en-US Mon, 20 Jan 2025 04:03:05 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 9265453
Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.]]> 345 China Miéville 0345524497 Dan 4 3.89 2011
author: China Miéville
name: Dan
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> 49994079
�This book is not an objective photograph of my life,� Trotsky writes in his foreword to "My Life", �but a component of it. In these pages I am continuing the struggle to which my whole life is devoted� Recounting events, I analyse and appraise them; telling my story, I defend myself, and even more frequently attack.�

When he wrote these words in 1929, Trotsky was fifty years old. He had left his old name of Lev Bronstein behind twenty-seven years ago, and in that interval he had escaped from Siberia twice, been imprisoned a number of times by a number of governments, met Lenin, fallen out with Lenin, fallen back in with Lenin, led the Petrograd Soviet, founded the Red Army, won the Civil War, produced a vast quantity of journalism, theory and even literary criticism and finally, after years of struggle against the rising Stalinist faction, found himself stripped of all power and exiled from the USSR. Once Lenin’s friend and equal, he was now reviled. His views, integral to the formation of Bolshevik and then Soviet policy, no longer had any expression. His face was being excised from pictures, his words from pages. His allies were dead, exiled or surrendered. These are the circumstances in which he began to write his memoirs.

"My Life" is primarily a very carefully constructed testimony. Trotsky’s life and reputation were at stake. His story had to be watertight, explaining away his class origins (his parents were landowners), smoothing over his early conflicts with Lenin and ensuring that his religious and ethnic origins were not prominent. Every action had to be accounted for, every wrong step justified.]]> 739 Leon Trotsky 8834161203 Dan 0 to-read 4.06 1929
author: Leon Trotsky
name: Dan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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]]> 61091940
Revised Previously published as Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, this edition of Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.]]> 691 Frederick Douglass 1662507879 Dan 4 3.89 1881
author: Frederick Douglass
name: Dan
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1881
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> 4948
One sunny Sunday, the caterpillar was hatched out of a tiny egg. He was very hungry. On Monday, he ate through one apple; on Tuesday, he ate through three plums--and still he was hungry. When full at last, he made a cocoon around himself and went to sleep, to wake up a few weeks later wonderfully transformed into a butterfly!

The brilliantly innovative Eric Carle has dramatized the story of one of Nature's commonest yet loveliest marvels, the metamorphosis of the butterfly. This audiobook will delight as well as instruct the very youngest listener.]]> 26 Eric Carle 0241003008 Dan 0 currently-reading 4.33 1969
author: Eric Carle
name: Dan
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 115476 ]]> 336 Joseph Conrad 0486424529 Dan 0 to-read 3.81 1904
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Dan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1904
rating: 0
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]]> 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 Dan 2 4.05 2014
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Dan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> 10208730 417 Rodric Braithwaite 1846680549 Dan 0 to-read 3.99 2011
author: Rodric Braithwaite
name: Dan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/22
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]]> 6892870
Lisbeth Salander - the heart of Larsson's two previous novels - lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She's fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she'll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.

~from the jacket]]> 566 Stieg Larsson 030726999X Dan 0 to-read 4.23 2007
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Dan
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/17
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]]> 36402034 258 Philip K. Dick Dan 0 to-read 4.16 1968
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Dan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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]]> 1842
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal]]> 498 Jared Diamond 0739467352 Dan 0 to-read 4.04 1997
author: Jared Diamond
name: Dan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
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]]> 2767 Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those…whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”]]> 729 Howard Zinn 0060838655 Dan 0 to-read 4.07 1980
author: Howard Zinn
name: Dan
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> 5060378 Millenium publisher Mikael Blomkvist has made his reputation exposing corrupt establishment figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with an investigation into sex trafficking, Blomkvist cannot resist waging war on the powerful figures who control this lucrative industry.

The Murder
When a young couple is found dead in their Stockholm apartment, it's a straightforward job for Inspector Bublanski and his team. The killer left the weapon at the scene - and the fingerprints on the gun point in only one direction.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
Ex-security analyst Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. The only way Salander can be reached is by computer. But she can break into almost any network she chooses...]]> 503 Stieg Larsson 0307269981 Dan 0 to-read 4.25 2006
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Dan
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> 1845 Librarian's Note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

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

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw away the maps. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.]]> 207 Jon Krakauer 0385486804 Dan 4 4.01 1996
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Dan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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]]> 92057
Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself "the angriest Black man in America" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind.

