John's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 15 Apr 2025 13:04:31 -0700 60 John's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir]]> 214175247 An unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary life—one forged through a poverty-stricken childhood in “slummy, one-horse towns�; obsessive desire; bursts of comedy; and indispensable friendships, reflecting on the way art, music, and a deep connection to nature helped her on a singular journeyto become a beloved, Grammy-nominated artist.

Neko Case has long been revered as one of music’s most influential artists, whose authenticity, lyrical storytelling, and sly wit have endeared her to a legion of critics, musicians, and lifelong fans.InThe Harder I Fight, the More I Love You,Casebrings her trademarkcandor andprecisionto a memoir that traces her evolution from an invisiblegirl “raised by two dogs and a space heater� in rural Washington state toher improbable emergence as an internationally-acclaimed talent. In luminous, sharp-edged prose, Caseshows readers what it’s like to be left alone for hours and hours as a child, to take refuge in the woods around her home, and to channel themonotony and loneliness and joy that comes from music, camaraderie, and shared experience into art.

The Harder I Fight, the More I Love Youis a rebellious meditation on identity and corruption, and a manifesto on how to make space for ourselves in this world, despite the obstacles we face.


ձ> 271 Neko Case 1538710501 John 4 4.07 2025 The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir
author: Neko Case
name: John
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:
The best sort of memoir: poetic, interesting, honest.
]]> Say Everything: A Memoir 214151379 Gen X icon Ione Skye bares all in an achingly vulnerable coming-of-age memoir about chasing fame, desire, and true love in the shadow of her famous, absent father.

In 1987, sixteen-year-old Ione Skye landed the breakout role of Diane Court, the dream girl who inspires John Cusack’s iconic boombox serenade in the hit Cameron Crowe film, Say Anything. While Skye seemed perfectly typecast as an aloof valedictorian, she was anything but.

Deserted by her dad, the folk singer legend Donovan, Skye was a ninth-grade dropout who sought solace and validation in the eyes of audiences and dreamy costars like Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix, Matthew Perry, John Cusack, and Robert Downey Jr. But like her sixties It Girl mom, Skye’s greatest weakness was musicians.

On the heels of a toxic relationship with the Red Hot Chili Peppers� Anthony Kiedis, which began when she was just sixteen and he was twenty-four, the actress leapt into wedded bliss with her first great love, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz.

But marriage was not the magical hall pass to adulthood Skye had imagined. Awakening to her bisexuality and desperately insecure, she risked her fairytale marriage for a string of affairs with gorgeous nineties “bad girls.� The dream marriage imploded, and Skye’s trust in herself and her future along with it.

Set against a backdrop of rock royalty compounds, supermodel cliques, and classic late-century films like River’s Edge, Gas Food Lodging, and Wayne’s World, Say Everything is a wild ride of Hollywood thrills as well as a lyrical reflection on ambition, intimacy, and a messy, sexy, unconventional life.]]> 304 Ione Skye 1668048264 John 3 4.09 Say Everything: A Memoir
author: Ione Skye
name: John
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:
Ione Skye does say a lot, which is great in a celebrity memoir because so often they can be about making themselves look good or saying how nice everyone is. But she sure doesn't make herself look good and she's totally willing to give the goop on people like Gwyneth Paltrow. That makes it very entertaining.
]]> The Heart in Winter 199795387 Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romantic tale of young lovers on the lam in 1890s Montana.

October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington. A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho, and briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a distant speck on their horizon, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

In this love story for the ages—lyrical, profane and propulsive—Kevin Barry has once again demonstrated himself to be a master stylist, an unrivalled humourist, and a true poet of the human heart.]]> 256 Kevin Barry 0385550596 John 3 3.80 2024 The Heart in Winter
author: Kevin Barry
name: John
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> Help Wanted 150778765 In Help Wanted, Adelle Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and knack for social observation to the world of work.

