclusion.]]> 448 John Boyne 0857526197 Yavor 3 3.65 2020
author: John Boyne
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/28
date added: 2024/01/28
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I wish the last two chapters did not exist. The idea is admiring and so is the structure - I wouldn’t say it reminds of Cloud Atlas, it might be slightly inspired by it but far from its language and style. This book would have benefited from a better research, one star less for the unbelievably basic mistakes. And one more for the ending.
]]> 57845084 240 Missouri Williams 0374605084 Yavor 0 to-read 3.14 2022
author: Missouri Williams
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 52357 259 Unknown 0393320979 Yavor 1 3.46 1000
author: Unknown
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1000
rating: 1
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]]> 10508
Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection exhibits the diversity of interests and the depth of knowledge that have made Eco one of the world's leading writers.

On some functions of literature --
A reading of the Paradiso --
On the style of The communist manifesto --
The mists of the Valoi --
Wilde : parados and aphorism --
A portrait of the artist as bachelor --
Between La Mancha and Babel --
Borges and my anxiety of influence --
On Camporesi : blood, body, life --
On symbolism --
On style --
Les Semaphores sous la Pluie --
The flaws in the form --
Intertextual irony and levels of reading --
The Poetics and us --
The American myth in three anti-American generations --
The power of falsehood --
How I write]]> 352 Umberto Eco 0156032392 Yavor 4 3.97 2002
author: Umberto Eco
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2014/12/11
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 60483 Music for Chameleons is Handcarved Coffins, a ‘nonfiction novel�� based on the brutal crimes of a real-life murderer. Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice. Also in this volume are six short stories and seven ‘conversational portraits�� including a touching one of Marilyn Monroe, the ‘beautiful child�� and a hilarious one of a dope-smoking cleaning lady doing her rounds in New York.]]> 262 Truman Capote 0141184612 Yavor 3 4.10 1980
author: Truman Capote
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2013/11/18
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 2287 Other Voices, Other Rooms is a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully’s Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks.

Fueled by a world-weariness that belied Capote’s tender age, this novel tempers its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence with an appreciation for small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.

This new edition, featuring an enlightening Introduction by John Berendt, offers readers a fresh look at Capote’s emerging brilliance as a writer of protean power and effortless grace.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 232 Truman Capote 0679745645 Yavor 3 3.80 1948
author: Truman Capote
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1948
rating: 3
read at: 2013/05/15
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 42038 488 William Shakespeare 1903436575 Yavor 4 4.26 1609
author: William Shakespeare
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1609
rating: 4
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]]> 3310282 B "Tютюн" зpялaтa миcъл, вкуcът и интeлeктът нa мopaлиcтa пpeoдoлявaт плaшeщoтo paзcтoяниe мeжду нeгoвитe блуждeния пo чужди cвeтoвe и нaшия coбcтвeн нaциoнaлeн иcтopичecки oпит, тe ca нaмepили cвoй eзик зa нoвия ни нaциoнaлeн oпит. Пpeoдoлявaнeтo нa тoвa oгpoмнo paзcтoяниe, нeoбичaйнaтa пapaбoлa нa тoвa пътeшecтвиe бяхa и пpeoдoлявaнe нa cмъpттa нa poмaнa в интeлeктуaлнaтa cухoтa и умoзpитeлнocт, oткpихa нoви, нe caмo чиcтo плacтичecки пътищa зa paзвитиeтo нa бъдeщия бългapcки poмaн и зa нaшeтo нoвo пoвecтвoвaтeлнo изкуcтвo.]]> 447 Dimitar Dimov 9542804229 Yavor 3 4.39 1974
author: Dimitar Dimov
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1974
rating: 3
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]]> 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X Yavor 4 4.39 1946
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1946
rating: 4
read at: 2013/03/12
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 207751 Each chapter explores a different aspect of the art of fiction and ends with a series of writing exercises ��127 in all. Complete with self-critique questions to help you assess your work, these exercises challenge you to experiment with the diverse writing styles as you clarify your own.
Make the most of Josip Novakovich's insightful, mind-expanding workshop and come away with a stronger voice, a broader perspective and better fiction.]]> 256 Josip Novakovich 1884910394 Yavor 4 3.91 1995
author: Josip Novakovich
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2012/11/01
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 84692 296 Josip Novakovich 1884910351 Yavor 4 3.85 1998
author: Josip Novakovich
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2012/10/06
date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 1802224 120 Христо Смирненски 9544390421 Yavor 4 4.34 1992
author: Христо Смирненски
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 11066429 560 Yordan Yovkov 9547395521 Yavor 3 4.46 1999
author: Yordan Yovkov
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1999
rating: 3
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]]> 295 Treasure Island has never been surpassed. From the moment young Jim Hawkins first encounters the sinister Blind Pew at the Admiral Benbow Inn until the climactic battle for treasure on a tropic isle, the novel creates scenes and characters that have fired the imaginations of generations of readers. Written by a superb prose stylist, a master of both action and atmosphere, the story centers upon the conflict between good and evil - but in this case a particularly engaging form of evil. It is the villainy of that most ambiguous rogue Long John Silver that sets the tempo of this tale of treachery, greed, and daring. Designed to forever kindle a dream of high romance and distant horizons, Treasure Island is, in the words of G. K. Chesterton, 'the realization of an ideal, that which is promised in its provocative and beckoning map; a vision not only of white skeletons but also green palm trees and sapphire seas.' G. S. Fraser terms it 'an utterly original book' and goes on to write: 'There will always be a place for stories like Treasure Island that can keep boys and old men happy.']]> 352 Robert Louis Stevenson 0753453800 Yavor 3 3.84 1882
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1882
rating: 3
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]]> 1805609 160 Aleko Konstantinov 9544396314 Yavor 4 3.69 1894
author: Aleko Konstantinov
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1894
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 6251113 Всеки народ има своите вечни книги. За нас, българите, “Ба�� Ганьо" е една от тях, защото мъдрият Алеко се е опитал да ни покаже какви сме и какви не трябва да бъдем.

