en-US Wed, 18 Oct 2023 18:29:59 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X Lauren 4 books-owned 3.48 1928
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/10/18
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 45286 Leaves of Grass, the work that defined him as one of America’s most influential voices and that he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation, and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful “Song of Myself� and “I Sing the Body Electric� to the elegiac “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,� Whitman’s art fuses oratory, journalism, and song in a vivid celebration of humanity. Containing all Whitman’s known poetic work, this edition reprints the final, or “deathbed,� edition of Leaves of Grass (1891�92). Earlier versions of many poems are also given, including the 1855 “Song of Myself.�
Features a completely new—and fuller—introduction discussing the development of Whitman's poetic career, his influence on later American poets, and his impact on the American cultural sensibility


Includes chronology, updated suggestions for further reading, and extensive notes]]> 896 Walt Whitman 0140424512 Lauren 5 4.26 1892
author: Walt Whitman
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1892
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/07/17
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]]> 1102116
(back cover)]]> 541 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Lauren 0 to-read 4.26 2006
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 763652
When Nigeria begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili's father sends her and her brother away to stay with their aunt, a University professor, whose house is noisy and full of laughter. There, Kambili and her brother discover a life and love beyond the confines of their father's authority. The visit will lift the silence from their world and, in time, give rise to devotion and defiance that reveal themselves in profound and unexpected ways. This is a book about the promise of freedom; about the blurred lines between childhood and adulthood; between love and hatred, between the old gods and the new.Ěý]]> 307 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 1400076943 Lauren 0 to-read 4.06 2003
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 530767 780 Robert Descharnes 0681567910 Lauren 0 books-owned 4.62 1994
author: Robert Descharnes
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.62
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/11
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Lauren 4 books-owned 4.57 2005
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/30
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 31173 Villette, Charlotte Brontë reached the height of her artistic power. First published in 1853, Villette is Brontë's most accomplished and deeply felt work, eclipsing even Jane Eyre in critical acclaim. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette. There she unexpectedly confronts her feelings of love and longing as she witnesses the fitful romance between Dr. John, a handsome young Englishman, and Ginerva Fanshawe, a beautiful coquette. The first pain brings others, and with them comes the heartache Lucy has tried so long to escape. Yet in spite of adversity and disappointment, Lucy Snowe survives to recount the unstinting vision of a turbulent life's journey - a journey that is one of the most insightful fictional studies of a woman's consciousness in English literature.]]> 573 Charlotte Brontë Lauren 0 to-read 3.78 1853
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1853
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/03/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 42040 160 William Shakespeare 0385017332 Lauren 5 4.26 1608
author: William Shakespeare
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1608
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/11/08
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]]> 295149 85 Sylvia Plath Lauren 4 4.13 1981
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/07/01
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]]> 93261 108 Washington Irving 0809594080 Lauren 4 3.71 1820
author: Washington Irving
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1820
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/04/07
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review:

]]> 22289 Been looking for a naked mannequin to hide in your kitchen cabinets?
Curious about Chuck's debut in an MTV music video?
What goes on at the Scum Center?
How do you get to the Apocalypse Café?

In the closest thing he may ever write to an autobiography, Chuck Palahniuk provides answers to all these questions and more as he takes you through the streets, sewers, and local haunts of Portland, Oregon.

According to Katherine Dunn, author of the cult classic Geek Love, Portland is the home of America's " fugitives and refugees." Get to know these folks, the " most cracked of the crackpots, "as Palahniuk calls them, and come along with him on an adventure through the parts of Portland you might not otherwise believe actually exist. No other travel guide will give you this kind of access to " a little history, a little legend, and a lot of friendly, sincere, fascinating people who maybe should've kept their mouths shut."

Here are strange personal museums, weird annual events, and ghost stories. Tour the tunnels under downtown Portland. Visit swingers' sex clubs, gay and straight. See Frances Gabe's famous 1940s Self-Cleaning House. Look into strange local customs like the I-Tit-a-Rod Race and the Santa Rampage. Learn how to talk like a local in a quick vocabulary lesson. Get to know, I mean really get to know, the animals at the Portland zoo.

Oh, the list goes on and on.]]> 176 Chuck Palahniuk 1400047838 Lauren 3 currently-reading 3.54 2003
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/01/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:
Would give this 3.5 stars. Can't. It was okay, and that's as profound as this review is getting.
]]> 144640 194 John Barth 0553120883 Lauren 0 to-read 3.23 1968
author: John Barth
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.23
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6750 467 David Foster Wallace 0142002429 Lauren 0 3.84 1987
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/12/26
shelves: currently-reading, books-owned
review:

]]> 3869
Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,� of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.]]> 226 Stephen Hawking 0553380168 Lauren 0 books-owned 4.22 1988
author: Stephen Hawking
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at: 2012/12/26
date added: 2012/12/26
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 276249
Ever since the publication of its original version, "Naming and Necessity" has had great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in particular of naming, and of identity. From a critique of the dominant tendency to assimilate names to descriptions and more generally to treat their reference as a function of their Fregean sense, surprisingly deep and widespread consequences may be drawn. The largely discredited distinction between accidental and essential properties, both of individual things (including people) and of kinds of things, is revived. So is a consequent view of science as what seeks out the essences of natural kinds. Traditional objections to such views are dealt with by sharpening distinctions between epistemic and metaphysical necessity; in particular by the startling admission of necessary a posteriori truths. From these, in particular from identity statements using rigid designators whether of things or of kinds, further remarkable consequences are drawn for the natures of things, of people, and of kinds; strong objections follow, for example to identity versions of materialism as a theory of the mind.