At a big-box store in a small town in upstate New York, the members of Team Movement clock in every morning at 3:55. Under the eye of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before customers arrive. When a golden opportunity for a promotion presents itself, the diverse members of Movement―among them a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging to her “cool kid� status from high school, a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together and set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot into motion. A darkly comic workplace caper that explores the aches and uses of solidarity, Help Wanted is a deeply human portrait of people trying, against increasingly long odds, to make a living.]]> 288 Adelle Waldman 132402044X John 5 to-read 3.56 2024 Help Wanted
author: Adelle Waldman
name: John
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:
I worked at Target during college many years ago, and it's interesting how little changed over the years. Waldman captures the limbo of many of the retail workers who yearn for something maybe a little different but are sort of trapped in an economic cycle that doesn't allow people much movement. The drama of everyday life is far more fascinating and I'd implore anyone to read this just to understand what America is like for most people.
]]> <![CDATA[Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation]]> 200298052 260 Jim O’Heir 0063293501 John 3 3.70 2024 Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation
author: Jim O’Heir
name: John
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves:
review:
Pleasant and nice just like Parks and Recreation.
]]> The Lamb 211143113
But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her own bid for freedom.

With this gothic coming-of-age tale, novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts—and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.]]> 336 Lucy Rose 0063374609 John 0 to-read 3.89 2025 The Lamb
author: Lucy Rose
name: John
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rosenfeld 207294097 For readers of Luster, All Fours, and Vladimir: a brazenly sexy and scathingly candid novel about a white-hot relationship and the two intractable characters who emerge from it transformed.

Noa Simon is a thirty-six-year-old filmmaker who knows what she wants when she sees it, and when she meets Teddy Rosenfeld, an antagonistic, older CEO, she goes for the jugular. An electrifying encounter in a bathroom stall after their first meeting only serves to whet Noa’s appetite, and despite Teddy’s subsequent rejections, she is exhilarated by the challenge—and by her own insatiability. In her first power play, she takes a job at his office, setting up a battle of the wills that Teddy proves unable to resist. Their ravenous, volatile romance will ultimately unearth difficult secrets from both of their pasts, and finally force Noa to reckon with her deepest desires and most destructive impulses.

Written with visceral intensity and voyeuristic precision, Rosenfeld is a propulsive tale of sexual abandon that titillates and interrogates in equal measure.]]> 400 Maya Kessler 1668053454 John 2 3.25 2024 Rosenfeld
author: Maya Kessler
name: John
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:
This book is so silly. Like being trapped with the living incarnation of the subreddit "IHaveSex." Or that one kid in college who realized the censorship in high school was gone and used the f-word casually in answers for no reason. Or hanging out with some person who thinks they are deep because they read some Sophist self-help book once.
]]> <![CDATA[Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia]]> 26156793
Putin Country crafts an intimate portrait of Middle Russia. We meet upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists who champion the rights of orphans and disabled children, and ostentatious mafiosi. We discover surprising subcultures, such as a vibrant underground gay community and a circle of determined Protestant evangelicals, and watch as doctors and teachers trying to cope with inescapable payoffs and institutionalized negligence. As Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on power and war in Ukraine leads to Western sanctions and a lower standard of living, the local population mingles belligerent nationalism with a deep ambivalence about their country’s direction. Drawing on close friendships sustained over many years, Garrels explains why Putin commands the loyalty of so many Russians, even those who decry the abuses of power they regularly encounter.

Garrels’s portrait of Russia’s silent majority is an essential corrective to the misconceptions of Putin's supporters and critics alike, especially at a time when cold war tensions are resurgent.]]> 228 Anne Garrels 0374710430 John 4 3.95 2016 Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia
author: Anne Garrels
name: John
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2016/04/24
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 John 4 4.38 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: John
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
review:
I agree with everything she argues. This will never happen. And I know that people will say, "Not with that attitude it won't." But that's the problem. Our society is built on an appetite that will not be satisfied and a few people's idealism will not satiate the beast. But maybe I'll put a free little farm stand out or something.
]]> We Used to Live Here 199798006
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it� (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).]]> 312 Marcus Kliewer 1982198788 John 4 3.66 2024 We Used to Live Here
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: John
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Yr Dead 195450005
Told in lyric fragments that span both lifetimes and geography, Yr Dead is a queer, Jewish, diasporic coming of age story that questions how our historical memory shapes our political and emotional present. Visceral, propulsive, and at turns fluorescently beautiful and fluorescently tragic, Yr Dead is the electric debut novel from award-winning writer Sam Sax, one of our most dynamic and imaginative writers.]]> 281 Sam Sax 1952119995 John 2 Form over function. 3.90 2024 Yr Dead
author: Sam Sax
name: John
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves:
review:
Form over function.
]]> <![CDATA[Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World]]> 199809440
In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was an AI chatbot called ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world’s two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, who now steers Google's AI efforts, has remained elusive - until now.