]��> 176 Aleko Konstantinov 9544597808 Yavor 3 3.88 1894
author: Aleko Konstantinov
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1894
rating: 3
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]]> 6184003 Веселина Димитрова]]> 88 Любен Каравелов 9545272430 Yavor 3 3.55 1869
author: Любен Каравелов
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1869
rating: 3
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]]> 3310284 Написан е от Иван Вазов по време на изгнание в Одеса, пренесен е в България с руската дипломатическа поща.

Композиционно романът се състои от три части и 88 глави, които обхващат подготовката, избухването и потушаването на Априлското въстание. Сюжетното действие започва с идването на Бойчо Огнянов в Бяла Черква през май 1875 г. и завършва с неговата смърт през май 1876 г. Но фабулата на творбата не се изчерпва с личните драми на героите, нито с действията и противодействията им през тази година, защото не личните, а историческите събития са в основата на сюжетното действие и определят неговия епически характер. Своеобразна кулминация и развръзка на романа са главите "Пиянството на един народ" и "Пробуждане", в които Вазов постига редки за българската литература прозрения по философия на българската история с резките й преходи от опиянение към отрезвяване и страх, от подем към покруса, разочарование и предателство.

Романът "Под игото" е първата книга, която носи литературна слава на Вазов и на България. Въпреки някои слабости и противоречия, това е най-мащабната и недостигната още "енциклопедия на българския национален живот".

"Под игото" е филмиран през 1953г.]]> 528 Ivan Vazov 9545272465 Yavor 4 4.24 1888
author: Ivan Vazov
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1888
rating: 4
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]]> 30597
The novel has been described as a key text in French literature[1] and has been adapted for film over a dozen times, in addition to numerous television and stage adaptations, such as a 1923 silent film with Lon Chaney, a 1939 sound film with Charles Laughton, and a 1996 Disney animated film with Tom Hulce (both as Quasimodo).

The novel sought to preserve values of French culture in a time period of great change, which resulted in the destruction of many French Gothic structures. The novel made Notre-Dame de Paris a national icon and served as a catalyst for renewed interest in the restoration of Gothic form.]]> 510 Victor Hugo 0451527887 Yavor 4 4.01 1831
author: Victor Hugo
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1831
rating: 4
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]]> 2956 327 Mark Twain 0142437174 Yavor 4 3.82 1884
author: Mark Twain
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 968 The da Vinci Code, The da Vinci Code, The da Vinci Code, and The da Vinci Code

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others.

In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth -- will be lost forever.

The Da Vinci Code heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightning-paced, intelligent thriller utterly unpredictable right up to its stunning conclusion.]]> 489 Dan Brown Yavor 4 3.92 2003
author: Dan Brown
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 19057 protect the diamonds
survive the clubs
dig deep through the spades
feel the hearts

Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He's pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery.

That's when the first ace arrives in the mail.

That's when Ed becomes the messenger.

Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission?]]> 357 Markus Zusak Yavor 4 4.03 2002
author: Markus Zusak
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 24280 1463 Victor Hugo 0451525264 Yavor 4 4.19 1862
author: Victor Hugo
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1862
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/01/21
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]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

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

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]> 151 Becky Chambers Yavor 3 4.25 2021
author: Becky Chambers
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves:
review:
As much as I loved The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - I can’t give more than 3 stars to this one. I adore the idea but the story moves too fast with little to no character growth; not sure if I will be picking up the sequel as I’d rather go back to the Wayfarers series.
]]> 123033397
April 5, 2019 : In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, troubled husband and wife, are both a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, has created a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. Meanwhile Nathan, age ten, is taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.

April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the brownstone is feeling more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe, while Nathan attempts to skirt her rules. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled jabs and frustrated sighs. And beloved Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts—and his secret Instagram life—for company.

April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality—with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.

