Mike's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 11 Apr 2025 12:03:19 -0700 60 Mike's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco]]> 205901155 COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco meditates on the extraordinary time of loss, isolation, and bizarre rituals of the Covid era and its aftermath.

"Yep, she's still got it. . . . Like the most inspiring religious services, 'Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco' ends on an optimistic note, with Finley pivoting from shock and horror at the lives lost, access and control over one's body into hope—for change, peace, courage, love. And art. Always art."—Elisabeth Vincentelli,The New York Times

First performed at sold-out theaters in New York, where theĚýVillage Voice compared Karen Finley to Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, this vivid suite of poems invokes a maelstrom of feelings that will make you laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page. In COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco, Finley processes the pandemic in all its complexity—from the collective coping strategies during isolation and loss to the absurd new habits we acquired, from handwashing to wiping down groceries to decorative double masks and zoom dance parties.

The New York City hotspot echoes an earlier AIDS era; that rage and sorrow remain part of the City's DNA. During COVID, tragic historic events such as the police murder of George Floyd and the continued brutality on Black and brown bodies, challenged the nation. Revolution took to the streets. The reversal of Roe v Wade and the criminalizing of trans peoples' bodies, mental health realities, houselessness, essential workers' rights, and social isolation brought desperate conditions. Finley reflects on these traumas, asking how do we employ love despite the hate, to encourage humanity despite proliferating violence?

On the fifth anniversary of the pandemic lockdown,ĚýCOVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco looks back while also looking forward, offering art as salvation, and the deep belief in the power of words, compassion, and humor to transcend the harsh realities of today.


]]> 144 Karen Finley 0872869350 Mike 2 poetry 3.92 COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco
author: Karen Finley
name: Mike
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> Notes from a Regicide 211510081 Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.

When your parents die, you find out who they really were.

Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own � both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.

Griffon’s best clue to his parents� lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.

In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.]]> 336 Isaac Fellman 1250329116 Mike 0 currently-reading 4.40 2025 Notes from a Regicide
author: Isaac Fellman
name: Mike
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Heartwood 220259184 Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.]]> 320 Amity Gaige 1668063603 Mike 5 bechdel, audiobook 3.94 2025 Heartwood
author: Amity Gaige
name: Mike
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: bechdel, audiobook
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Warriors Graphic Novel: The Prophecies Begin #1]]> 199531775 With more than 40 million copies sold, Erin Hunter's Warriors series has taken the world by storm and is now available in a full-color graphic novel adaptation. The first book covers the first two original novels in The Prophecies Begin: Into the Wild and Fire and Ice. A perfect introduction to the world of Warriors for any new readers and the ultimate gift for its legions of fans!

For generations, four Clans of wild cats have shared the forest. But the cats of ThunderClan are in grave danger, and sinister ShadowClan grows stronger every day. In the midst of this turmoil appears a house cat named Rusty—who may turn out to be the bravest warrior of them all.

Ever since the first Warriors book hit shelves, readers have devoured these epic adventures. This stunning new adaptation retells the original Warriors story arc as a full-color graphic novel.]]> 272 Erin Hunter 006320388X Mike 3 4.32 2024 Warriors Graphic Novel: The Prophecies Begin #1
author: Erin Hunter
name: Mike
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: childrens, comic-graphic-novel, ooad-book-clubs
review:

]]> Call Me Home: Poems 214152364 A powerful exploration of the diverse manifestations of “home�, extending beyond its mere physicality, through topics such as womanhood, spirituality, and immigration.

Explore the multifaceted concept of "home" through Kaur's evocative poetry. Journey beyond its physical confines to discover its emotional and psychological depths, touching on themes like immigration, womanhood, and spirituality.

Encounter narratives of loss, rediscovery, and healing that resonate with the human experience. With rich language and imagery, this collection offers fresh perspectives, inviting readers to reconsider their understanding of what it means to feel at home.]]> 128 Harman Kaur 1771683996 Mike 3 poetry 4.33 Call Me Home: Poems
author: Harman Kaur
name: Mike
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: poetry
review:
Kaur's book is a rumination on emigration, family, and impending motherhood. There wasn't a ton that really hit for me. There was an interesting aside that pointed toward migrant-as-orpheus/Lot's Wife, looking back because there is no choice but to look back, no matter the cost.
]]> Ephemera 61363163
Ephemera is a poetic and dreamlike take on a graphic memoir set in a garden, a forest, and a greenhouse. The story drifts among a grown woman, her early memories as a child, and the gossamer existence of her mother. A lyrical entry in the field of graphic medicine, Ephemera is a story about a daughter trying to relate to a parent who struggles with mental illness. Gorgeously illustrated in a painted palette of warmy, earthy tones, it is a quiet book of isolation, plants, confusion, acceptance, and the fog of childhood. Loewinsohn’s debut book is an aching, meditative twist on autobiography, infusing the genre with an ethereal fusion of memory and imagination.]]> 200 Briana Loewinsohn 1683966902 Mike 5 3.97 2023 Ephemera
author: Briana Loewinsohn
name: Mike
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: bechdel, comic-graphic-novel, biography-memoir
review:

]]> Primordial: Poems 211934960
With profound and attentive care, Vang addresses the plight of the saola, an extremely rare and critically endangered animal native to the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam. The saola looks like an antelope, with two long horns, and is related to wild cattle, though the saola has been placed in a genus of its own. Remarkably, the saola has only been known to the outside world since 1992, and sightings are so rare that it has now been more than a decade since the last known image of one was captured in a camera trap photo in 2013.

Primordial examines the saola’s relationship to Hmong refugee identity and cosmology and a shared sense of exile, precarity, privacy, and survival. Can a war-torn landscape and memory provide sanctuary, and what are the consequences for our climate, our origins, our ability to belong to a homeland? Written during a difficult pregnancy and postpartum period, Vang’s poems are urgent stays against extinction.]]> 144 Mai Der Vang 1644453266 Mike 4 poetry 4.41 Primordial: Poems
author: Mai Der Vang
name: Mike
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> Woodworking 217311813 An unforgettable and heartwarming debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: one of her students.

Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.

Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica ľ±˛ő˛Ô’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of othersâ€� expectations.

As their unlikely friendship evolves under the increasing scrutiny of their community, both women—and those closest to them—will come to realize that sometimes there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you really are.

Detransition Baby meets Fleishman is in Trouble in this remarkable debut novel from an incisive contemporary voice. A story about the awkwardness of growing up and the greatest love story of all, that between us and our friends, Woodworking is a tonic for the moment and a celebration of womanhood in all its multifaceted joy.]]> 351 Emily St. James 163893147X Mike 5 4.43 2025 Woodworking
author: Emily St. James
name: Mike
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: bechdel, favorites, gender-issues, ooad-book-clubs
review:

]]> Wake Up and Open Your Eyes 204642502 For fans of The Last of Us, a fast-paced supernatural horror novel about a mass demonic possession epidemic that spreads through the internet from Vulture’s “master of horror� Clay McLeod Chapman.

Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reckoning� is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trance-like state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get medical help.

Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.

But Noah ľ±˛ő˛Ô’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart-–literally-–as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend watching particular channels, using certain apps, or visiting certain websites. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklynâ€�-but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?