In Supremacy, Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, tells the astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history. The story focuses on the continuing rivalry of two key CEOs at the center of it all, who cultivated a religion around their mission to build god-like super intelligent machines: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind.

Supremacy sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence that its top creators are ignoring: the profit-driven spread of flawed and biased technology into industries, education, media and more. With exclusive access to a network of high-ranking sources, Parmy Olson uses her 13 years of experience covering technology to bring to light the exploitation of the greatest invention in human history, and how it will impact us all.]]> 336 Parmy Olson 1250337747 John 4 4.03 2024 Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
author: Parmy Olson
name: John
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:
Really interesting look at the behind-the-scenes human side of how artificial intelligence was brought to consumers.
]]> <![CDATA[Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman]]> 203579088 A memoir of the author's journey from an office job to restoring a cabin in the Pacific Northwest, based on his wildly popular Outside Magazine piece.


Wit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a run-down off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state.


To say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years or renovations.


CABIN is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of renovation, of seeing what could be instead of what is. It is a book for those who know what it’s like to bite off more than you can chew, or who desperately wish to.

]]> 304 Patrick Hutchison 1250285704 John 3 4.04 2024 Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman
author: Patrick Hutchison
name: John
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:

]]> Water, Water: Poems 208894906 Water, Water we learn how vigilance and a respect for the peripheral can result in moments of interest and delight. A cat leans to drink from a swimming pool; a nurse calls a name in a waiting room; an astronaut recites Emily Dickinson from outer space—such common and uncommon events are captured here with equal fascination. In a voice both conversational and melodic, hospitable and lyrical, informal but steadied by form, this poet asks us to tap the brakes and slow down so as to glimpse the elevated in the ordinary, the odd in the familiar.]]> 144 Billy Collins 0593731026 John 4 3.93 Water, Water: Poems
author: Billy Collins
name: John
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves:
review:
Collins can have an almost oh-shucks quality to his poetry that could be easily dismissed as closer to Will Rogers than Will Shakespeare. But then he hits you with some gut punch idea, like imagining a child born on the day of someone's death, and I get floored.
]]> The Third Gilmore Girl 207298106 Brought to you by Penguin.

Beloved award-winning actress Kelly Bishop, famous for playing the iconic Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls , finally tells the whole story of her six decades in show business.

Kelly Bishop’s storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing, but it is probably her role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy.
Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future, sharing some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced—among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer—Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life.
Full of witty insights, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and powerful memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades.

]]> 256 Kelly Bishop 1668023776 John 3 An interesting career. 4.35 2024 The Third Gilmore Girl
author: Kelly Bishop
name: John
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves:
review:
An interesting career.
]]> 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 John 4 4.51 2024 The Message
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: John
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
Coates has all the best words. The last essay on Israel is nuanced in its approach but ultimately condemning of the segregation Palestinian's face, so he'll be called an antisemite.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 John 3 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: John
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
There is some practical advice in here, and I am not sure there is much of a counterargument against the pervasive use of cell phones. The rise of cell phones and anxiety does seem correlated. Some of the free range parenting advice does also seem useful. At the same time, the nostalgic yearning for unparented lives totally glazes over the pitfalls of the latchkey kid life, where drugs and sex were far more prevalent. There is a privilege to his advice, and, frankly, as a teacher, I see the kids who are hardly parented and have plenty of unsupervised time to "explore" and that is a lot different than letting your kid take the subway to see the US Open on his own.
]]> <![CDATA[Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir]]> 203931803 A powerful memoir that reckons with mental health as well as the insidious ways men impact the lives of women.

In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression and self-harm. Over two weeks, she underwent myriad psychological tests, participated in numerous therapy sessions, connected with fellow patients and experienced profound breakthroughs, such as when a doctor noted, “There is a you inside that feels invisible to those looking at you from the outside.�

In Men Have Called Her Crazy, Tendler recounts her hospital experience as well as pivotal moments in her life that preceded and followed. As the title suggests, many of these moments are impacted by men: unrequited love in high school; the twenty-eight-year-old she lost her virginity to when she was sixteen; the frustrations and absurdities of dating in her mid-thirties; and her decision to freeze her eggs as all her friends were starting families.