An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcolm X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, and the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.]]> 466 Malcolm X Dan 0 to-read 4.35 1965
author: Malcolm X
name: Dan
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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]]> 36236124 Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.]]> 224 Chuck Palahniuk 0393355942 Dan 4 4.18 1996
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Dan
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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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 Dan 0 to-read 3.99 2006
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Dan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> 2429135
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.]]> 480 Stieg Larsson 0670069019 Dan 4 4.17 2005
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Dan 0 to-read 4.36 1880
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Dan
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1880
rating: 0
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]]> 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 Dan 0 to-read 3.87 1615
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Dan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1615
rating: 0
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]]> 656
War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.

As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.


Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction by Henry Gifford, and Tolstoy's important essay `Some Words about War and Peace'.]]> 1392 Leo Tolstoy 0192833987 Dan 0 to-read 4.14 1869
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Dan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1869
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]]> 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Dan 0 to-read 4.04 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Dan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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]]> 15823480 Anna Karenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in all of literature. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenin and turns to Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature - with tragic consequences. Levin is a reflection of Tolstoy himself, often expressing the author's own views and convictions.

Throughout, Tolstoy points no moral, merely inviting us not to judge but to watch. As Rosemary Edmonds comments, 'He leaves the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope to bring home the meaning of the brooding words following the title, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.]]> 964 Leo Tolstoy 0345803922 Dan 0 to-read 4.11 1878
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Dan
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1878
rating: 0
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]]> 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Dan 0 to-read 4.26 1866
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Dan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 0
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]]> 5297 272 Oscar Wilde Dan 0 to-read 4.13 1890
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Dan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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]]> 58696 882 Charles Dickens Dan 0 to-read 4.02 1850
author: Charles Dickens
name: Dan
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1850
rating: 0
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]]> 1953 A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.]]> 489 Charles Dickens 0141439602 Dan 0 to-read 3.86 1859
author: Charles Dickens
name: Dan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1859
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/17
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]]> 164154 334 Walter M. Miller Jr. 0060892994 Dan 0 to-read 3.99 1959
author: Walter M. Miller Jr.
name: Dan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/28
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]]> 50489351
One of the most infamous crimes in the history of American labor unions, the Yablonski murders triggered one of the most intensive and successful manhunts in FBI history—and also led to the first successful rank-and-file takeover of a major labor union in modern U.S. history. One that inspired workers in other labor unions to rise up and challenge their own entrenched, out-of-touch leaders.]]> 352 Mark A. Bradley 039365253X Dan 0 to-read 4.13 2020
author: Mark A. Bradley
name: Dan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/05
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]]> 52382796
Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, ShĹŤgun is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but also one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, ShĹŤgun is, as the New York Times put it, "...not only something you read--you live it." Provocative, absorbing, and endlessly fascinating, there is only one: ShĹŤgun.]]> 1152 James Clavell 1982603844 Dan 0 to-read 4.42 1975
author: James Clavell
name: Dan
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/04
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]]> 748526
Barbarossa is a classic of miltary history. This paperback edition contains a new preface by the author.]]> 560 Alan Clark 0688042686 Dan 0 to-read 4.09 1966
author: Alan Clark
name: Dan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 46153499 216 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Dan 4 4.18 1818
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Dan
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1818
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/12
date added: 2023/08/12
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]]> 17349
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.]]> 459 Carl Sagan 0345409469 Dan 0 to-read 4.28 1995
author: Carl Sagan
name: Dan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/12
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]]> 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"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 Dan 0 to-read 4.46 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Dan
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/24
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]]> 436982 Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov � Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821�1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes � moral, religious, political and social � that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works. Notes from the Underground, then, aside from its own compelling qualities, offers readers an ideal introduction to the creative imagination, profundity and uncanny psychological penetration of one of the most influential novelists of the nineteenth century. Constance Garnett's authoritative translation is reprinted here, with a new introduction.]]> 96 Fyodor Dostoevsky Dan 4 4.08 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Dan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1864
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/02/19
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]]> 1062950 Book by Foot, Paul 294 Paul Foot 0906224136 Dan 4 4.32 1980
author: Paul Foot
name: Dan
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1980
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/01/15
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]]> 184957 260 Paul N. Siegel 1931859248 Dan 0 to-read 4.29 1986
author: Paul N. Siegel
name: Dan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/25
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]]> 28676 American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.]]> 399 Bret Easton Ellis 0679735771 Dan 0 to-read 3.82 1991
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Dan
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/17
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]]> 77505 624 Kim Stanley Robinson 0553572393 Dan 4 3.94 1993
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Dan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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date added: 2022/10/22
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]]> 9646 232 George Orwell 0156421178 Dan 5 4.09 1938
author: George Orwell
name: Dan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1938
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/09/29
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]]> 10808156 194 Primo Levi 0141399449 Dan 5 3.87 1975
author: Primo Levi
name: Dan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1975
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/09/29
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]]> 187429 258 Farrell Dobbs 087348973X Dan 5 4.51 1972
author: Farrell Dobbs
name: Dan
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1972
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/09/21
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]]> 407267 Ěý
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the “nonprofit industrial complex� and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt political movements? Activists--or careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden exposé of the “nonprofit industrial complex� and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.]]> 257 0896087662 Dan 0 to-read 4.28 2007
author: Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
name: Dan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/08
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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 Dan 0 to-read 4.25 1988
author: Edward S. Herman
name: Dan
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/08
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]]> 13651 387 Ursula K. Le Guin Dan 4 4.24 1974
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Dan
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1974
rating: 4
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date added: 2022/09/08
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]]> 41681
When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary.