This ambitious, searing novel from "one of horror's modern masters" holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.]]> 384 Clay McLeod Chapman 1683693957 Mike 1 3.64 2025 Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
author: Clay McLeod Chapman
name: Mike
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2025
rating: 1
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: ooad-book-clubs, speculatve-fiction, zombies
review:
This is quite possibly the worst book I've ever finished reading. Good premise, terrrrrible execution. Painful to read, so incredibly repetitive, and just lazily done. A character buys a new TV, and Chapman wants us to be impressed by how big it is, so he says it's "85 inches wide and 33 inches tall." First off, that's not how any one measures TVs, and second, that's an INSANE size for a TV. Even watching wide-screen programming there'd be 15" of black space on either side of the picture. It takes 3 seconds to google TV aspect ratios, or just give the diagonal which is how actual TVs are measured. Another time, the narrator has his whole fist shoved in someone's mouth. That person, possessed by "Fax News", attempts to say "Just the Fax" and it comes out "Fussstt neee fakksx" or something like that. Here's a list of all the sounds in that utterance that you can actually say with a fist in your mouth: u, a. That's it. Take 3 seconds and stick your hand in your mouth and see what it sounds like. Gah!
]]> Squished 60758243 From the Eisner-nominated duo behind the instant bestseller Allergic comes a fun new graphic novel about finding your own space� especially when you're in a family of nine!

Eleven-year-old Avery Lee loves living in Hickory Valley, Maryland. She loves her neighborhood, school, and the end-of-summer fair she always goes to with her two best friends. But she's tired of feeling squished by her six siblings! They're noisy and chaotic and the younger kids love her a little too much. All Avery wants is her own room -- her own space to be alone and make art. So she's furious when Theo, her grumpy older brother, gets his own room instead, and her wild baby brother, Max, moves into the room she already shares with her clinging sister Pearl! Avery hatches a plan to finally get her own room, all while trying to get Max to sleep at night, navigating changes in her friendships, and working on an art entry for the fair. And when Avery finds out that her family might move across the country, things get even more complicated.

Megan Wagner Lloyd and Michelle Mee Nutter have once again teamed up to tell a funny, heartfelt, and charming story of family, friendship, and growing up.]]> 248 Megan Wagner Lloyd 1338568930 Mike 3 4.13 2023 Squished
author: Megan Wagner Lloyd
name: Mike
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: childrens, comic-graphic-novel, ooad-book-clubs, bechdel
review:

]]> Address Unknown 54798506 A rediscovered classic and international bestseller that recounts the gripping tale of a friendship destroyed at the hands of Nazi GermanyĚý

In this searing novel, Kathrine Kressmann Taylor brings vividly to life the insidious spread of Nazism through a series of letters between Max, a Jewish art dealer in San Francisco, and Martin, his friend and former business partner who has returned to Germany in 1932, just as Hitler is coming to power.

Originally published in StoryĚýmagazine in 1938, Address UnknownĚýbecame an international sensation. Credited with exposing the dangers of Nazism to American readers early on, it is also a scathing indictment of fascist movements around the world and a harrowing exposĂ© of the power of the pen as a weapon.

A powerful and eloquent tale about the consequences of a friendship—and society—poisoned by extremism, Address UnknownĚýremains hauntingly and painfully relevant today.Ěý]]> 96 Kathrine Kressmann Taylor 0063068494 Mike 5 classics, favorites 4.45 1938 Address Unknown
author: Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
name: Mike
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1938
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: classics, favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fairies vs. Leprechauns (Oona Bramblegoop's Sideways Magic)]]> 211025370 144 Kate Korsh 0593533704 Mike 3 childrens, ooad-book-clubs 3.71 Fairies vs. Leprechauns (Oona Bramblegoop's Sideways Magic)
author: Kate Korsh
name: Mike
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: childrens, ooad-book-clubs
review:

]]> <![CDATA[American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era]]> 207003668 From an award-winning journalist comes a vivid and moving portrait of eight trans and nonbinary teenagers across the country, following their daily triumphs, struggles, and all that encompasses growing up trans in America today

“A master class in journalism as a force for change. Nico Lang cuts through the political ping-pong over transgender rights to surface the human stories that too often go ignored. Lang’s lucid and clear-eyed account of their lives offers an essential corrective, reminding us that there’s nothing more American than the freedom to be yourself.”Ě�—SAMANTHA ALLEN, author ofĚýReal Queer America Ěý

“Lang weaves this broad bleak terrain with warm insights and a clear immediacy of message. Expansive and compassionate.â€� â€�GABE DUNN,ĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author ofĚýI Hate Everyone But You

Media coverage tends to sensationalize the fight over how trans kids should be allowed to live, but whatĚýisĚýincredibly rare are the voices of the people at the heart of this transgender and gender nonconforming kids themselves. For their groundbreaking new book, journalist Nico Lang spent a year traveling the country to document the lives of transgender, nonbinary, and genderfluid teens and their families. Drawing on hundreds of hours of on-the-ground interviews with them and the people in their communities,ĚýAmerican TeenagerĚýpaints a vivid portrait of what it’s actually like to grow up trans today.

From the tip of Florida’s conservative panhandle to vibrant queer communities in California, and from Texas churches to mosques in Illinois,ĚýAmerican TeenagerĚýgives readers a window into the lives of Wyatt, Rhydian, Mykah, Clint, Ruby, Augie, Jack, and Kylie, eight teens who, despite what some lawmakers might want us to believe, are truly just kids looking for a brighter future.]]> 288 Nico Lang 1419773828 Mike 5 4.47 American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era
author: Nico Lang
name: Mike
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: biography-memoir, gender-issues, nonfiction, parenting
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America]]> 216520753 New York Times best-selling author brings his trademark legal acumen and passionate snark to offer a brilliant takedown of ten incredibly bad pieces of legislation that are causing way too much misery to millions.

“If it were up to me, I’d treat every law passed before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as presumptively unconstitutional. The government of this country was illegitimate when it ruled over people who had no ability to choose the rules.�

—from the introduction to Bad Law

In Bad Law, the New York Times best-selling author of Allow Me to A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution brings his trademark legal acumen and passionate snark to a brilliant takedown of ten of what he considers the most egregiously awful laws on the books today. These are pieces of legislation that are making life worse rather than better for Americans, and that, he argues with trenchant wit and biting humor, should be repealed completely.

On topics ranging from abortion and immigration to voting rights and religious freedom, we have chosen rules to live by that do not reflect the will of most of the people. With respect to our decision to make a law that effectively grants immunity to gun manufacturers, for example, Mystal writes, “We live in the most violent, wealthy country on earth not in spite of the law; we live in a first-person-shooter video game because of the law.�

But, as the man Samantha Bee calls “irrepressible and righteously indignant� and Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion calls “the funniest lawyer in America,� points out, these laws do not come to us from on high; we write them, and we can and should unwrite them. In a marvelous and original takedown spanning all the hot-button topics in the country today, one of our most brilliant legal thinkers points the way to a saner tomorrow.]]> 256 Elie Mystal 162097858X Mike 5 nonfiction 4.52 Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America
author: Elie Mystal
name: Mike
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: nonfiction
review:
Informative and thoroughly researched and funny throughout, as was Mystal’s Allow Me To Retort. From Don’t Say Gay to Felony Murder, Mystal presents ten laws that reinforce the racist/mysogynist/homophobic underpinnings of modern America, and offers suggestions about how each can be removed.
]]> Another 220652200 New York Times bestselling, acclaimed horror author Paul Tremblay delivers an unforgettable middle grade debut in this bone-chilling tale of an unsettling, unbreakable friendship.

When Casey Wilson’s parents tell him that his friend is coming for a sleepover, he has no idea who that might be. Ever since the Zoom Incident, everyone treats him like a pariah, and his tics are worse than ever.

When Morel appears, he’s not like any friend Casey has ever met. His skin is like clay, and he doesn’t speak. But Casey’s parents are charmed by the strange kid, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to besides his sister, Ally, who is away at college. As his normally loving parents grow distant from Casey, they gush and fawn over Morel. Casey knows something is wrong—but with no end in sight to the sleepover, he’s exhausted. And in the dark, out of the corner of his eye, Morel doesn’t look like a kid at all. . . .]]> 256 Paul Tremblay 0063396351 Mike 4 childrens, speculatve-fiction 4.22 2025 Another
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Mike
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: childrens, speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> Tilt 214151301 Set over the course of one day, a heart-racing story about a woman facing the unimaginable, determined to find safety

Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, she realizes there’s nothing to do but walk.

Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. She’s determined to change her life if she can just make it home.]]> 229 Emma Pattee 1668055473 Mike 4 3.71 2025 Tilt
author: Emma Pattee
name: Mike
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: bechdel, parenting, speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> Victorian Psycho 213395480 From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.]]> 208 Virginia Feito 1631498630 Mike 4 audiobook, bechdel 3.62 2025 Victorian Psycho
author: Virginia Feito
name: Mike
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: audiobook, bechdel
review:

]]> The River Has Roots 211004176 Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.�

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters� bond but also their lives will be at risk…]]> 133 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341086 Mike 5 4.19 2025 The River Has Roots
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Mike
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: audiobook, bechdel, favorites, speculatve-fiction
review:
Gorgeous, lyrical story of two sisters who live by the river that flows out of the Fae.
]]> Burn 202102018 From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence

Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania—a mania that has simultaneously spread across other states—Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worst-case scenario, folks in the capital.

But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find: a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road. Trying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, they set their sights on finding their way home, dragging a wagon across bumpy dirt roads, scavenging from boats left in lakes, and dodging armed men—secessionists or U.S. military, they cannot tell—as they seek a path to safety. Then, a startling discovery drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape.

Drenched in the beauty of the natural world and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Burn is both a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.]]> 291 Peter Heller 0593801628 Mike 3 3.51 2024 Burn
author: Peter Heller
name: Mike
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: non-bechdel, speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3) 209439446
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 527 Rebecca Yarros 1649374186 Mike 3 speculatve-fiction 4.17 2025 Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Mike
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Joker: DC Compact Comics Edition]]> 203166770 136 Brian Azzarello 1779527314 Mike 2 3.54 Joker: DC Compact Comics Edition
author: Brian Azzarello
name: Mike
average rating: 3.54
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: comic-graphic-novel, non-bechdel
review:

]]> The Repeat Room 205673381 Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers

In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.

The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy’s broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.

Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball’s absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.]]> 256 Jesse Ball 1646221400 Mike 4 3.13 2024 The Repeat Room
author: Jesse Ball
name: Mike
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: ooad-book-clubs, speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 Mike 0 to-read 4.23 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Mike
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng]]> 218185743
These days nobody can reach Cora: not her aunt, who wants her to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival; not her weird colleagues; and especially not the slack-jawed shadow lurking around her door frame. After all, it can't be real—can it? After a series of unexplained killings in Chinatown, Cora believes someone might be targeting East Asian women, and something might be targeting Cora herself.]]> 304 Kylie Lee Baker 0778368459 Mike 0 to-read 4.26 2025 Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
author: Kylie Lee Baker
name: Mike
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil]]> 215020997 ALL first edition copies will be signed by the author! Signed copies available while supplies last.

From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger.

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life�
how it ends, and how it starts.

USA Today, 15 Most Anticipated of 2025
BookBub, Most Anticipated of 2025 (and Reader’s Pick)
Readers Digest, 20 Most Anticipated Books This Year
Paste Magazine, Most Anticipated Fantasy Books of 2025
BookRiot, Most Anticipated Books of 2025
Men's Health, 25 Best & Most Anticipated Books of 2025
The Nerd Daily, SFF to Devour in 2025
Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ, Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2025]]> 560 Victoria E. Schwab 1035064642 Mike 0 to-read 4.39 2025 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Mike
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The White Album 421 The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.]]> 224 Joan Didion 0374532079 Mike 4 nonfiction 4.06 1979 The White Album
author: Joan Didion
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: nonfiction
review:
The first Didion I have read. It's an interesting window into 60s and 70s California. Didion's writing is thoughtful and erudite throughout, and the range of subjects is broad. I wouldn't say it's required reading for anyone, but I'm gald I gave it a chance.
]]> <![CDATA[High and Rising: A Book About De la Soul]]> 200576188 240 Marcus J. Moore 0358494885 Mike 3 nonfiction 3.61 2024 High and Rising: A Book About De la Soul
author: Marcus J. Moore
name: Mike
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: nonfiction
review:

]]> Thornhedge 61884932 There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This ľ±˛ő˛Ô’t her story.

Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?

But nothing with fairies is ever simple.

Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…]]> 116 T. Kingfisher 1250244099 Mike 5 speculatve-fiction 3.95 2023 Thornhedge
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Mike
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/28
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1)]]> 1857440 STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.

The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I'm sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault. ]]> 362 David Wong 0978970764 Mike 0 abandoned 3.89 2007 John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1)
author: David Wong
name: Mike
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: abandoned
review:

]]> Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic 26135825
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.]]> 232 Alison Bechdel 0618871713 Mike 4 4.07 2006 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
author: Alison Bechdel
name: Mike
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: bechdel, biography-memoir, comic-graphic-novel, gender-issues, nonfiction
review:

]]> Orbital 123136728
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?]]> 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Mike 5 3.55 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Mike
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: bechdel, ooad-book-clubs, sciency, speculatve-fiction
review:
Gorgeous, gorgeous book. Internal, reflective, sometimes philosophical. Don’t come looking for plot, or really even character development come to spend a day - twenty-four hours, sixteen sunrises and sunsets - with six thoughtful astronauts in the space station.
]]> Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Mike 5 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Mike
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2012/03/01
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: non-bechdel, speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> Looking Glass Sound 60784412 Looking Glass Sound is the newest twisty psychological horror novel from Catriona Ward, the internationally bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street and Sundial.

In a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood summer companions and the killer that stalked the small New England town. Of the body they found, and the horror of that discovery echoing down the decades. And of Sky, Wilder’s one-time best friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, Looking Glass Sound.

But as Wilder writes, the lines between memory and fiction blur. He fears he’s losing his grip on reality when he finds notes hidden around the cottage written in Sky’s signature green ink.

Catriona Ward delivers another mind-bending and cleverly crafted tale about one man’s struggle to come to terms with the terrors of his past� before it’s too late.]]> 342 Catriona Ward 1250860024 Mike 4 3.45 2023 Looking Glass Sound
author: Catriona Ward
name: Mike
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: bechdel, mystery, ooad-book-clubs, unusual-format
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pen and Platen: Short Stories Written the Long Way]]> 13137342
What starts with a simple home-invasion goes awry when neither the burglar nor the burgled are who they seem.

A boy, his father, and a mustachioed man of myth face off against a leviathan during the height of World War II.

After seeing his rival on TV performing a routine that he wrote, a struggling comedian plots revenge with a Remington…or two.

A gambler recounts the origin of the legendary one-armed gunfighter, Silas Starkweather.


The eleven stories contained herein may vary dramatically, but their inception was the each was composed via the simple alchemy of ink on paper. Pen and Short Stories Written the Long Way features tales that never came within a country mile of a computer until at least the third draft. Rather, they were pounded out the old-fashioned way on Mike Speegle's venerable Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter and edited—by hand—with a fountain pen. This process, though intense, was a labor of love, and is the author's way of providing the reader with the purest story possible. P&P is by design all killer, no filler.]]> 251 Mike Speegle Mike 0 to-read 4.22 2011 Pen and Platen: Short Stories Written the Long Way
author: Mike Speegle
name: Mike
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Something Greater Than Artifice]]> 20708018
Something hungry.

Ros lost everything when the faceless agents of SILOS destroyed her homeland. Her music school: in flames. Her friends and classmates: killed or driven insane. Her mentor: murdered while trying to save her from a fate far worse than death.