This stunning literary self-portrait examines the unreasonable expectations and pressures women face in the 21st century. Yet overwhelming and despairing as that can feel, Tendler ultimately offers a message hope. Early in her stay in the hospital, she says, “My wish for myself is that one day I’ll reach a place where I can face hardship without trying to destroy myself.� By the end of the book, she fulfills that wish.]]> 304 Anna Marie Tendler 1668032341 John 2
At the same time, these are abstract concepts, and, in our lives, we don't deal with abstract concepts, but real people, who may be shaped by society but still have ideas, perspectives, contradictions, and feelings. Tendler tends to paint with a large brush, and maybe her experiences have led her to the conclusions she reaches, but sometimes two things can be true: some psychologists pathologize women's mental frameworks and some women just be nuts. ]]> 3.42 2024 Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir
author: Anna Marie Tendler
name: John
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
There is an interesting thesis here: women are over-diagnosed with mental disorders because the mental health sciences often treat femininity as a disorder. The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" expertly demonstrated this thesis over a hundred years ago, and maybe things haven't changed and women are still being diagnosed with psychology disorders for having emotions and feelings.

At the same time, these are abstract concepts, and, in our lives, we don't deal with abstract concepts, but real people, who may be shaped by society but still have ideas, perspectives, contradictions, and feelings. Tendler tends to paint with a large brush, and maybe her experiences have led her to the conclusions she reaches, but sometimes two things can be true: some psychologists pathologize women's mental frameworks and some women just be nuts.
]]> <![CDATA[From Under the Truck: A Memoir]]> 199793680
Weaving a latticework of different strands, moving back and forth through time, Josh Brolin captures a life marked by curiosity, pain, devotion, kindness, humor.He recounts an unconventional childhood far from Hollywood.Raised on a ranch in Paso Robles, California, he was surrounded as a child by the wolves, cougars, and other wild animals gathered by his fearless and explosive mother, Jane Agee Brolin. Her tragic, early death haunts this book, and the force of her unforgettable personality is felt throughout. Brolin also brings to life his career in the film industry—from his breakout role inThe Gooniesto the set ofNo Country for Old Men—and the professional and personal ups and downs in between and since.With unflinching honesty but also great humor, he shares insights into relationships, addiction, love, and fatherhood, while letting the white space in between words speak for itself.Grappling with the mysteries of life and death in a way that will catch readers by surprise, From Under the Truck is an audacious and riveting memoir from a born writer.]]> 240 Josh Brolin 0063382180 John 3 3.20 2024 From Under the Truck: A Memoir
author: Josh Brolin
name: John
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
Tried to be poetic with these short prose descriptions that skip through time and place, which leaned more into pretentious than arty.
]]> <![CDATA[The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within]]> 199373502 A renowned climber and National Geographic photographer shares his incredible adventures—and the early trauma that drove him to seek such heights.

“In order to escape madness, I will live madly. I will risk my life in order to save it.�

Growing up in the mountains of Utah, Cory Richards was constantly surrounded by the outdoors. His father, a high school teacher and a ski patroller, spent years teaching Richards and his brother how to ski, climb, mountaineer, and survive in the wild. Despite a seemingly idyllic childhood, the Richards home was fraught with violence, grief, and mental illness. After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and dropping out of high school, Richards subsumed himself in the worlds of photography and climbing, seeking out the farthest reaches of the world to escape the darkness. Then, in the midst of a wildly successful career in adventure photography, a catastrophic avalanche changed everything, forcing Richards to confront the trauma of his past, evaluate his own mental health, and learn to rewrite his story.

The Color of Everything is a thrilling tale of risk and adventure, written by a man who has done it all: He’s stood at the top of the world, climbed imposing mountain faces alone in the dark, and become the only American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter. But it is also the story of a tumultuous life—a stirring, lyrical memoir that captures the profound musings of an unquiet mind grappling with the meaning of success, the cost of fame and addiction, and whether it is possible to outrun your demons. With exquisite prose and disarming candor, accompanied by stunning photos from his career, Richards excavates the roots of his trauma and shares what it took for him to climb out of it.]]> 368 Cory Richards 059359679X John 4 4.23 2024 The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
author: Cory Richards
name: John
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
Tackles some complex topics (mental health, patriarchy, parental relationships, etc.) in an interesting way.
]]> <![CDATA[In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm Better Than You and You are Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book]]> 43885900
"I can think of no one more suited to defend elitism than Stein, a funny man with hands as delicate as a baby full of soft-boiled eggs." —Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The night Donald Trump won the presidency, our author Joel Stein, Thurber Prize finalist and former staff writer for Time Magazine, instantly knew why. The main reason wasn't economic anxiety or racism. It was that he was anti-elitist. Hillary Clinton represented Wall Street, academics, policy papers, Davos, international treaties and the people who think they're better than you. People like Joel Stein. Trump represented something far more appealing, which was beating up people like Joel Stein.

