en-US Sun, 06 Apr 2025 02:00:19 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 22364136 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439679.

'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root everything else'

Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school owner and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and his family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from young minds. As a consequence his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessman and 'bully of humility' Mr Bounderby, and his son Tom rebels to become embroiled in gambling and robbery. And, as their fortunes cross with those of free-spirited circus girl Sissy Jupe and victimised weaver Stephen Blackpool, Gradgrind is eventually forced to recognise the value of the human heart in an age of materialism and machinery.

This edition of Hard Times is based on the text of the first volume publication of 1854. Kate Flint's introduction sheds light on the frequently overlooked character interplay in Dickens' great critique of Victorian industrial society.]]> 321 Charles Dickens Jo 4 3.42 1854
author: Charles Dickens
name: Jo
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1854
rating: 4
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Re-reading Hard Times. It's set around my neck of the woods - North Lancashire - and even though the substance of the world has changed so much (all those cotton mills have gone - or have become student flats and workshop spaces) so many of the themes still feel pertinent. Louisa and Tom's dry wonderless -ological education feels very like our SATs with their sterile grammar questions. Some of the images - like the telegraph wires as a musical score - will stay with me a long time. And I love the way that Dickens is so free and flexible with his narrative voice and point of view - that shift towards the end, where futures are outlined and summed up, and quantities of happiness are allotted... The only thing I found problematic is that it seems to be morally acceptable (to characters we are to approve of, and to the narrative voice) for Tom to evade the consequences of his actions - which have been terrible for entirely innocent others. Not that one expects the moral simplicity of good deeds rewarded and bad deeds punished - but I did feel very uneasy to be expected to root for the spoilt kid's escape from jail.
]]> 25489625 “This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.�
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In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,� a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Ěý
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.]]> 152 Ta-Nehisi Coates Jo 0 to-read 4.40 2015
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Jo
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2015
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]]> 25614241
It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought eleven years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching forties, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to calm his unquiet soul in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour.
Ěý Ěý ĚýBeatlebone is a tour de force of language and literary imagination that marries the most improbable elements to the most striking effect. It isĚýa book that only Kevin Barry would attempt, letĚýalone succeed in pulling off—a Hibernian high wire act of courage, nerve, and great beauty.]]> 299 Kevin Barry 0385540299 Jo 0 to-read 3.47 2015
author: Kevin Barry
name: Jo
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2015
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]]> 17841
Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled � a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth.

Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.]]> 623 Umberto Eco 015603297X Jo 0 currently-reading 3.92 1988
author: Umberto Eco
name: Jo
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1988
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]]> 28602820 432 Bee Wilson 0007549709 Jo 4 4.02 2015
author: Bee Wilson
name: Jo
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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]]> 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 304 Ursula K. Le Guin Jo 0 currently-reading 4.11 1969
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Jo
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
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