Now an exile–with nothing left but the cello on her back–Ros seeks help from neighboring nations segregated along artistic lines, only to find that each has already fallen to SILOS. On her way to the Greater Tech Republic–a technological utopia and the last great hope for humanity’s salvation–she will be joined by Gregor the Artificer, Moses the hammer, and Mikhail the sage.

Their mission won’t be easy, however. The Republic is being torn apart from within by sectarian strife, pulled between those who want to free the city from the shackles of capitalism and those who will kill to maintain the status quo.

With SILOS dogging them at every turn, Ros and her allies will have to navigate a society steeped in civil discord and convince the Republic of the coming storm before it’s too late.]]> 478 Mike Speegle 0692260501 Mike 0 to-read 3.83 2013 Something Greater Than Artifice
author: Mike Speegle
name: Mike
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You]]> 9778142 Sold on Language, noted language scientists Julie Sedivy and Greg Carlson examine how rampant competition shapes the ways in which commercial and political advertisers speak to us. In an environment saturated with information, advertising messages attempt to compress as much persuasive power into as small a linguistic space as possible. These messages, the authors reveal, might take the form of a brand name whose sound evokes a certain impression, a turn of phrase that gently applies peer pressure, or a subtle accent that zeroes in on a target audience. As more and more techniques of persuasion are aimed squarely at the corner of our mind which automatically takes in information without conscious thought or deliberation, does 'endless choice' actually mean the end of true choice?

Sold on Language offers thought-provoking insights into the choices we make as consumers and citizens - and the choices that are increasingly being made for us.

Click here for more discussion and debate on the authors' blog:
http: //

[Wiley disclaims all responsibility and liability for the content of any third-party websites that can be linked to from this website. Users assume sole responsibility for accessing third-party websites and the use of any content appearing on such websites. Any views expressed in such websites are the views of the authors of the content appearing on those websites and not the views of Wiley or its affiliates, nor do they in any way represent an endorsement by Wiley or its affiliates.]]]> 336 Julie Sedivy 0470683090 Mike 5 linguistics 3.62 2010 Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You
author: Julie Sedivy
name: Mike
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: linguistics
review:

]]> Blackout (Newsflesh, #3) 11806716
The year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising.

The year was 2039. The world didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. They uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made.

Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this:

Things can always get worse.

Blackout is the conclusion to the epic trilogy that began in the Hugo-nominated Feed and the sequel, Deadline.]]> 512 Mira Grant 1841499005 Mike 4 speculatve-fiction, zombies 4.07 2012 Blackout (Newsflesh, #3)
author: Mira Grant
name: Mike
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: speculatve-fiction, zombies
review:
Phenomenal end to the Newsflesh trilogy.
]]> <![CDATA[A Short History of Nearly Everything]]> 21 544 Bill Bryson 076790818X Mike 4 sciency 4.21 2003 A Short History of Nearly Everything
author: Bill Bryson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: sciency
review:

]]> Legacy (The Way, #3) 172738 416 Greg Bear 1857238869 Mike 2 3.78 1994 Legacy (The Way, #3)
author: Greg Bear
name: Mike
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1994
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson]]> 6900
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.]]> 210 Mitch Albom Mike 3 4.19 1997 Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
author: Mitch Albom
name: Mike
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal]]> 49234
With fascinating facts and his unparalleled readability, Diamond intended his book to improve the world that today’s young people will inherit. Triangle Square’s The Third Chimpanzee for Young People is a book for future generation and the future they’ll help build.]]> 407 Jared Diamond 0060845503 Mike 3 sciency, nonfiction 4.08 1991 The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
author: Jared Diamond
name: Mike
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: sciency, nonfiction
review:

]]> We, the Drowned 7988467 We, the Drowned is the story of the port town of Marstal, whose inhabitants sailed the world’s oceans aboard freight ships for centuries. Spanning over a hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War � from the barren rocks of Newfoundland to the lush plantations of Samoa, from the roughest bars in Tasmania to the frozen coasts of northern Russia � We, the Drowned is a magnificent tale of love, war, and adventure, of the men who go to sea and the women they leave behind.

Ships are wrecked and blown up in wars, they are places of terror and violence, yet they continue to lure each generation of Marstallers. Among them are Laurids Madsen, who vanishes in the South Pacific; his son Albert, who searches the globe for his father; Knud Erik and his widowed mother, Klara, who takes on the town and the seas. There are cannibals here, shrunken heads, prophetic dreams, forbidden passions, cowards, heroes, devastating tragedies, and miraculous survivals � everything that a town like Marstal has actually lived. We, the Drowned is a novel destined to take its place among the greatest seafaring literature.]]> 678 Carsten Jensen 0151013772 Mike 0 abandoned 4.23 2006 We, the Drowned
author: Carsten Jensen
name: Mike
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: abandoned
review:

]]> Probe (Probe #1) 1503983 384 Carole Nelson Douglas 0812535871 Mike 2 speculatve-fiction 3.37 1985 Probe (Probe #1)
author: Carole Nelson Douglas
name: Mike
average rating: 3.37
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 1995/01/01
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: speculatve-fiction
review:
Found this in an old box of books from high school. Exactly what you'd expect given the cover and description.
]]> A Short, Sharp Shock 41122
A Short, Sharp Shock

A man tumbles through wild surf, half drowned, to collapse on a moonlit beach. When he regains consciousness, he has no memory of who he is or where he came from. he know only that the woman who washed ashore with him has disappeared sometime in the night, and that he has awakened in a surreal landscape of savage beauty -- a mysterious watery world encircled by a thin spine of land. Aided by strange tribesmen, he will journey to the cove of the spine kings, a brutal race that has enslaved the woman and several of the tribesmen. That is only the beginning of his quest, as he struggles to find her identity in this wondrous and cruel land -- and seeks out the woman whose hold on his imagination is both unfathomable and unshakable.

Haunting and lyrical, filled with uncommon beauty and terrible peril, A Short, Sharp Shock is an ambitious and enthralling story by one of science fiction's most respected talents.]]> 208 Kim Stanley Robinson 0553574612 Mike 0 3.36 1990 A Short, Sharp Shock
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Mike
average rating: 3.36
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at: 2020/10/01
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software]]> 2296 Being Digital and The Tipping Point, Steven Johnson, acclaimed as a "cultural critic with a poet's heart" (The Village Voice), takes readers on an eye-opening journey through emergence theory and its applications. Explaining why the whole is sometimes smarter than the sum of its parts, Johnson presents surprising examples of feedback, self-organization, and adaptive learning. How does a lively neighborhood evolve out of a disconnected group of shopkeepers, bartenders, and real estate developers? How does a media event take on a life of its own? How will new software programs create an intelligent World Wide Web?

In the coming years, the power of self-organization -- coupled with the connective technology of the Internet -- will usher in a revolution every bit as significant as the introduction of electricity. Provocative and engaging, Emergence puts you on the front lines of this exciting upheaval in science and thought.

]]> 288 Steven Johnson 0684868768 Mike 4 sciency 3.95 2001 Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
author: Steven Johnson
name: Mike
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2007/01/09
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: sciency
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)]]> 119322
Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want--but what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other.]]> 399 Philip Pullman 0679879242 Mike 4 4.02 1995 The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)
author: Philip Pullman
name: Mike
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2012/07/16
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream]]> 7745 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.]]> 204 Hunter S. Thompson 0679785892 Mike 2 4.08 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1971
rating: 2
read at: 2000/01/16
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> We the Living 668 Ayn Rand's first published novel, a timeless story that explores the struggles of the individual against the state in Soviet Russia.