This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here published with a substantial new Preface by the author.]]> 192 Saul A. Kripke 0674598466 Lauren 0 to-read 4.00 1971
author: Saul A. Kripke
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/09/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25739 345 Isaac Bashevis Singer 0451166639 Lauren 0 to-read 4.01 1966
author: Isaac Bashevis Singer
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13503109
In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”]]> 217 Junot Díaz 1594487367 Lauren 0 to-read 3.74 2010
author: Junot DĂ­az
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/09/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 46945
Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in a spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares.

"Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists . . . To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." —The New York Times Book Review]]> 279 Hubert Selby Jr. 1560252480 Lauren 5 books-owned 4.11 1978
author: Hubert Selby Jr.
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2012/09/09
date added: 2012/09/09
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 317863 The Man Who Listens to Horses and going light-years beyond The Hidden Life of Dogs, this extraordinary book takes a radical new direction in understanding our life with canines and offers us astonishing new lessons about our pets. From changing the misbehaviors and habits that upset us, to seeing the world from their unique and natural perspective, to finding a deep connection with another being, BONES WOULD RAIN FROM THE SKY will help you receive an incomparable gift: a profound, lifelong relationship with the dog you love.]]> 320 Suzanne Clothier 044669634X Lauren 4 books-owned 4.25 2002
author: Suzanne Clothier
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2012/09/09
date added: 2012/09/09
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 7437 Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, a book that redefined not just literature but American culture. An unnerving tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, its formal innovation, taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution have exerted a significant influence on authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media generally. Naked Lunch: The Restored Text includes many editorial corrections to errors present in previous editions, and incorporates Burroughs’s notes on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and an appendix of 20 percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the first published version. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of this classic of our culture.]]> 289 William S. Burroughs 0802140181 Lauren 4 books-owned 3.48 1959
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1959
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/09/09
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 1134902 ĚýA Primer of Drug Action addresses the mechanisms of action of each drug and drug class presented, current theories about the etiology of major psychological disorders and rationales for drug treatment, and the uses and limitations of psychopharmacology in patient care. Now in its Tenth Edition, this definitive guide has been completely revised and updated to again make it the most current and comprehensive introduction to the pharmacology of drugs that affect the mind and behavior.
]]> 704 Robert M. Julien 0716706156 Lauren 0 to-read 4.29 1975
author: Robert M. Julien
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6389257 288 Nick Cave 1847673767 Lauren 4 books-owned
Upon reflection, this book probably deserves four stars, so I am upping it from three to four. It impacted me intensely; I thought about Bunny and Bunny Jr. for weeks after turning the last page. In fact, it has been eight months since I read it, and The Death of Bunny Munro continues to lend unanswerable questions to my thoughts. Sometimes the only question is "Why are people so fucked up?", which has a simple and complex answer all at once. Because they're people, and Bunny is always human even when his actions are monstrous.

Bunny is also a malignant pervert who realizes his impact on others in nearly no way, but his son loves him unquestioningly. That alone causes me to mourn the death of Bunny Munro.]]> 3.46 2009
author: Nick Cave
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/09/09
shelves: books-owned
review:
There were moments in this book which lost meaning to vulgarity. The titular character is a deplorable man, but the reader is supposed to see his actions for what they are: deplorable, questionable, ungodly... The list could go on. Nonetheless, it is an addictive read; as ever, Nick Cave bends the English language to his will. Words serve his genius well, as do character portraits.

Upon reflection, this book probably deserves four stars, so I am upping it from three to four. It impacted me intensely; I thought about Bunny and Bunny Jr. for weeks after turning the last page. In fact, it has been eight months since I read it, and The Death of Bunny Munro continues to lend unanswerable questions to my thoughts. Sometimes the only question is "Why are people so fucked up?", which has a simple and complex answer all at once. Because they're people, and Bunny is always human even when his actions are monstrous.