In a full-throated defense of academia, the mainstream press, medium-rare steak, and civility, Joel Stein fights against populism. He fears a new tribal elite is coming to replace him, one that will fend off expertise of all kinds and send the country hurtling backward to a time of wars, economic stagnation and the well-done steaks doused with ketchup that Trump eats.

To find out how this shift happened and what can be done, Stein spends a week in Roberts County, Texas, which had the highest percentage of Trump voters in the country. He goes to the home of Trump-loving Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams; meets people who create fake news; and finds the new elitist organizations merging both right and left to fight the populists. All the while using the biggest words he knows.]]> 336 Joel Stein 1455591475 John 2 3.79 2019 In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm Better Than You and You are Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book
author: Joel Stein
name: John
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2019/11/16
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves:
review:
For a self-claimed elite, Joel Stein lacks insight or even a good acerbic wit. He's like the Jimmy Fallon of humor: I grin slightly out of politeness but won't remember anything tomorrow. Or maybe Stein is like a Subway sandwich. Will I eat a Subway sandwich? Sure. Do I ever desire a Subway sandwich? Not really. Is a Subway sandwich someone I would go to for important critiques of American political discourse? Definitely not. Is there a Subway restaurant on the Stanford University campus, which is the alma mater of Joel Stein in case you missed it the three thousand times he mentions it? Yes. The parallels are uncanny.
]]> Death of the Author 214283593 The future of storytelling is here.

Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.

In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.

What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.]]> 448 Nnedi Okorafor 0063391147 John 0 to-read 4.10 2025 Death of the Author
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: John
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering]]> 216857785
Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.

Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.]]> 352 Malcolm Gladwell 0316575801 John 4 4.03 2024 Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: John
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
I usually start Gladwell with cynicism because I think I am so tired of his formula: "Here's what you thought. Guess what though? You're wrong. It's actually this!" I am such a sucker though because I still get drawn in and then start sprinkling these anecdotes into conversation like a complete dunce. I am the guy who subscribes to The New Yorker and listens to NPR to appear smart but then forgets all the details and only remembers the broad outlines. I am the shadow of a silhouette of a critical thinker. I am a dumbass. I am Malcolm Gladwell.
]]> <![CDATA[All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians]]> 198902261 New York Times Editors' Choice
Named a best book of the year by Amazon

"A rollicking, unexpectedly affecting story. . . It’s going to be one of the big, buzzy Beltway books of the year."
�Politico

A bridge-burning, riotous memoir by a top PR operative in Washington who exposes the secrets of the $129-billion industry that controls so much of what we see and hear in the media—from a man who used to pull the strings, and who is now pulling back the curtain.

After nearly two decades in the Washington PR business, Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry that’s made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what he’s been up to for the past twenty years—and it isn’t pretty.

Elwood has worked for a murderer’s row of questionable clients, including Gaddafi, Assad, and the government of Qatar. In All the Worst Humans, Elwood unveils how the PR business works, and how the truth gets made, spun, and sold to the public—not shying away from the gritty details of his unlikely career.

This is a piercing look into the corridors of money, power, politics, and control, all told in Elwood’s disarmingly funny and entertaining voice. He recounts a four-day Las Vegas bacchanal with a dictator’s son, plotting communications strategies against a terrorist organization in Western Africa, and helping to land a Middle Eastern dictator’s wife a glowing profile in Vogue on the same time the Arab Spring broke out. And he reveals all his slippery tricks for seducing journalists in order to create chaos and ultimately cover for politicians, dictators, and spies—the industry-secret tactics that led to his rise as a political PR pro.