First published in 1936, 'We the Living' portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three human beings who demand the right to live their own lives and pursue their own happiness. It tells of a young woman’s passionate love, held like a fortress against the corrupting evil of a totalitarian state.

'We the Living' is not a story of politics, but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans. It is a picture of what those slogans do to human beings. What happens to the defiant ones? What happens to those who succumb?

Against a vivid panorama of political revolution and personal revolt, Ayn Rand shows what the theory of socialism means in practice.

Ayn Rand (1905�1982) was born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg to a prosperous Jewish family as Alisa Rosenbaum. When the Bolsheviks requisitioned her family's business, they fled to the Crimea, and she later moved to America as soon as she was offered the chance. After beginning her writing career with screenplays, she published the novel 'We the Living' in 1936. Her status was later established with 'The Fountainhead' (1943) and her magnus opus, 'Atlas Shrugged' (1957). Also a prolific non-fiction writer, as well as the founder of the philosophical school of Objectivism, she has had an unequivocal impact on both literature and culture, regardless of one's perspective of her works.]]> 464 Ayn Rand 0451187849 Mike 1 3.93 1936 We the Living
author: Ayn Rand
name: Mike
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1936
rating: 1
read at: 1996/01/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1)]]> 64222
It was a tough decision.

But he has to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers' Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer.

Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.

Maybe it'll take a criminal to succeed where honest men have failed, or maybe it's a death sentence either way.

Or perhaps there's a shot at redemption in the mad world of the mail, waiting for a man who's prepared to push the envelope...]]> 394 Terry Pratchett 0060502932 Mike 4 4.40 2004 Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Mike
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2013/11/13
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, #1)]]> 823 Quicksilver is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.

It is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe--London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds--risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox.

And it is the tale of Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent Europe through the newborn power of finance.

A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life, Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time.

And it's just the beginning...

(back cover)

This P.S. edition includes 16 pages of supplementary materials.

Cover design by Richard L. Aquan
Cover illustration from the Mary Evans Picture Library; painting of Great Fire of London on stepback]]> 927 Neal Stephenson Mike 4 speculatve-fiction 3.91 2003 Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, #1)
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Mike
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2004/01/01
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> Cat’s Cradle 135479 Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ...

Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to humankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh...]]> 306 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Mike 2 4.17 1963 Cat’s Cradle
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Mike
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1963
rating: 2
read at: 1999/01/08
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Small Gods (Discworld, #13) 34484
And the Word was: "Hey, you!"

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

He also wants the Inquisition to stop torturing him now, please...]]> 389 Terry Pratchett 0552152978 Mike 4 4.32 1992 Small Gods (Discworld, #13)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Mike
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2013/11/21
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> How We Are Hungry 4955 "Another"

"What It Means When a Crowd in a Faraway Nation Takes a Soldier Representing Your Own Nation, Shoots Him, Drags Him from His Vehicle and Then Mutilates Him in the Dust"

"The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water"

"On Wanting to Have Three Walls Up Before She Gets Home"

"Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance"

"She Waits, Seething, Blooming"

"Quiet"

"Your Mother and I"

"Naveed"

"Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone"

"About the Man Who Began Flying After Meeting Her"

"Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly"

"After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned"




From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 218 Dave Eggers 1400095565 Mike 3 3.76 2004 How We Are Hungry
author: Dave Eggers
name: Mike
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2004/02/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
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]]> Henry V 37526
The authoritative edition of Henry V from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

-Scene-by-scene plot summaries

-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases

-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language

-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books

-An annotated guide to further reading]]> 294 William Shakespeare 0743484878 Mike 5 3.84 1599 Henry V
author: William Shakespeare
name: Mike
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1599
rating: 5
read at: 2001/01/16
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> The Stars My Destination 333867
The Stars My Destination is a classic of technological prophecy and timeless narrative enchantment by an acknowledged master of science fiction.]]> 258 Alfred Bester 0679767800 Mike 5 speculatve-fiction, classics 4.08 1956 The Stars My Destination
author: Alfred Bester
name: Mike
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1956
rating: 5
read at: 2004/01/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: speculatve-fiction, classics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It]]> 8714 An Inconvenient Truth—Gore's groundbreaking, battle cry of a follow-up to the bestselling Earth in the Balance—is being published to tie in with a documentary film of the same name. Both the book and film were inspired by a series of multimedia presentations on global warming that Gore created and delivers to groups around the world. With this book, Gore, who is one of our environmental heroes—and a leading expert—brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world; photographs, charts, and other illustrations; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming. He presents, with alarming clarity and conclusiveness—and with humor, too—that the fact of global warming is not in question and that its consequences for the world we live in will be disastrous if left unchecked. This riveting new book—written in an accessible, entertaining style—will open the eyes of even the most skeptical.]]> 320 Al Gore 1594865671 Mike 4 3.79 2006 An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It
author: Al Gore
name: Mike
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2006/01/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Tempest 12985
Each edition includes:
� Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

� Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

� Scene-by-scene plot summaries

� A key to famous lines and phrases

� An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

� An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

� Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books]]> 218 William Shakespeare Mike 4 3.79 1611 The Tempest
author: William Shakespeare
name: Mike
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1611
rating: 4
read at: 2001/01/18
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> Fury 4836 But fury is all around him. An astonishing work of explosive energy, Fury is by turns a pitiless and pitch-black comedy, a love story of mesmerizing force, and a disturbing inquiry into the darkest side of human nature.]]> 259 Salman Rushdie 0099421860 Mike 4 3.33 2001 Fury
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Mike
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2003/01/18
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> The Crucible 17250
Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, "Political opposition... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."

WIth an introduction by Christopher Bigsby.
(back cover)]]> 143 Arthur Miller 0142437336 Mike 2 3.60 1953 The Crucible
author: Arthur Miller
name: Mike
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1953
rating: 2
read at: 1997/01/18
date added: 2024/11/29
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth]]> 714583 302 Paul Hoffman 0786884061 Mike 4 biography-memoir, mathy 4.05 1998 The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth
author: Paul Hoffman
name: Mike
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2012/01/09
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: biography-memoir, mathy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers]]> 32145 Stiff an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.]]> 304 Mary Roach 0393324826 Mike 4 sciency, nonfiction 4.06 2003 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
author: Mary Roach
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2012/03/22
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: sciency, nonfiction
review:

]]> Collected Fictions 17961 Alternate cover edition of ISBN-13: 978-0140286809, ISBN-10/ASIN: 0140286802

For the first time in English, all the fiction by the writer who has been called “the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century� collected in a single volume

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper

For some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious fictions that reimagined the very form of the short story—from his 1935 debut with A Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, the enigmatic prose poems of The Maker, up to his final work in the 1980s, Shakespeare’s Memory—Jorge Luis Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself. Playfully experimenting with ostensibly subliterary genres, he took the detective story and turned it into metaphysics; he took fantasy writing and made it, with its questioning and reinventing of everyday reality, central to the craft of fiction; he took the literary essay and put it to use reviewing wholly imaginary books.

Bringing together for the first time in English all of Borges’s magical stories, and all of them newly rendered into English in brilliant translations by Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions is the perfect one-volume compendium for all who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master’s work for all who have yet to discover this singular genius.]]> 565 Jorge Luis Borges Mike 5 favorites 4.57 1998 Collected Fictions
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Mike
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2003/01/15
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> Fahrenheit 451 4381 158 Ray Bradbury 0307347974 Mike 4 classics, speculatve-fiction 3.96 1953 Fahrenheit 451
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Mike
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at: 2000/12/01
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: classics, speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> Othello 12996 319 William Shakespeare Mike 4 3.89 1603 Othello
author: William Shakespeare
name: Mike
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1603
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/16
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> The Moor's Last Sigh 9865 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Moraes 'Moor' Zogoiby is a 'high-born crossbreed', the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinise spice merchants and crime lords. He is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a labyrinthine tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerised offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave. The Moor's Last Sigh is a spectacularly ambitious, funny, satirical and compassionate novel. It is a love song to a vanishing world, but also its last hurrah.