Bunny is also a malignant pervert who realizes his impact on others in nearly no way, but his son loves him unquestioningly. That alone causes me to mourn the death of Bunny Munro.
]]> 10959 An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.]]> 403 Jostein Gaarder 1857993284 Lauren 4 books-owned 3.94 1991
author: Jostein Gaarder
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1991
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/09/09
shelves: books-owned
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]]> 6509 200 Darcey Steinke 0802136648 Lauren 1 books-owned 3.34 1992
author: Darcey Steinke
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.34
book published: 1992
rating: 1
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date added: 2012/08/21
shelves: books-owned
review:
This is the (loosely) literary equivalent of snobby art students talking loudly in public about things they can't yet and may never understand. When an author understands emotional response and the nature of their characters, they don't need to be so ostentatious. Every emotion falls flat; the characters are deeply unlikable. I began reading Suicide Blonde during a bout of insomnia, and the endless pages of fruitless introspection literally put me to sleep. This book raised only one question in my mind: How did it get published in the first place?
]]> 16793 Alternate cover edition can be found here

Young Tristran Thorn will do anything to win the cold heart of beautiful Victoria—even fetch her the star they watch fall from the night sky. But to do so, he must enter the unexplored lands on the other side of the ancient wall that gives their tiny village its name. Beyond that old stone wall, Tristran learns, lies Faerie—where nothing not even a fallen star, is what he imagined.]]> 248 Neil Gaiman 0061142026 Lauren 4 books-owned 4.11 1998
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/08/19
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]]> 12614 In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War and at a time of great political and social instability, two of the world's leading intellectuals, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, were invited by Dutch philosopher Fons Edlers to debate an age-old question: is there such a thing as "innate" human nature independent of our experiences and external influences?
The resulting dialogue is one of the most original, provocative, and spontaneous exchanges to have occurred between contemporary philosophers, and above all serves as a concise introduction to their basic theories. What begins as a philosophical argument rooted in linguistics (Chomsky) and the theory of knowledge (Foucault), soon evolves into a broader discussion encompassing a wide range of topics, from science, history, and behaviorism to creativity, freedom, and the struggle for justice in the realm of politics.
In addition to the debate itself, this volume features a newly written introduction by noted Foucault scholar John Rajchman and includes additional text by Noam Chomsky.]]> 213 Noam Chomsky 1595581340 Lauren 0 to-read 3.99 1974
author: Noam Chomsky
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/08/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 12617
Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy� versus “unworthy� victims, “legitimizing� and “meaningless� Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.]]> 412 Edward S. Herman 0375714499 Lauren 0 to-read 4.25 1988
author: Edward S. Herman
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/08/09
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review:

]]> 55227 Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky turns the tables, showing how the United States itself shares features with other failed states―suffering from a severe "democratic deficit," eschewing domestic and international law, and adopting policies that increasingly endanger its own citizens and the world. Exploring the latest developments in U.S. foreign and domestic policy, Chomsky reveals Washington's plans to further militarize the planet, greatly increasing the risks of nuclear war. He also assesses the dangerous consequences of the occupation of Iraq; documents Washington's self-exemption from international norms, including the Geneva conventions and the Kyoto Protocol; and examines how the U.S. electoral system is designed to eliminate genuine political alternatives, impeding any meaningful democracy. Forceful, lucid, and meticulously documented, Failed States offers a comprehensive analysis of a global superpower that has long claimed the right to reshape other nations while its own democratic institutions are in severe crisis. Systematically dismantling the United States' pretense of being the world's arbiter of democracy, Failed States is Chomsky's most focused―and urgent―critique to date.]]> 320 Noam Chomsky 0805082840 Lauren 0 4.00 2006
author: Noam Chomsky
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919�2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Lauren 2 3.81 1951
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 2
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date added: 2012/08/07
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]]> 1111992 512 Charmaine Solomon 080481791X Lauren 4 always-reading, books-owned 4.31 1976
author: Charmaine Solomon
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1976
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/08/07
shelves: always-reading, books-owned
review:

]]> 56301 Light on Yoga has become the bible for hundreds of thousands of people who practice Yoga daily with the Iyengar method, for exercise, meditation, or simply relaxation. With more than 600 photographs depicting all the postures and breathing exercises, it remains the fullest, most practical, and most profusely illustrated guide by the world's foremost yoga teacher. Light on Yoga is a comprehensive and definitive source-book for the initiated, as well as the best introduction for the novice who seeks the healthful benefits of Yoga for mind, body, and soul.]]> 544 B.K.S. Iyengar 0805210318 Lauren 4 4.29 1966
author: B.K.S. Iyengar
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1966
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/08/04
shelves: currently-reading, books-owned, always-reading
review:

]]> 864153
This unusual anthology provides a new, holistic approach to understanding religion–stressing what unites us rather than what divides us. Among the religious texts represented are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Jainism, Sikhism, Baha'i, Church of Jesus Christ of the Later Day Saints, and Zoroastrianism. Also featured are the oral traditions of various religions of Africa, Native America, Asia, and Oceania along with their recorded prayers and proverbs.]]> 882 Andrew W. Wilson 1557787239 Lauren 5 4.27 1991
author: Andrew W. Wilson
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/08/04
shelves: currently-reading, books-owned, always-reading
review:

]]> 14416820 182 Daniel Waldman 1468001752 Lauren 2 books-owned 2.00 2012
author: Daniel Waldman
name: Lauren
average rating: 2.00
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2012/08/04
date added: 2012/08/04
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 89997 272 Paul Hawken 0887307043 Lauren 0 to-read 4.12 1993
author: Paul Hawken
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 991197
Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming—both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.

Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom�Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.]]> 341 Marjane Satrapi 0375714839 Lauren 0 to-read 4.38 2007
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/07/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 409
With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

--Thomas Pynchon

About the Author:
Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner, a collection of short stories, Vineland and, most recently, Mason and Dixon. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.]]> 1085 Thomas Pynchon 159420120X Lauren 0 books-owned, to-read 4.01 2006
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/07/18
shelves: books-owned, to-read
review:

]]> 68682 320 Nick Cave 1880985721 Lauren 0 to-read 3.87 1989
author: Nick Cave
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/07/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 48318 309 Jostein Gaarder 0374266514 Lauren 4 books-owned 4.24 1990
author: Jostein Gaarder
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2012/07/09
date added: 2012/07/09
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 39926 368 Naomi Wolf 0060512180 Lauren 0 to-read 3.90 1990
author: Naomi Wolf
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/07/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 96039 288 Jonathan Ames 080217017X Lauren 0 to-read 3.81 2005
author: Jonathan Ames
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/06/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3836
With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as the first modern novel. The book has been enormously influential on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible."]]> 1023 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Lauren 0 to-read, books-owned 3.86 1615
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1615
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/06/06
shelves: to-read, books-owned
review:

]]> 23960 556 Irvine Welsh 0099436922 Lauren 2 books-owned 3.90 2001
author: Irvine Welsh
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2001
rating: 2
read at: 2012/06/06
date added: 2012/06/06
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 3805 After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man - or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, "The Corrections" brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and globalised greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.]]> 653 Jonathan Franzen 1841156736 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.83 2001
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/06
date added: 2012/06/06
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 1059680 Veganomicon have been thoroughly kitchen-tested to ensure user-friendliness and amazing results. Veganomicon also includes meals for all occasions and soy-free, gluten-free, and low-fat options, plus quick recipes that make dinner a snap.
]]> 336 Isa Chandra Moskowitz 156924264X Lauren 0 to-read 3.84 2007
author: Isa Chandra Moskowitz
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 48308 592 Robin Robertson 1558322116 Lauren 4 books-owned 3.94 2003
author: Robin Robertson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 4696064 176 Mary Taylor 0895946491 Lauren 0 books-owned 0.0
author: Mary Taylor
name: Lauren
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 2801992 288 Regina Campbell 1557884102 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.00 2003
author: Regina Campbell
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 333504
* full, balanced menus with appetizer, main course, and side dishes
* a luscious array of soups and an ingenious selection of desserts
* invaluable information on terms, ingredients, and techniques
* a culinary world tour including Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle Fast, as well as Europe and the United States]]> 320 Myra Kornfeld 0609804898 Lauren 4 books-owned, always-reading
That being said, these recipes are in-depth and often expensive to make. Only brave chefs need embark on preparing a full menu, and you had better purchase certain items in bulk.]]> 3.81 2000
author: Myra Kornfeld
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: books-owned, always-reading
review:
The stews and soups are my favorite recipes out of this book. I cook one up every two or three weeks to last for a couple of days. The flavors are always perfectly balanced, and I feel like Popeye post-spinach after having a bowl. It also contains great recipes for tofu "creams". Yum!

That being said, these recipes are in-depth and often expensive to make. Only brave chefs need embark on preparing a full menu, and you had better purchase certain items in bulk.
]]> 196613
If you can't take one more day of self-loathing, you're ready to hear the truth: You cannot keep shoveling the same crap into your mouth every day and expect to lose weight.

Authors Rory Freeman and Kim Barnouin are your new smart-mouthed girlfriends who won't mince words and will finally tell you the truth about what you're feeding yourself. And they'll guide you on making intelligent and educated decisions about food. They may be bitches, but they are skinny bitches. And you'll be one too--after you get with the program and start eating right.]]> 224 Rory Freedman 0762424931 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.33 2005
author: Rory Freedman
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/06/05
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 5113 �Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.�

First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, �Franny� and �Zooey� offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, �Zooey�, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.

Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.]]> 201 J.D. Salinger 0316769029 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.97 1957
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1957
rating: 3
read at: 2012/05/29
date added: 2012/05/29
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 50275 Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting.

Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode.

Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky.

'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years'
Allen Ginsberg

'An urgent tickertape from hell'
Spectator]]> 290 Hubert Selby Jr. 0747549923 Lauren 4 books-owned 3.94 1964
author: Hubert Selby Jr.
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/05/29
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 158949
When her stage play The Vagina Monologues became a runaway hit and an international sensation, Eve Ensler emerged as a powerful voice and champion for women everywhere. Now the brilliant playwright gives us her first major work written exclusively for the printed page. Insecure at Last is a timely and urgent look at our security-obsessed world, the drastic measures taken to keep us safe, and how we can truly experience freedom by letting go of the deceptive notion of vigilant “protection.�

Ensler draws on personal experiences and candid interviews with burka-clad women in Afghanistan; female prisoners in upstate New York; survivors at the Superdome after Katrina; and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan–sharing unforgettable snapshots that chronicle a post-9/11 existence in which hyped obsession for safety and security has undermined our humanity. The us-versus-them mentality, Ensler explains, has closed our minds and hardened our compassionate hearts.