The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905.
It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition.

A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition.]]> 335 Upton Sinclair 1884365302 Dan 0 to-read 3.77 1906
author: Upton Sinclair
name: Dan
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1906
rating: 0
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]]> 1237300 The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.]]> 558 Naomi Klein 0805079831 Dan 0 to-read 4.27 2007
author: Naomi Klein
name: Dan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/08
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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 Dan 0 to-read 4.15 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Dan
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> 6088007 Neuromancer is a cyberpunk, science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks with 1984 and Brave New World as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future.

The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus-hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace...

Henry Dorsett Case was the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.

The winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about our technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.]]> 288 William Gibson Dan 0 to-read 3.94 1984
author: William Gibson
name: Dan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> 30474 The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels' revolutionary 1848 summons to the working classes, is one of the most influential political theories ever formulated. After four years of collaboration, the authors produced this incisive account of their idea of Communism, in which they envisage a society without classes, private property, or a state. They argue that increasing exploitation of industrial workers will eventually lead to a revolution in which capitalism is overthrown. Their vision transformed the world irrevocably, and remains relevant as a depiction of global capitalism today.]]> 288 Karl Marx 0140447571 Dan 5 3.67 1848
author: Karl Marx
name: Dan
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1848
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/06/16
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]]> 332535
Neither realizes that their future in Japan has already been foreseen. For a young nobleman, Lord Genji, has dreamt that his life will be saved by an outsider in the New Year. Widely reviled as a dilettante, Lord Genji has one weapon with which to inspire awe. In his family, one in every generation is said to have the gift of prophecy. And what Lord Genji sees has struck fear in many around him. As the Shogun’s secret police chief plots Genji’s death--and the utter destruction of his entire clan--the young and untried lord must prove that he is more than the handsome womanizer of legend, famed lover of Edo’s most celebrated geisha, Lady Heiko, and that his prophetic powers are no mere fairy tale.

Forced to escape from Edo and flee to his ancestral stronghold, the spectacular Cloud of Sparrows Castle, Genji joins his fate with Emily and Stark, unaware of the dark forces that drive them. Together with Genji’s uncle, Lord Shigeru, a legendary swordsman knee-deep in the blood of his own kin, and the enigmatic Lady Heiko, the unlikely band embarks on a harrowing journey through a landscape bristling with danger--to prepare for a final battle.