~from the back cover]]> 434 Salman Rushdie 009959241X Mike 4 3.95 1995 The Moor's Last Sigh
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Mike
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2007/11/17
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> Goodnight Moon 32929
In this classic of children's literature, beloved by generations of readers and listeners, the quiet poetry of the words and the gentle, lulling illustrations combine to make a perfect book for the end of the day.]]> 32 Margaret Wise Brown 0060775858 Mike 3 childrens 4.31 1947 Goodnight Moon
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Mike
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1947
rating: 3
read at: 2012/12/16
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: childrens
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)]]> 62291 An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Here is the third volume in George R.R. Martin's magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. Together, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.

Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, victim of the sorceress who holds him in her thrall. Young Robb still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world. And as opposing forces manoeuver for the final showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost limits of civilization, accompanied by a horde of mythical Others—a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords...]]> 1177 George R.R. Martin 055357342X Mike 4 bechdel 4.54 2000 A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Mike
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2014/04/09
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: bechdel
review:

]]> Cryptonomicon 816 Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods—World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first... Of course, to observe is not its real duty—we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."

All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes—inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe—team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.]]> 1152 Neal Stephenson Mike 5 speculatve-fiction 4.24 1999 Cryptonomicon
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2004/01/01
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: speculatve-fiction
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]]> <![CDATA[Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking]]> 40102 The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you'll understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?

In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.]]> 296 Malcolm Gladwell 0316010669 Mike 3 3.97 2005 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Mike
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2004/01/16
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time]]> 204180 Thirty years later, David Edmonds and John Eidinow have set out to reexamine the story we recollect as the quintessential cold war clash between a lone American star and the Soviet chess machine - a machine that had delivered the world title to the Kremlin for decades. Drawing upon unpublished Soviet and U.S. records, the authors reconstruct the full and incredible saga, one far more poignant and layered than hitherto believed.

The authors chronicle how Fischer, a manipulative, dysfunctional genius, risked all to seize control of the contest as the organizers maneuvered frantically to save it - under the eyes of the world's press. They can now tell the inside story of Moscow's response, and the bitter tensions within the Soviet camp as the anxious and frustrated apparatchiks strove to prop up Boris Spassky, the most un-Soviet of their champions - fun-loving, sensitive, and a free spirit. Edmonds and Eidinow follow this careering, behind-the-scenes confrontation to its climax: a clash that displayed the cultural differences between the dynamic, media-savvy representatives of the West and the baffled, impotent Soviets. Try as they might, even the KGB couldn't help.

]]> 368 David Edmonds 0060510242 Mike 4 3.89 2003 Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time
author: David Edmonds
name: Mike
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2008/01/08
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> <![CDATA[A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)]]> 226004 A Fire Upon The Deep, this is the story of Pham Nuwen, a small cog in the interstellar trading fleet of the Queng Ho. The Queng Ho and the Emergents are orbiting the dormant planet Arachna, which is about to wake up to technology, but the Emergents' plans are sinister.]]> 775 Vernor Vinge 0812536355 Mike 5 speculatve-fiction 4.31 1999 A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)
author: Vernor Vinge
name: Mike
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2012/01/09
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)]]> 13497 Crows will fight over a dead man's flesh, and kill each other for his eyes.

Bloodthirsty, treacherous and cunning, the Lannisters are in power on the Iron Throne in the name of the boy-king Tommen. The war in the Seven Kingdoms has burned itself out, but in its bitter aftermath new conflicts spark to life.

The Martells of Dorne and the Starks of Winterfell seek vengeance for their dead. Euron Crow's Eye, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail, returns from the smoking ruins of Valyria to claim the Iron Isles. From the icy north, where Others threaten the Wall, apprentice Maester Samwell Tarly brings a mysterious babe in arms to the Citadel.

Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory will go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel and the coldest hearts.]]> 1060 George R.R. Martin 055358202X Mike 3 bechdel 4.16 2005 A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Mike
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2014/04/12
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: bechdel
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed]]> 475 Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?

In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?

As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society's apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.

Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?]]> 608 Jared Diamond 0143036556 Mike 4 sciency 3.93 2004 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
author: Jared Diamond
name: Mike
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2006/01/17
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: sciency
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]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (Great Discoveries)]]> 1079428
To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary programmable calculating machine. But the idea of actually producing a "Turing machine" did not crystallize until he and his brilliant Bletchley Park colleagues built devices to crack the Nazis' Enigma code, thus ensuring the Allies' victory in World War II. In so doing, Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, formulating the famous (and still unbeaten) Turing Test that challenges our ideas of human consciousness. But Turing's postwar computer-building was cut short when, as an openly gay man in a time when homosexuality was officially illegal in England, he was apprehended by the authorities and sentenced to a "treatment" that amounted to chemical castration, leading to his suicide.

With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity—his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor—while elegantly explaining his work and its implications.]]> 319 David Leavitt 0393052362 Mike 5 3.37 2006 The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (Great Discoveries)
author: David Leavitt
name: Mike
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2006/01/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: mathy, sciency, biography-memoir
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]]> <![CDATA[Special Topics in Calamity Physics]]> 3483
Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer.]]> 514 Marisha Pessl 067003777X Mike 4 bechdel 3.72 2006 Special Topics in Calamity Physics
author: Marisha Pessl
name: Mike
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: bechdel
review:

]]> The Master and Margarita 117833 The first complete, annotated English Translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic masterpiece.

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.]]> 372 Mikhail Bulgakov 0679760806 Mike 4 4.31 1967 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Mike
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2002/01/17
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> Glory Season 834670
Young Maia is fast approaching a turning point in her life.ĚýĚýAs a half-caste var, she must leave the clan home of her privileged half sisters and seek her fortune in the world.ĚýĚýWith her twin sister, Leie, she searches the docks of Port Sanger for an apprenticeship aboard the vessels that sail the trade routes of the Stratoin oceans.

On her far-reaching, perilous journey of discovery, Maia will endure hardship and hunger, imprisonment and loneliness, bloody battles with pirates and separation from her twin.ĚýĚýAnd along the way, she will meet a traveler who has come an unimaginable distance--and who threatens the delicate balance of the Stratoins' carefully maintained, perfect society....

Both exciting and insightful, Glory Season is a major novel, a transcendent saga of the human spirit.]]> 772 David Brin 0553567675 Mike 2 3.75 1993 Glory Season
author: David Brin
name: Mike
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1993
rating: 2
read at: 1995/01/18
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> The Long Walk 967694 242 Slavomir Rawicz 1558216847 Mike 4 4.25 1956 The Long Walk
author: Slavomir Rawicz
name: Mike
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2003/01/19
date added: 2024/11/29
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, #2)]]> 822 815 Neal Stephenson 0060733357 Mike 4 speculatve-fiction 4.26 2004 The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, #2)
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2004/01/17
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, #3)]]> 116257 The System of the World, the third and concluding volume of Neal Stephenson's shelf-bending Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver and The Confusion), brings the epic historical saga to its thrilling - and truly awe-inspiring - conclusion.