Along the way, Phil walks the halls of the Capitol, rides in armored cars through Abuja, and watches his client lose his annual income at the roulette table. But as he moved up the ranks, he felt worse and worse about the sleaziness of it all—until Elwood receives a shocking wake-up call from the FBI. This risky game nearly cost Elwood his life and his freedom. Seeing the light, Elwood decides to change his ways, and his clients, and to tell the full truth about who is the worst human.]]> 272 Phil Elwood 1250321573 John 3 3.83 2024 All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians
author: Phil Elwood
name: John
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
Phil Elwood is a piece of shit but at least he's a piece of shit that explains how he and other pieces of shit help evil pieces of shit make the world shittier. Apparently though, not much we can because the world is made so shitty by these pieces of shit. Sad face emoji. Poo emoji. Sad face emoji.
]]> <![CDATA[The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982]]> 58725001
In the summer of 1982, eight science fiction films were released within six weeks of one another. E.T., Tron, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Mad Max: The Road Warrior changed the careers of some of Hollywood's now biggest names―altering the art of movie-making to this day.

In The Future Was Now, Chris Nashawaty recounts the riotous genesis of these films, featuring an all-star cast of Hollywood luminaries and gadflies alike: Steven Spielberg, at the height of his powers, conceives E.T. as an unlikely family tale, and quietly takes over the troubled production of Poltergeist, a horror film he had been nurturing for years. Ridley Scott, fresh off the success of Alien, tries his hand at an odd Philip K. Dick story that becomes Blade Runner � a box office failure turned cult classic. Similar stories arise for films like Tron, Conan the Barbarian, and The Thing. Taken as a whole, these films show a precarious turning-point in Hollywood history, when baffled film executives finally began to understand the potential of high-concept films with a rabid fanbase, merchandising potential, and endless possible sequels.

Expertly researched, energetically told, and written with an unabashed love for the cinema, The Future Was Now is a chronicle of how the revolution sparked in a galaxy far, far away finally took root and changed Hollywood forever.]]> 304 Chris Nashawaty 1250827051 John 3 4.07 2024 The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982
author: Chris Nashawaty
name: John
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves:
review:
The so-what? is not really answered in this... or at least it is attempted, but feels insignificant.
]]> Sociopath: A Memoir 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X John 4 3.74 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir
author: Patric Gagne
name: John
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Go as a River 63922274 A sweeping, heart-stopping epic of a young woman's journey to becoming, set against the harsh beauty of mid-century Colorado

On a cool autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash delivers late-season peaches from her family's farm set amid the wild beauty of Colorado. As she heads into her village, a disheveled stranger stops to ask her the way. How she chooses to answer will unknowingly alter the course of both their young lives.

So begins the mesmerizing story of split-second choices and courageous acts that propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength.

Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life forever.

Go as a River is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettable characters and a breathtaking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate.]]> 320 Shelley Read 1954118236 John 4 4.20 2023 Go as a River
author: Shelley Read
name: John
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Hip-Hop Is History 195790908 352 Questlove 0374614075 John 3 3.93 2024 Hip-Hop Is History
author: Questlove
name: John
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:
A lot of this book is "Then I listened to this song and it was cool."
]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore John 4 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: John
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:

]]> The Netanyahus 55817233 240 Joshua Cohen 1913097609 John 5 3.81 2021 The Netanyahus
author: Joshua Cohen
name: John
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
review:
A novel of assimilation, the nature of history, families--all with a keen wit.
]]> <![CDATA[The Rise of Wolf 8: Witnessing the Triumph of Yellowstone’s Underdog]]> 44156559
This is the incredible true story of one of those wolves.

Wolf 8 struggles at first—he is smaller than the other pups, and often bullied—but soon he bonds with an alpha female whose mate was shot. An unusually young alpha male, barely a teenager in human years, Wolf 8 rises to the occasion, hunting skillfully, and even defending his family from the wolf who killed his father. But soon he faces a new opponent: his adopted son, who mates with a violent alpha female. Can Wolf 8 protect his valley without harming his protégé?

Authored by a renowned wolf researcher and gifted storyteller, >i>The Rise of Wolf 8 marks the beginning of The Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone series, which will transform our view of wolves forever.]]> 304 Rick McIntyre 1771645210 John 3 4.19 2019 The Rise of Wolf 8: Witnessing the Triumph of Yellowstone’s Underdog
author: Rick McIntyre
name: John
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Tallgrass 226113
During World War II, a family finds life turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers.