Provocative, illuminating, inspiring, and boldly envisioned, Insecure at Last challenges us to reconsider what it means to be free, to discover that our strength is not born out of that which protects us. Ensler offers us the opportunity to reevaluate our everyday lives, expose our vulnerability, and, in doing so, experience true freedom and fulfillment.]]> 224 V (formerly Eve Ensler) 1400063345 Lauren 0 books-owned 4.02 2006
author: V (formerly Eve Ensler)
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2012/05/29
date added: 2012/05/29
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 2916298 A Collection of his sermons 141 Reinhold Niebuhr 0664251706 Lauren 0 to-read 4.19 1974
author: Reinhold Niebuhr
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 55235 Moral Man and Immoral Society is Reinhold Niebuhr's important early study in ethics and politics. Forthright and realistic, it discusses the inevitability of social conflict, the brutal behavior of human collectives of every sort, the inability of rationalists and social scientists to even imagine the realities of collective power, and, ultimately, how individual morality can overcome social immorality.

The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.]]> 284 Reinhold Niebuhr 0664224741 Lauren 0 to-read 4.11 1932
author: Reinhold Niebuhr
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1932
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55236 174 Reinhold Niebuhr 0684718553 Lauren 0 to-read 3.99 1952
author: Reinhold Niebuhr
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23931 192 William S. Burroughs 0802133304 Lauren 0 to-read, books-owned 3.68 1964
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read, books-owned
review:

]]> 23937 184 William S. Burroughs 0802133290 Lauren 0 books-owned 3.48
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.48
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 61661
Carl Sagan is considered one of the greatest scientific minds of our time. His remarkable ability to explain science in terms easily understandable to the layman in bestselling books such as Cosmos, The Dragons of Eden, and The Demon-Haunted World won him a Pulitzer Prize and placed him firmly next to Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, and Oliver Sachs as one of the most important and enduring communicators of science. In December 2006 it will be the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, and Ann Druyan, his widow and longtime collaborator, will mark the occasion by releasing Sagan's famous "Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology," The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.

The chance to give the Gifford Lectures is an honor reserved for the most distinguished scientists and philosophers of our civilization. In 1985, on the grand occasion of the centennial of the lectureship, Carl Sagan was invited to give them. He took the opportunity to set down in detail his thoughts on the relationship between religion and science as well as to describe his own personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience, edited, updated and with an introduction by Ann Druyan, is a bit like eavesdropping on a delightfully intimate conversation with the late great astronomer and astrophysicist. In his charmingly down-to-earth voice, Sagan easily discusses his views on topics ranging from manic depression and the possibly chemical nature of transcendance to creationism and so-called intelligent design to the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets to the likelihood of nuclear annihilation of our own to a new concept of science as "informed worship." Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, he illuminates his explanations with examples from cosmology, physics, philosophy, literature, psychology, cultural anthropology, mythology, theology, and more. Sagan's humorous, wise, and at times stunningly prophetic observations on some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos have the invigorating effect of stimulating the intellect, exciting the imagination, and reawakening us to the grandeur of life in the cosmos.]]> 284 Carl Sagan 1594201072 Lauren 0 books-owned, to-read 4.27 2006
author: Carl Sagan
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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shelves: books-owned, to-read
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]]> 61672
La villa est magnifique, l'été brûlant, la Méditerranée toute proche. Cécile a dix-sept ans. Elle ne connaît de l'amour que des baisers, des rendez-vous, des lassitudes. Pas pour longtemps. Son père, veuf, est un adepte joyeux des liaisons passagères et sans importance. Ils s'amusent, ils n'ont besoin de personne, ils sont heureux. La visite d'une femme de cœur, intelligente et calme, vient troubler ce délicieux désordre. Comment écarter la menace ? Dans la pinède embrasée, un jeu cruel se prépare.
C'était l'été 1954. On entendait pour la première fois la voix sèche et rapide d'un « charmant petit monstre » qui allait faire scandale. la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle commençait. Elle serait à l'image de cette adolescente déchirée entre le remords et le culte du plaisir.

Set against the translucent beauty of France in summer, Bonjour Tristesse is a bittersweet tale narrated by Cecile, a seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood, whose meddling in her father's love life leads to tragic consequences.

Endearing, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old Cécile is the very essence of untroubled amorality. Freed from the stifling constraints of boarding school, she joins her father—a handsome, still-young widower with a wandering eye—for a carefree, two-month summer vacation in a beautiful villa outside of Paris with his latest mistress. Cécile cherishes the free-spirited moments she and her father share, while plotting her own sexual adventures with a "tall and almost beautiful" law student. But the arrival of her late mother's best friend intrudes upon a young girl's pleasures. And when a relationship begins to develop between the adults, Cécile and her lover set in motion a plan to keep them apart...with tragic, unexpected consequences.