Set in the early 18th century and featuring a diverse cast of characters that includes alchemists, philosophers, mathematicians, spies, thieves, pirates, and royalty, The System of the World follows Daniel Waterhouse, an unassuming philosopher and confidant to some of the most brilliant minds of the age, as he returns to England to try and repair the rift between geniuses Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. After reluctantly leaving his family in Boston, Waterhouse arrives in England and is almost killed by a mysterious Infernal Device. Having been away from the war-decimated country for two decades, Waterhouse quickly learns that although many things have changed, there is still violent revolution simmering just beneath the surface of seemingly civilized society. With Queen Anne deathly ill and Tories and Whigs jostling for political supremacy, Waterhouse and Newton vow to figure out who is trying to kill certain scientists and decipher the riddle behind the legend of King Solomon's gold, a mythical hoard of precious metal with miraculous properties.

Arguably one of the most ambitious -- and most researched -- stories ever written, Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is set in one of the most turbulent and exciting times in human history. Filled with wild adventure, political intrigue, social upheaval, civilization-changing discoveries, cabalistic mysticism, and even a little romance, this massive saga is worth its weight in (Solomon's) gold.
Paul Goat Allen]]> 908 Neal Stephenson 0060750863 Mike 4 speculatve-fiction 4.33 2004 The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, #3)
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2004/01/17
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> The Final Solution 16696
What is the meaning of the mysterious string of German numbers the bird spews out - a top secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case - the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot - beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth?

A short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that reimagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story.]]> 131 Michael Chabon 0060777109 Mike 3 3.35 2004 The Final Solution
author: Michael Chabon
name: Mike
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2005/01/05
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity]]> 821914
Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? The nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's answer to this question not only surprised him but also shook the very foundations upon which math had been built. Cantor's counterintuitive discovery of a progression of larger and larger infinities created controversy in his time and may have hastened his mental breakdown, but it also helped lead to the development of set theory, analytic philosophy, and even computer technology.

Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics.]]> 319 David Foster Wallace 0393003388 Mike 5 mathy, biography-memoir 3.72 2003 Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Mike
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2008/01/05
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: mathy, biography-memoir
review:

]]> Congo 7672
Ten thousand miles away, Karen Ross, the Congo Project Supervisor, watches a gruesome video transmission of the aftermath: a camp destroyed, tents crushed and torn, equipment scattered in the mud alongside dead bodies � all motionless except for one moving image � a grainy, dark, man-shaped blur.

In San Francisco, primatologist Peter Elliot works with Amy, a gorilla with an extraordinary vocabulary of 620 “signs,� the most ever learned by a primate, and she likes to fingerpaint. But recently, her behavior has been erratic and her drawings match, with stunning accuracy, the brittle pages of a Portuguese print dating back to 1642 . . . a drawing of an ancient lost city. A new expedition � along with Amy � is sent into the Congo where they enter a secret world, and the only way out may be through a horrifying death �
source: michaelcrichton.com]]> 442 Michael Crichton 0060541830 Mike 3 3.63 1980 Congo
author: Michael Crichton
name: Mike
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 1996/01/01
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail]]> 9791 A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).]]> 397 Bill Bryson 0307279464 Mike 5 4.07 1998 A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
author: Bill Bryson
name: Mike
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2005/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: favorites, travel, biography-memoir
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Consider Phlebas (Culture, #1)]]> 8935689
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.]]> 467 Iain M. Banks 1857231384 Mike 0 to-read 3.86 1987 Consider Phlebas (Culture, #1)
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Mike
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at: 2014/09/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good As Gold 10714 445 Joseph Heller 0684839741 Mike 0 to-read 3.39 1979 Good As Gold
author: Joseph Heller
name: Mike
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at: 2003/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dick and Jane: Fun with Dick and Jane]]> 938593 32 William S. Gray 0448434113 Mike 2 childrens, classics 3.61 1951 Dick and Jane: Fun with Dick and Jane
author: William S. Gray
name: Mike
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1951
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: childrens, classics
review:

]]> The Message 210943364
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk� city of “old traditions and new machinery,� but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning� of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Mike 5 4.51 2024 The Message
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Mike
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: audiobook, nonfiction, on-writing, travel
review:

]]> Calvin: A Novel 29102837
Seventeen-year-old Calvin has always known his fate is linked to the comic book character from Calvin & Hobbes.

He was born on the day the last strip was published. His grandpa put a stuffed tiger named Hobbes in his crib. And he even had a best friend named Susie.

Then Calvin’s mom washed Hobbes to death. Susie grew up beautiful and stopped talking to him. And Calvin pretty much forgot about the strip―until now.

Now he is seventeen years old and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Hobbes is back, as a delusion, and Calvin can’t control him. Calvin decides that cartoonist Bill Watterson is the key to everything―if he would just make one more comic strip, but without Hobbes, Calvin would be cured.

Calvin and Susie (is she real?) and Hobbes (he can’t be real, can he?) set out on a dangerous trek across frozen Lake Erie to track down Watterson.

Calvin by Martine Leavitt is a stirring YA novel that's not just a story about one boy's struggle with schizophrenia, but a coming of age story, a love story, and one unforgettable adventure. Martine Leavitt is the author of Keturah and Lord Death , a National Book Award Finalist, My Book of Life by Angel , which garnered five starred reviews and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and Heck Superhero , a finalist for the Governor General's Award.

Praise for Calvin :

“The novel has a fresh, funny voice that never diminishes the seriousness of schizophrenia. Leavitt delivers an imaginative exploration of mental illness, examining what’s real and what’s true in this magical world.� � Booklist , starred review

"Written as a letter to Watterson (to fulfill a make-up English assignment), the first-person narrative eschews quotation marks and dialogue tags, further blurring the lines between real life and what’s in Calvin’s head. . . . Memorable ." � Horn Book , starred review

"Equal parts coming-of-age tale, survival adventure, and love story , this outstanding novel also sensitively deals with an uncommon but very real teen issue, making it far more than the sum of its parts. " � Kirkus Reviews , starred review

" Funny, intellectual, and entertaining , it’s a sensitive yet irreverent adventure about a serious subject." � Publishers Weekly

" Sweet, romantic, and funny ." � School Library Journal]]> 192 Martine Leavitt 1250104254 Mike 5 favorites, ya 3.61 2015 Calvin: A Novel
author: Martine Leavitt
name: Mike
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: favorites, ya
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science (The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science #1)]]> 207567700 From beloved Saturday Night Live alum Kate McKinnon comes a madcap new adventure about three sisters, a ravenous worm, and a mysterious mad scientist.

So, you want to be a young mad scientist. Congratulations! Admitting it is the first step. The second step is reading the (definitely true) tale of the Porch sistersâ€� Ěý

Gertrude, Eugenia, and Dee-Dee Porch do not belong. They don’t belong in the snooty town of Antiquarium, where all girls have to go to etiquette school and the only dog allowed is the bichon frise. They don’t belong with their adoptive family, where all their cousins are named Lavinia and their Aunt has more brooches than books. And they certainly don’t belong at Mrs. Wintermacher’s etiquette school—they’re far more interested in science. After getting kicked out of the last etiquette school that would take them, the girls expect to be sent away for good... until they receive a mysterious invitation to a new school.

Suddenly the girls are under the tutelage of the infamous Millicent Quibb—a mad scientist with worms in her hair and oysters in her bathtub. At 231 Mysterium Way, the pizza is fatal, the bus is powered by Gerbils, and the Dean of Students is a hermit crab.Ěý Dangerous? Yes! More fun than they’ve ever had? Absolutely! But when the sisters are asked to save their town from an evil cabal of nefarious mad scientists, they must learn to embrace what has always made them stand out, and determine what side they’re on—before it’s too late!]]> 244 Kate McKinnon 0316554731 Mike 3 4.05 2024 The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science (The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science #1)
author: Kate McKinnon
name: Mike
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: bechdel, childrens, ooad-book-clubs, speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity]]> 49348225 "A masterly book" --Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan
"A classic" --Simon Kuper, Financial Times

In the spirit of On Bullshit and Assholes: A Theory, an economist explores the five laws that confirm our worst fears: stupid people can and do rule the world

Since time immemorial, a powerful dark force has hindered the growth of human welfare and happiness. It is more powerful than the Mafia or the military. It has global catastrophic effects and can be found anywhere from the world's most powerful boardrooms to your local pub. This is the immensely powerful force of human stupidity.