This is Tallgrass as Rennie Stroud has never seen it before. She has just turned thirteen and, until this time, life has pretty much been what her father told her it should be: predictable and fair. But now the winds of change are coming and, with them, a shift in her perspective. And Rennie will discover secrets that can destroy even the most sacred things.

Part thriller, part historical novel, Tallgrass is a riveting exploration of the darkest—and best—parts of the human heart.]]> 305 Sandra Dallas 0312360193 John 3 To Kill a Beet 3.88 2007 Tallgrass
author: Sandra Dallas
name: John
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
To Kill a Beet
]]> A Secret Worth Keeping 210130065 A perfect weekend. The perfect company. A perfect cabin.

The perfect place to bury a body�

For Joel and Stella, it’s the trip they’ve been dreaming about. Fresh air, quiet time in the woods, and no work to distract them from each other. Being a new couple, they don’t waste any time with their first full weekend away together.

But their perfect getaway turns into a nightmare when an accident occurs and they find a dead woman lying outside their cabin.

Clearly they have to call the police, but what Joel reveals to Stella makes her understand there’s no way they can get the authorities involved.

Stella has no other choice than to go along with Joel’s plans to hide the body, realizing now that she never really knew the man she’s sharing a bed with.

But what if there’s more that Joel isn’t telling her? And what if he figures out that she doesn’t trust him anymore?

Most of all, what if Joel finds out the secret that she’s been hiding from him?]]> 211 Drew Strickland John 3 3.70 A Secret Worth Keeping
author: Drew Strickland
name: John
average rating: 3.70
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves:
review:
The problem with setting up a first-person narrator is the inconsistency you can have when there is a twist. This one is best when not asking too many questions. Just enjoy the ride and don't ask yourself if the bolts are screwed in tight enough to keep the rollercoaster from falling apart.
]]> The Glutton 207294032 A subversive historical novel set during the French Revolution, inspired by a young peasant boy turned showman, said to have been tormented and driven to murder by an all-consuming appetite.

1798, France. Nuns move along the dark corridors of a Versailles hospital where the young Sister Perpetué has been tasked with sitting with the patient who must always be watched. The man, gaunt, with his sallow skin and distended belly, is dying: they say he ate a golden fork, and that it’s killing him from the inside. But that’s not all—he is rumored to have done monstrous things in his attempts to sate an insatiable appetite� an appetite they say tortures him still.

Born in an impoverished village to a widowed young mother, Tarare was once overflowing with quiet affection: for the Baby Jesus and the many Saints, for his mother, for the plants and little creatures in the woods and fields around their house. He spends his days alone, observing the delicate charms of the countryside. But his world is not a gentle one—and soon, life as he knew it is violently upended. Tarare is pitched down a chaotic path through revolutionary France, left to the mercy of strangers, and increasingly, bottomlessly, ravenous.

This exhilarating, disquieting novel paints a richly imagined life for The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon in 18th-century France: a world of desire, hunger and poverty; hope, chaos and survival. As in her cult hit The Manningtree Witches, Blakemore showcases her stunning lyricism and deep compassion for characters pushed to the edge of society in The Glutton, her most unputdownable work yet.]]> 320 A.K. Blakemore 1668030632 John 0 to-read 3.83 2023 The Glutton
author: A.K. Blakemore
name: John
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend 200174139 White Lotus meets Kevin Wilson in this whip-smart social satire about a man who finds himself trapped on an island resort after the sun literally explodes, and suddenly must choose whether to save himself from the chaos, or help fellow guests make it off the island alive�

Vacation Checklist:
Pack swim trunks.
Apply sunscreen.
Survive the apocalypse?

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he’s never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up.

Then the sun explodes.

With the island resort suddenly plunged into darkness (he really should’ve sprung for the travel insurance), Dan’s holiday goes from bad to worse when elite guests stage a coup and commandeer supplies. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, revolution begins to brew on the island, and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But when one six-person plane is discovered that could get them back to the mainland, Dan realizes he has a choice to make.

Does he escape the island with Mara? Or does he stay and fight to become the most unlikely hero of the end of the world?

]]> 384 M.J. Wassmer 1464218021 John 4 3.69 2024 Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend
author: M.J. Wassmer
name: John
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/06
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves:
review:
A fun way to explore class differences, although at times it veers from fun to into really dark and there is tonal whiplash.
]]> The Shutdown List 214930934 People are disappearing. Anita may be next. But first, they have to find her.