The internationally beloved story of a precocious teenager's attempts to understand and control the world around her, Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse is a beautifully composed, wonderfully ambiguous celebration of sexual liberation, at once sympathetic and powerfully unsparing.]]> 154 Françoise Sagan 2266127748 Lauren 0 to-read 3.76 1954
author: Françoise Sagan
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1954
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 366662 288 martin-rees 074323099X Lauren 0 to-read 3.89 1997
author: martin-rees
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 15050 167 Jeanette Winterson 0802135781 Lauren 0 books-owned 3.87 1989
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 15055
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.

At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.]]> 176 Jeanette Winterson Lauren 0 books-owned 3.76 1985
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: books-owned
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]]> 413
We follow the mismatch'd pair—one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic—from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.]]> 773 Thomas Pynchon 0312423209 Lauren 0 to-read, books-owned 4.12 1997
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read, books-owned
review:

]]> 81582 Jack Kerouac 2267012626 Lauren 0 books-owned 3.70 1959
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: books-owned
review:

]]> 163977 256 John Steinbeck 0582461502 Lauren 0 to-read 3.84 1935
author: John Steinbeck
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1935
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 5306 A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California’s Monterey Peninsula

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.]]> 214 John Steinbeck 0142000701 Lauren 0 to-read, books-owned 4.07 1961
author: John Steinbeck
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read, books-owned
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]]> 5308
A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man’s nature, greed, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.]]> 96 John Steinbeck 0142000698 Lauren 0 books-owned 3.52 1947
author: John Steinbeck
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: books-owned
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]]> 117666
The Good Body starts with Eve’s tortured relationship with her own “post-forties� stomach and her skirmishes with everything from Ab Rollers to fad diets and fascistic trainers in an attempt get the “flabby badness� out. As Eve hungrily seeks self-acceptance, she is joined by the voices of women from L.A. to Kabul, whose obsessions are also laid A young Latina candidly critiques her humiliating “spread,� a stubborn layer of fat that she calls “a second pair of thighs.� The wife of a plastic surgeon recounts being systematically reconstructed–inch by inch–by her “perfectionist� husband. An aging magazine executive, still haunted by her mother’s long-ago criticism, describes her desperate pursuit of youth as she relentlessly does sit-ups.

Along the way, Eve also introduces us to women who have found a hard-won peace with their an African mother who celebrates each individual body as signs of nature’s diversity; an Indian woman who transcends “treadmill mania� and delights in her plump cheeks and curves; and a veiled Afghani woman who is willing to risk imprisonment for a taste of ice cream. These are just a few of the inspiring stories woven through Eve’s global journey from obsession to enlightenment. Ultimately, these monologues become a personal wake-up call from Eve to love the “good bodies� we inhabit.]]> 112 V (formerly Eve Ensler) 0812974735 Lauren 0 to-read 3.69 2004
author: V (formerly Eve Ensler)
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 32913 384 Ken Kesey 0140085300 Lauren 0 books-owned 3.58 1986
author: Ken Kesey
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
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]]> 408555 Meditations on the Tarot is the landmark edition of one of the most important works of esoteric Christianity. Written anonymously and published posthumously, as was the author's wish, the intention of this work is for the reader to find a relationship with the author in the spiritual dimensions of existence. The author wanted not to be thought of as a personality who lived from 1900 to 1973, but as a friend who is communicating with us from beyond the boundaries of ordinary life.]]> 688 Valentin Tomberg 1585421618 Lauren 0 to-read 4.50 1980
author: Valentin Tomberg
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 816017 718 Camille Paglia 0679735798 Lauren 0 to-read 3.89 1990
author: Camille Paglia
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 108939
"The Trouble with Physics" is a groundbreaking account of the state of modern physics: of how we got from Einstein and Relativity through quantum mechanics to the strange and bizarre predictions of string theory, full of unseen dimensions and multiple universes.

Lee Smolin not only provides a brilliant layman's overview of current research as we attempt to build a "theory of everything," but also questions many of the assumptions that lie behind string theory. In doing so, he describes some of the daring, outlandish ideas that will propel research in years to come.]]> 392 Lee Smolin 0618551050 Lauren 0 to-read 4.05 2006
author: Lee Smolin
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
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]]> 771
Today, physicists and mathematicians throughout the world are feverishly working on one of the most ambitious theories ever proposed: superstring theory. String theory, as it is often called, is the key to the Unified Field Theory that eluded Einstein for more than thirty years. Finally, the century-old antagonism between the large and the small--General Relativity and Quantum Theory--is resolved. String theory proclaims that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe, from the frantic dancing of subatomic quarks to the majestic swirling of heavenly galaxies, are reflections of one grand physical principle and manifestations of one single entity: microscopically tiny vibrating loops of energy, a billionth of a billionth the size of an atom. In this brilliantly articulated and refreshingly clear book, Greene relates the scientific story and the human struggle behind twentieth-century physics' search for a theory of everything.