Here, on a snowscape stained with blood, horror will mix with wonder, secrets will unravel, and love will duel with vengeance--as East and West, flesh and spirit, past and future, collide in ways no one--least of all Genji--could have imagined.]]> 405 Takashi Matsuoka 0385338503 Dan 0 to-read 4.05 2002
author: Takashi Matsuoka
name: Dan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/15
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]]> 53463024
The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined -- every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.]]> Suzanne Collins Dan 0 to-read 3.90 2020
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Dan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/13
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]]> 66717
The body, however, turns out to be that of Declan Gunn, a depressed writer living in Clerkenwell, interrupted in his bath mid-suicide. Ever the opportunist, and with his main scheme bubbling in the background, Luce takes the chance to tap out a few thoughts - to straighten the biblical record, to celebrate his favourite achievements, to let us know just what it's like being him.

Neither living nor explaining turns out to be as easy as it looks. Beset by distractions, miscalculations and all the natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the Father of Lies slowly begins to learn what it's like being us.]]> 272 Glen Duncan 0802140149 Dan 0 to-read 3.61 2002
author: Glen Duncan
name: Dan
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/11/13
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]]> 33933 The Panda's Thumb will introduce a new generation of readers to this unique writer, who has taken the art of the scientific essay to new heights.


Were dinosaurs really dumber than lizards? Why, after all, are roughly the same number of men and women born into the world? What led the famous Dr. Down to his theory of mongolism, and its racist residue? What do the panda's magical "thumb" and the sea turtle's perilous migration tell us about imperfections that prove the evolutionary rule? The wonders and mysteries of evolutionary biology are elegantly explored in these and other essays by the celebrated natural history writer Stephen Jay Gould.]]> 343 Stephen Jay Gould 0393308197 Dan 0 to-read 4.12 1980
author: Stephen Jay Gould
name: Dan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/24
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]]> 37813 321 Mark Twain 0060518650 Dan 0 to-read 4.22 1962
author: Mark Twain
name: Dan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/05/06
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]]> 159709 236 John A. De Vito 059525070X Dan 0 to-read 3.58 2002
author: John A. De Vito
name: Dan
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/05/06
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]]> 346023 The Gods Will Have Blood is the story of Gamelin, an idealistic young artist appointed as a magistrate during the French Revolution. Gamelin's ideals lead him to the most monstrous mass murder of his countrymen, and the links between Gamelin and his family, his mistress and the humanist Brotteaux are catastrophically severed. This book recreates the violence and devastation of the Terror with breathtaking power, and weaves into it a tale which grips, convinces and profoundly moves. The perfection of Anatole France's prose style, with its myriad subtle ironies, is here translated by Frederick Davies with admirable skill and sensitivity. That The Gods Will Have Blood is Anatole France's masterpiece is beyond doubt. It is also one of the most brilliantly polished novels in French literature.

Anatole France was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.]]> 279 Anatole France 0140184570 Dan 0 to-read 3.78 1912
author: Anatole France
name: Dan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1912
rating: 0
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]]> 2251777
Anatole France's 1914 satire of war, government, and religion offers an ever-resonant protest against violence and tyranny.]]> 282 Anatole France 1399719238 Dan 0 to-read 4.06 1914
author: Anatole France
name: Dan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1914
rating: 0
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]]> 8726524
This anthology, global in scope, presents voices of dissent from every era of human history: speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos. Every age has its iconoclasts, and yet the greatest among them build on the words and actions of their forerunners. The Verso Book of Dissent will become an invaluable resource, reminding today’s citizens that these traditions will never die.]]> 400 Andrew Hsiao 1844674487 Dan 0 to-read 3.99 2010
author: Andrew Hsiao
name: Dan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/04/22
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]]> 23529
Having proved himself peerless in the arena of reinterpreting superheroes, Alan Moore turned his ever-incisive eye to the squalid, enigmatic world of Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders of 1888. Weighing in at 576 pages, From Hell is certainly the most epic of Moore's works and remarkably and is possibly his finest effort yet in a career punctuated by such glorious highlights as Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Going beyond the myriad existing theories, which range from the sublime to the ridiculous, Moore presents an ingenious take on the slaughter. His Ripper's brutal activities are the epicentre of a conspiracy involving the very heart of the British Establishment, including the Freemasons and The Royal Family. A popular claim, which is transformed through Moore's exquisite and thoroughly gripping vision, of the Ripper crimes being the womb from which the 20th century, so enmeshed in the celebrity culture of violence, received its shocking, visceral birth.