Seeing the shambolic state of human affairs, and sensing the dark force at work behind it, Carlo M. Cipolla, the late, noted professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley, created a vitally important economic model that would allow us to detect, know, and neutralize this threat: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

If you've ever found yourself despairing at the ubiquity of stupidity among even the most 'intellectual' of people, then this hilarious, timely, and slightly alarming little book is for you. Arm yourself in the face of baffling political realities, unreasonable colleagues, or the unbridled misery of Christmas day with the in-laws with the first and only economic model for stupidity.

"Cipolla's subtle tongue-in-cheek humor made this book an underground classic in Italy. Today, under current worldwide political trends, it reads more like black humor. Keep in mind: reliable statistical data shows that 98% of the people seriously believe that they are far less stupid than the average." --Carlo Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics]]> 96 Carlo M. Cipolla 0385546475 Mike 4 nonfiction, sciency 3.78 1976 The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
author: Carlo M. Cipolla
name: Mike
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: nonfiction, sciency
review:

]]> A Council of Dolls 199550226 From the mid-century metropolis of Chicago to the windswept ancestral lands of the Dakota people to the bleak and brutal Indian boarding schools, A Council of Dolls is the story of three women, told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried.

Sissy, born 1961: Sissy’s relationship with her beautiful and volatile mother is difficult, even dangerous, but her life is also filled with beautiful things, including a new Christmas present, a doll called Ethel. Ethel whispers advice and kindness in Sissy’s ear, and in one especially terrifying moment, maybe even saves Sissy’s life.

Lillian, born 1925: Born in her ancestral lands in a time of terrible change, Lillian clings to her sister, Blanche, and her doll, Mae. When the sisters are forced to attend an “Indian school� far from their home, Blanche refuses to be cowed by the school’s abusive nuns. But when tragedy strikes the sisters, the doll Mae finds her way to defend the girls.

Cora, born 1888: Although she was born into the brutal legacy of the “Indian Wars,â€� Cora ľ±˛ő˛Ô’t afraid of the white men who remove her to a school across the country to be “civilized.â€� When teachers burn her beloved buckskin and beaded doll Winona, Cora discovers that the spirit of Winona may not be entirely lost.

A modern masterpiece, A Council of Dolls is gorgeous, quietly devastating, and ultimately hopeful, shining a light on the echoing damage of Indian boarding schools, and the historical massacres of Indigenous people.]]> 304 Mona Susan Power 0063281104 Mike 4 3.83 2023 A Council of Dolls
author: Mona Susan Power
name: Mike
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: bechdel, native-author, ooad-book-clubs
review:

]]> Houdini and Me 54081433
Eleven-year-old Harry Mancini is NOT Harry Houdini--the famous escape artist who died in 1926. But Harry DOES live in Houdini's old New York City home, and he definitely knows everything there is to know about Houdini's life. What is he supposed to do, then, when someone starts texting him claiming that they're Houdini, communicating from beyond the grave? Respond, of course.

It's hard for Harry to believe that Houdini is really contacting him, but this Houdini texts the secrets to all of the escape tricks the dead Houdini used to do. What's more, Houdini's offering Harry a chance to go back in time and experience it for himself. Should Harry ignore what must be a hoax? Or should he give it a try and take Houdini up on this death-defying offer?

Dan Gutman is the award-winning author of series including My Weird School, The Genius Files, and the baseball card series, including Honus & Me. He uses his writing powers for good once again in this exciting new middle grade novel.

Named a New York State Great Read by the Empire State Center for the Book!]]> 224 Dan Gutman 0823445151 Mike 2 childrens, ooad-book-clubs 3.57 2021 Houdini and Me
author: Dan Gutman
name: Mike
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: childrens, ooad-book-clubs
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books]]> 200987258
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic� books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

But Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome� dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.]]> 298 Kirsten Miller 0063348691 Mike 3 bechdel, ooad-book-clubs 4.06 2024 Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books
author: Kirsten Miller
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: bechdel, ooad-book-clubs
review:

]]> <![CDATA[HP Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu for Beginning Readers]]> 33781360
The late Professor Angell's research has been discovered by his grand-nephew, Francis Wayland Thurston. Francis delves into the papers and discovers a bas-relief depicting an odd creature with an octopoid head, spurring him to read on. He learns of the raid led by Inspector Legrasse and the voyage of the Vigilant, captained by Gustaf Johansen.

This fantastic 102-page adaptation was written and illustrated by R.J. Ivankovic.]]> 102 R.J. Ivankovic 1568821123 Mike 4 4.44 HP Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu for Beginning Readers
author: R.J. Ivankovic
name: Mike
average rating: 4.44
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: comic-graphic-novel, speculatve-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions]]> 21413662 xkcd comic ask Munroe a lot of strange questions: What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away?

In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by his signature xkcd comics. (They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.)

In celebration of 10 years of unusual insight, Randall Munroe has revised his classic blockbuster to ask what if? x 10. The result is 10x the adventure of scientific inquiry. Featuring brand-new 2-color annotations and illustrations, this special anniversary edition is far more than a book for geeks, What If? explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much smarter for having read.]]> 303 Randall Munroe 0544272994 Mike 5 sciency 4.13 2014 What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
author: Randall Munroe
name: Mike
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2015/06/12
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: sciency
review:

]]> In Praise of Mystery 205478760
As part of her tenure as U.S. poet laureate, Ada Limón has written “In Praise of Mystery,� which will be engraved on the Europa Clipper spacecraft that launches to Jupiter and its moons in October 2024. Published here as Limón’s debut picture book, this luminous poem is illustrated by celebrated and internationally renowned artist Peter Sís.

In Praise of Mystery celebrates humankind’s endless curiosity, asks us what it means to explore beyond our known world, and shows how the unknown can reflect us back to ourselves.]]> 32 Ada Limon 132405400X Mike 5 childrens, poetry 3.86 In Praise of Mystery
author: Ada Limon
name: Mike
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: childrens, poetry
review:

]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Mike 4 3.52 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Mike
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: bechdel, gender-issues, ooad-book-clubs
review:

]]> The Bezzle (Martin Hench, #2) 127306588
The year is 2006. Martin Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerrilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He spends his downtime on Catalina Island, where scenic, imported bison wander the bluffs and frozen, reheated fast food burgers cost 25$. Wait, what? When Marty disrupts a seemingly innocuous scheme during a vacation on Catalina Island, he has no idea he’s kicked off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life.

Martin has made his most dangerous mistake trespassed into the playgrounds of the ultra-wealthy and spoiled their fun. To them, money is a tool, a game, and a way to keep score, and they’ve found their newest mark―California’s Department of Corrections. Secure in the knowledge that they’re living behind far too many firewalls of shell companies and investors ever to be identified, they are interested not in the lives they ruin, but only in how much money they can extract from the government and the hundreds of thousands of prisoners they have at their mercy.

A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash, The Bezzle is a sizzling follow-up to Red Team Blues .]]> 230 Cory Doctorow 1250865875 Mike 4 4.00 2024 The Bezzle (Martin Hench, #2)
author: Cory Doctorow
name: Mike
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/10
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Glorious Exploits 127278133 An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.]]> 304 Ferdia Lennon 1250893690 Mike 5 favorites, non-bechdel 4.15 2024 Glorious Exploits
author: Ferdia Lennon
name: Mike
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/06
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: favorites, non-bechdel
review:

]]>