Through the masterful use of metaphor and analogy, The Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated viscerally accessible and thoroughly entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to understanding how the universe works.]]> 425 Brian Greene 0375708111 Lauren 0 to-read 4.06 1999
author: Brian Greene
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 169756 Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.

For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon—a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world—and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.]]> 308 M.T. Anderson 0763622591 Lauren 0 to-read 3.55 2002
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Lauren 0 to-read 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Lauren 0 to-read 3.99 2006
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 10878 Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in his signature style.

Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling “Gonzo Papers� is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style.

Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed “gonzo”—“The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,� which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly in 1970. From this essay a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful �60s and �70s.]]> 624 Hunter S. Thompson 0743250451 Lauren 3 books-owned 4.09 1979
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1979
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/05/24
shelves: books-owned
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]]> 34448 Hunter S. Thompson's legions of fans have waited a decade for this book.

They will not be disappointed. His notorious Screwjack is as salacious, unsettling, and brutally lyrical as it has been rumored to be since the private printing in 1991 of three hundred fine collectors' copies and twenty-six leather-bound presentation copies. Only the first of the three pieces included here�"Mescalito," published in Thompson's 1990 collection Songs of the Doomed—has been available to the public, making the trade edition of Screwjack a major publishing event. "We live in a jungle of pending disasters," Thompson warns in "Mescalito," a chronicle of his first mescaline experience and what it sparked in him while he was alone in an L.A. hotel room in February 1969—including a bout of paranoia that would have made most people just scream no, once and for all. But for Thompson, along with the downside came a burst of creativity too powerful to ignore. The result is a poetic, perceptive, and wildly funny stream-of-consciousness take on 1969 America as only Hunter S. Thompson could see it.

Screwjack just gets weirder with its second offering, "Death of a Poet." As Thompson describes this trailer-park confrontation with the dark side of a deservingly doomed friend: "Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train."

The heart of the collection lies in its final, title piece, an unnaturally poignant love story. What makes the romantic tale "Screwjack" so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man's burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School...and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again."

Ostensibly written by Raoul Duke, "Screwjack" begins with an editor's note explaining of Thompson's alter ego that "the first few lines contain no warning of the madness and fear and lust that came more and more to plague him and dominate his life...." "I am guilty, Lord," Thompson writes, "but I am also a lover—and I am one of your best people, as you know; and yea tho I have walked in many strange shadows and acted crazy from time to time and even drooled on many High Priests, I have not been an embarrassment to you...."

Nor has Hunter S. Thompson been to American literature. Quite the contrary: What the legendary Gonzo journalist proves with Screwjack is just how brilliant a prose stylist he really is, amid all the hilarity. As Thompson puts it in his introduction, the three stories here "build like Bolero to a faster & wilder climax that will drag the reader relentlessly up a hill, & then drop him off a cliff....That is the Desired Effect."]]> 64 Hunter S. Thompson 0684873214 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.53 2000
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2000
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/05/24
shelves: books-owned
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]]> 3717 233 Chuck Palahniuk 0385722222 Lauren 4 books-owned 3.57 2004
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/05/24
shelves: books-owned
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]]> 22288
The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them.

But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight.]]> 419 Chuck Palahniuk 1400032822 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.60 2005
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/05/24
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]]> 1840511 From the master of literary mayhem and provocation, a full-frontal Triple X novel that goes where no American work of fiction has gone before

Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. Snuff unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?]]> 208 Chuck Palahniuk 0385517882 Lauren 2 3.23 2008
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2008
rating: 2
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date added: 2012/05/24
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]]> 50140
"Big Sur's humane, precise account of the extraordinary ravages of alcohol delirium tremens on Kerouac, a superior novelist who had strength to complete his poetic narrative, a task few scribes so afflicted have accomplished—others crack up. Here we meet San Francisco's poets & recognize hero Dean Moriarty ten years after On the Road. Jack Kerouac was a 'writer,' as his great peer W.S. Burroughs says, and here at the peak of his suffering humorous genius he wrote through his misery to end with 'Sea,' a brilliant poem appended, on the hallucinatory Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur."—Allen Ginsberg 10/10/91 N.Y.C.]]> 256 Jack Kerouac 0140168125 Lauren 4 books-owned 3.85 1962
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1962
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/05/24
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]]> 7624 182 William Golding 0140283331 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.70 1954
author: William Golding
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1954
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/05/24
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]]> 26596 1136 E.E. Cummings 0871401525 Lauren 4 books-owned 4.35 1991
author: E.E. Cummings
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1991
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/05/24
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]]> 23944 332 William S. Burroughs 0312278462 Lauren 4 books-owned 3.77 1981
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1981
rating: 4
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]]> 23940 Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky, his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an unvarnished field report from the American post-war underground. Unafraid to portray himself in 1953 as a confirmed member of two socially-despised under classes (a narcotics addict and a homosexual), Burroughs was writing as a trained anthropologist when he unapologetically described a way of life - in New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City - that by the 1940's was already demonized by the artificial anti-drug hysteria of an opportunistic bureaucracy and a cynical, prostrate media. For this fiftieth-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly recreated the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts and places the book's contents against a lively historical background in a comprehensive introduction. Here as well, for the first time, are Burroughs' own unpublished introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages, as well as auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others.]]> 166 William S. Burroughs 0142003166 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.87 1953
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1953
rating: 3
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]]> 38500 291 Charles Bukowski 0061177598 Lauren 3 books-owned 3.85 1978
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1978
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/05/24
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]]> 141526 208 Charles Bukowski 0876859260 Lauren 4 3.71 1994
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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]]> 6482837 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver emerged as one of today's foremost authors of young adult fiction. Like Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why and Gayle Forman's If I Stay, Before I Fall raises thought-provoking questions about love, death, and how one person's life can affect so many others.