Bolstered by meticulous research that encompasses a wide spectrum of Ripper studies and myths and coupled with his ability to evoke sympathies in such monstrous characters, Moore has created perhaps the finest examination of the Ripper legacy, observing far beyond society's obsessive need to expose Evil's visage. Ultimately, as Moore observes, Jack's identity and his actions are inconsequential to the manner in which society embraced the Fear: "It's about us. It's about our minds and how they dance. Jack mirrors our hysterias. Faceless, he is the receptacle for each new social panic."

Eddie Campbell's stunning black and white artwork, replete with a scratchy, dirty sheen, is perfectly matched to the often-unshakeable intensity of Moore's writing. Between them, each murder is rendered in horrifying detail, providing the book's most unnerving scenes, made more so in uncomfortable, yet lyrical moments as when the villain embraces an eviscerated corpse, craving understanding; pleading that they "are wed in legend, inextricable within eternity".

Though technically a comic, the term hardly begins to describe From Hell's inimitable grandeur and finesse, as it takes the medium to fresh heights of ingenuity and craftsmanship. Moore and Campbell's autopsy on the emaciated corpse of the Ripper myth has divulged a deeply disturbing yet undeniably captivating masterpiece. �Danny Graydon]]> 576 Alan Moore 0861661419 Dan 0 to-read 4.19 1999
author: Alan Moore
name: Dan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/01/30
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]]> 8855321
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.]]> 592 James S.A. Corey 1841499889 Dan 0 to-read 4.30 2011
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Dan
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/11/08
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]]> 6931246 Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about—or prevent—the End of All Things.

In the Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre’s prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux—better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy’s tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.

As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens—human and otherwise—are adept in magic and murder.

There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanity—and beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRC—the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit—a branch of London’s finest that fights sorcery with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the city’s entrails. There is Grisamentum, London’s greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifying—yet darkly charismatic—demonic duo.

All of them—and others—are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.]]> 509 China Miéville 034549749X Dan 0 to-read 3.62 2010
author: China Miéville
name: Dan
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/06/08
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]]> 4703581
Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.]]> 312 China Miéville 0345497511 Dan 0 to-read 3.90 2009
author: China Miéville
name: Dan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> 68494 710 China Miéville 0345459407 Dan 0 to-read 3.98 2000
author: China Miéville
name: Dan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/06/08
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]]> 77504 768 Kim Stanley Robinson 0553573357 Dan 0 to-read 3.94 1996
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Dan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> 77507 In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research and cutting-edge science in the first of a trilogy chronicling the colonization of Mars.

For eons, sandstorms have swept the desolate landscape. For centuries, Mars has beckoned humans to conquer its hostile climate. Now, in 2026, a group of 100 colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers and Arkady Bogdanov lead a terraforming mission. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness. For others it offers an opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. For the genetic alchemists, it presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life and death. The colonists orbit giant satellite mirrors to reflect light to the surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth. Massive tunnels, kilometers deep, will be drilled into the mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves and friendships will form and fall to pieces—for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in evolution, creating a world in its entirety. It shows a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision.]]> 572 Kim Stanley Robinson 0553560735 Dan 0 to-read 3.86 1992
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Dan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/06/08
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]]> 7181078 184 James Leslie Mitchell Dan 0 to-read 3.50 1934
author: James Leslie Mitchell
name: Dan
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1934
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/06/08
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]]> 93542 Spartacus is a masterpiece of vivid storytelling from one of Scotland's finest writers.]]> 264 Lewis Grassic Gibbon 1933648139 Dan 0 to-read 3.98 1933
author: Lewis Grassic Gibbon
name: Dan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1933
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/06/08
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]]> 292602 A Scots Quair is revolutionary - innovative in its form, deft and humorous in its use of language, courageous in its characterization and politics. Central to the trilogy is Chris Guthrie, one of the most remarkable female characters in modern literature. In Sunset Song, Gibbon's finest achievement, the reader follows Chris through her girlhood in a tight-knit Scottish farming community: the seasons, the weddings, the funerals, the grind of work, the gossip. As the Great War takes its toll, machines replace the old way of life. Cloud Howe and Grey Granite take Chris from her rural homeland to life in an industrial Scotland and the desperate years of the Depression. The trilogy as a whole is a major achievement, a picture of a society undergoing traumatic and far-reaching transformation. Always readable, never sentimental, A Scots Quair is one of the most important works of modern Scottish literature.]]> 696 Lewis Grassic Gibbon Dan 0 to-read 4.25 1934
author: Lewis Grassic Gibbon
name: Dan
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1934
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/06/08
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]]> 185822
In a balkanized twenty-first century, where the "peace process" is deadlier than war, the US/UN's spy satellites have everyone in their sights. But the Watchmaker has other plans, and the lives of Moh, Janis, and Jordan are part of the program. A specter is haunting the fight for space and freedom, the specter of the betrayed revolution that happened before...