From the brilliant mind of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, Day is a searing, exquisitely crafted meditation on love and loss and the struggles and limitations of family life—how to live together and apart.]]> 273 Michael Cunningham 0399591346 Yavor 3 3.50 2023
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/01/14
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Day reads in a day. It’s hard not to fall for Cunningham’s writing - the words are alive and the characters are so close that it’s scary.
]]> 24233708 343 Hank Green 1524743453 Yavor 0 to-read 4.05 2018
author: Hank Green
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58988398 In the tradition of Station Eleven, Severance and The Dog Stars, a beautifully written and emotionally stirring dystopian novel about how our dreams of the future may shift as our environment changes rapidly, even as the earth continues to spin.

The year is 1873, and a bison hunter named Samson travels the Kansas plains, full of hope for his new country. The year is 1975, and an adolescent girl named Bea walks those very same plains; pregnant, mute, and raised in extreme seclusion, she lands in an institution, where a well-meaning psychiatrist struggles to decipher the pictures she draws of her past. The year is 2027 and, after a series of devastating storms, a tenacious engineer named Paul has left behind his banal suburban existence to build a floating city above the drowned streets that were once New Orleans. There with his poet daughter he rules over a society of dreamers and vagabonds who salvage vintage dresses, ferment rotgut wine out of fruit, paint murals on the ceiling of the Superdome, and try to write the story of their existence. The year is 2073, and Moon has heard only stories of the blue planet--Earth, as they once called it, now succumbed entirely to water. Now that Moon has come of age, she could become a mother if she wanted to-if only she understood what a mother is. Alone on Mars with her two alien uncles, she must decide whether to continue her family line and repopulate humanity on a new planet.
A sweeping family epic, told over seven generations, as America changes and so does its dream, Walk the Vanished Earth explores ancestry, legacy, motherhood, the trauma we inherit, and the power of connection in the face of our planet's imminent collapse.
This is a story about the end of the world--but it is also about the beginning of something entirely new. Thoughtful, warm, and wildly prescient, this work of bright imagination promises that, no matter what the future looks like, there is always room for hope.]]> 384 Erin Swan 0593299337 Yavor 0 to-read 3.70 2022
author: Erin Swan
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 Yavor 3
All stories felt unfinished and all characters robbed from their true selves and emotions.

Nature felt more real and alive than any human present in the book.

2,5* ]]> 4.12 2023
author: Daniel Mason
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/10
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I wish there was more to it. It started off well promising a story that spans across centuries but it truly lost me half way. It might have been the prose itself or the presence of other forms that I generally avoid, but it just dragged and that’s rarely a great thing.

All stories felt unfinished and all characters robbed from their true selves and emotions.

Nature felt more real and alive than any human present in the book.

2,5*
]]> 83017 198 Dino Buzzati 1567923046 Yavor 0 to-read 4.24 1940
author: Dino Buzzati
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53095651 The untold story of how Japan became a cultural superpower through the fantastic inventions that captured--and transformed--the world's imagination, from karaoke and the Walkman to anime and emoji.

During the "economic miracle" of the 1970s and 80s, Japan seemed to exist in some near future, soaring on the superior technology of Sony and Toyota while the West struggled to catch up. Then a catastrophic 1990 stock-market crash ushered in what the Japanese call their "lost decades." The end of the boom times should have plunged Japan into irrelevance. But in Pure Invention, Matt Alt argues that's precisely when things got interesting--when once again, Japan got to the future a little ahead of the rest of us.

Japan made itself rich after the Second World War by selling the world what it needed, in the form of better cars, appliances, and microprocessors. But it conquered hearts through wildly creative pop culture that responded to modern life in new ways. As social compacts and safety nets evaporated, in rushed a revolution of geeky gadgets, gizmos, and flights of fancy. Hello Kitty, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and illustrated entertainment empires like Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z were more than marketing hits. They transformed Japan into the world's forge of fantasies, and they transformed us as we consumed them: karaoke making everyone a star, emoji rewriting the rules of human communication, virtual game-worlds offering escapes from reality and new perspectives on it.

By turns a nostalgia trip and a secret history, Pure Invention is the story of an indelible group of Japanese craftsmen, artists, businesspeople, geniuses, and oddballs. It is also an unsung chapter of globalization, in which Japanese dreams formed a new blueprint for global pop culture--and may have created the modern world as we know it.]]> 352 Matt Alt 1984826697 Yavor 0 to-read 4.24 2020
author: Matt Alt
name: Yavor
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61896629
Tommy Dees is in the weeds—restaurant speak for beyond overwhelmed. He’s been working as a server at Sunset Estates retirement community to get the experience he needs to attend one of the best culinary schools in the world. And to make his application shine, he also needs a letter of recommendation from his sadistic manager. But in exchange for the letter, Tommy has to meet three conditions—including training the new hire.

What he doesn’t expect is for the newbie to be an old crush: Gabe, with the dimples and kind heart, who Tommy fell for during summer camp at age ten and then never saw again. Unfortunately, Gabe doesn’t remember Tommy at all. The training proves distracting as old feelings resurface, and the universe seems to be conspiring against them.

With the application deadline looming and Gabe on his mind, Tommy is determined to keep it all together—but what if life isn’t meant to follow a recipe?]]> 368 Erik J. Brown 0063055023 Yavor 0 to-read 3.77 2023
author: Erik J. Brown
name: Yavor
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
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