For popular high school senior Samantha Kingston, February 12�"Cupid Day"—should be one big party, a day of valentines and roses and the privileges that come with being at the top of the social pyramid. And it is…until she dies in a terrible accident that night.

However, she still wakes up the next morning. In fact, Sam lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she ever imagined.

Named to numerous state reading lists, this novel was also recognized as a Best Book of the Year by Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, The Daily Beast, NPR, and Publishers Weekly. It has been optioned for film by Fox 2000 Pictures.

Supports the Common Core State Standards.]]> 470 Lauren Oliver 0061726818 Lauren 0 to-read 3.89 2010
author: Lauren Oliver
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> 14891 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.]]> 496 Betty Smith 0061120073 Lauren 0 to-read 4.29 1943
author: Betty Smith
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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]]> 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 Lauren 0 to-read 4.10 1998
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/24
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]]> 18405 1037 Margaret Mitchell 0446365386 Lauren 0 to-read 4.30 1936
author: Margaret Mitchell
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1936
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/05/24
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]]> 239239
Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command--the highest misdirection and the darkest science.

Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.]]> 404 Christopher Priest 0312858868 Lauren 0 to-read 3.92 1995
author: Christopher Priest
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/29
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]]> 655739 104 John Wilmot 1599869640 Lauren 0 to-read 4.09 1963
author: John Wilmot
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/28
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]]> 14276 135 William Maxwell 1860464181 Lauren 0 to-read 3.91 1980
author: William Maxwell
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/28
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]]> 456902 384 Donald Harington 0151001642 Lauren 0 to-read 3.98 1996
author: Donald Harington
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/26
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]]> 470727 Library Journal praised this edition of Sherwood Anderson's famed short stories as "the finest edition of this seminal work available." Reconstructed to be as close to the original text as possible, Winesburg, Ohio depicts the strange, secret lives of the inhabitants of a small town. In "Hands," Wing Biddlebaum tries to hide the tale of his banishment from a Pennsylvania town, a tale represented by his hands. In "Adventure," lonely Alice Hindman impulsively walks naked into the night rain. Threaded through the stories is the viewpoint of George Willard, the young newspaper reporter who, like his creator, stands witness to the dark and despairing dealings of a community of isolated people.]]> 256 Sherwood Anderson 0140186557 Lauren 0 to-read 3.87 1919
author: Sherwood Anderson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1919
rating: 0
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]]> 33553 This eerie ghost story, from Richard Matheson, the award-winning author of Hell House and I Am Legend, inspired the acclaimed 1999 film starring Kevin Bacon.

Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now he's hearing the private thoughts of the people around him-and learning shocking secrets he never wanted to know. But as Tom's existence becomes a waking nightmare, even greater jolts are in store as he becomes the unwilling recipient of a compelling message from beyond the grave!]]> 224 Richard Matheson 0765308711 Lauren 2 books-owned 3.88 1958
author: Richard Matheson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1958
rating: 2
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date added: 2012/04/25
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]]> 69719 163 Jamaica Kincaid 2253153818 Lauren 0 to-read 3.83 1990
author: Jamaica Kincaid
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/25
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]]> 1043697
What is new in the disenchantments is the deliberately feminist purpose stated in the rules for telling stories: only women are to narrate "true cases intended to disenchant women about men's deceptions," pointedly denying men the opportunity to dominate the storytelling. In the frame, however, the subtly ironic commentaries on the stories highlight the differences between masculine and feminine points of view. The conclusion of the frame reiterates the exemplary message that women are safe from men's physical and psychological abuse only in the sisterhood of the convent.

These ten sensational and bizarre tales focus on the ways lovers deceive women in order to "get their way," through magic, cross dressing as women, and rape--to the torture and murder of innocent women at the hands of their protectors--their fathers, brothers, and husbands. The graphic depictions of women's mutilated bodies are unprecedented in Western literature, as is the meticulous description of domestic violence that has traditionally remained private and hidden. A fascinating dimension of these fast-paced narratives is what they suggest through omission, silence, and ambiguous detail: the untold story that fires the reader's imagination.]]> 405 MarĂ­a de Zayas Sotomayor 0791432823 Lauren 0 to-read 4.24 1647
author: MarĂ­a de Zayas Sotomayor
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1647
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/04/25
shelves: to-read
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]]>