With The Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod burst onto the SF scene and began the Fall Revolution sequence that continued with The Stone Canal, The Cassini Division, and The Sky Road.]]> 320 Ken MacLeod 0765301563 Dan 0 to-read 3.72 1995
author: Ken MacLeod
name: Dan
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/06/08
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]]> 3119719
Excerpt:
A few Frenchmen, united in friendship, who were spending the spring in Rome, were wont to meet amid the ruins of the disinterred Forum. They were Josephin Leclerc, an Embassy Attache on leave; M. Goubin, licencie es lettres, an annotator; Nicole Langelier, of the old Parisian family of the Langeliers, printers and classical scholars; Jean Boilly, a civil engineer, and Hippolyte Dufresne, a man of leisure, and a lover of the fine arts.]]> 240 Anatole France 1410105792 Dan 0 to-read 3.14 1905
author: Anatole France
name: Dan
average rating: 3.14
book published: 1905
rating: 0
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]]> 92303
Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend the "rivals" to fight for Ernest's undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds pandemonium breaks loose. Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.]]> 89 Oscar Wilde 158049580X Dan 4 to-read 4.17 1895
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1895
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/06/08
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]]> 17876 Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead (150th Anniversary Edition)

The compelling works presented in this volume were written at distinct periods in Dostoyevsky's life, at decisive moments in his groping for a political philosophy and a religious answer. From the primitive peasant who kills without understanding that he is destroying life to the anxious antihero of Notes from Underground—who both craves and despises affection—the writer's often-tormented characters showcase his evolving outlook on our fate.

Thomas Mann described Dostoyevsky as "an author whose Christian sympathy is ordinarily devoted to human misery, sin, vice, the depths of lust and crime, rather than to nobility of body and soul" and Notes from Underground as "an awe- and terror- inspiring example of this sympathy."]]> 233 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0451529553 Dan 0 to-read 4.19 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Dan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1864
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/03/13
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]]> 4900
A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is considered one of the most influential works ever written.]]> 188 Joseph Conrad 1892295490 Dan 4 3.43 1899
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Dan
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1899
rating: 4
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]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Dan 4 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: Dan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 4
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]]> 18114322
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 496 John Steinbeck 067001690X Dan 4 4.06 1939
author: John Steinbeck
name: Dan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1939
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/10/17
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]]> 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Dan 3 3.99 1932
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Dan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 3
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]]> 890 “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.�

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. But George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own.

While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful.

A unique perspective on life's hardships, this story has achieved the status of timeless classic due to its remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.]]> 107 John Steinbeck 0142000671 Dan 4 3.88 1937
author: John Steinbeck
name: Dan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1937
rating: 4
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]]> 7613
When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced with another.

Animal Farm was one of George Orwell's most successful books - after its publication Orwell became one of the best-paid writers in England. Though the text continues to play a foundational role in the political education of young people across the world, its allegorical function has become more difficult to decode as the U.S.S.R recedes into the historical distance.]]> 129 George Orwell Dan 4 3.90 1945
author: George Orwell
name: Dan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1945
rating: 4
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]]> 865 197 Paulo Coelho 0061122416 Dan 2 3.85 1988
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Dan
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1988
rating: 2
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date added: 2017/10/17
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]]> 5470 328 George Orwell Dan 5 4.15 1949
author: George Orwell
name: Dan
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1949
rating: 5
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