Anita Forester witnesses her husband, Julian, being dragged away by police during a protest. A stranger warns her to flee. Still reeling from the loss of her adult son only two years earlier, Anita embarks on a perilous journey to find her husband, unaware of the crucial secret he has kept from her.

While piecing together the trail to her missing husband, Anita intercepts a hard drive containing priceless data sought by a fossil fuel magnate with secrets of his own—secrets he would kill to protect.

Set against a backdrop of climate activism, The Shutdown List is filled with twists and turns, corruption and betrayal. Anita must fight to stay alive and find Julian before he disappears forever.]]> 346 Sharon Dukett John 0 to-read 3.86 The Shutdown List
author: Sharon Dukett
name: John
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wordhunter 199793420
Tattooed, pierced, and a bit of a mess, Maggie Moore is a surprising genius when it comes to words, a savant able to solve any linguistic puzzle. The top student in her forensic linguistics class, she’s tapped by local police to use her skills to decipher harrowing notes left by a stalker-turned-rapist—and succeeds brilliantly.

But when the daughter of a local mayor is abducted, Maggie isn’t sure she’s the right person to help the police solve the crime. Given what happened to her best childhood friend, Maggie just might be too close to this one.

Yet she knows the authorities in this rural south-Central Florida town cannot crack the case without her special skill. Along with her new best friend, a detective Jackson, Maggie begins to analyze the texts, emails, and verbal tics of various suspects . . . and comes to a disturbing conclusion that will rock this small community.]]> 244 Stella Sands 0063345307 John 0 to-read 3.40 2024 Wordhunter
author: Stella Sands
name: John
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Isola 212806636 A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this epic saga of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.]]> 368 Allegra Goodman 0593730089 John 0 to-read 3.99 2025 Isola
author: Allegra Goodman
name: John
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The One Week Writing Workshop: 7 Days to Spark, Boost or Revive Your Novel]]> 218115898 It's time to crush the blank page, shed your writer's angst and write the novel you were meant to write! All the magic and enthusiasm of acclaimed author Karin Adams� in-person writing workshops—now in book form!

You’ve always wanted to write a novel and have been nurturing a great idea. Maybe you’ve read books by writing experts, perhaps even taken a class or two. But as you sit down alone with the blank page, despite all the dreaming, planning and learning—nothing happens. Or if the writing does start to flow, it soon dries up.

Why is writing a novel so hard?

۴dz’r not uncreative. And the learning and planning you’ve done isn’t suddenly useless!

Rather, you’re facing that overwhelming gap between the story you’re imagining and the book you want to write. It’s enough to stop most people from trying at all. But that doesn’t have to be you!

In The One Week Writing Workshop, author Karin Adams helps you to overcome the overwhelm. She breaks the writing process down into a series of bite-sized, actionable tasks within a proven seven-step method. It’s the method Karin herself uses, and the one she has taught to thousands of workshop participants since 2010. This is not another book to read before you start your draft—it’s the book you grab when you want to actually start writing your novel.

While The One Week Writing Workshop emphasizes taking action now, it also circles back to story essentials as you go. If you’ve read other writing books, it will complement, reinforce and add fresh perspectives to what you’ve learned. If you’ve never studied creative writing before, The One Week Writing Workshop is the perfect book for getting yourself grounded while you get busy writing!

Structured as a seven-day workshop, each chapter is a lively session guiding you through energizing tasks that get you working on and actively growing your story. Throughout the book, you have lots of choice so that you can further tailor the experience for you and your novel.

You’ll find:


- Real-world writing activities and strategies you’ll start using within minutes of opening the book

- A tried-and-tested 7-step method for starting your novel and seeing it through to the finish

- Hands-on strategies for every step of the writing process, from generating ideas to revision

- Helpful mini lessons to get (or keep) you grounded with story writing essentials
A blend of at-your-desk and out-of-the-box actions that help to inspire your entire creative self

- Activities you can come back to again and again to bust past blocks, develop new story concepts and reconnect with the joy that got you writing in the first place


The One Week Writing Workshop is the book you need when it’s time to take action, start writing your novel and finally see it through to completion. ]]> 212 Karin Adams 1896711235 John 0 to-read 4.78 The One Week Writing Workshop: 7 Days to Spark, Boost or Revive Your Novel
author: Karin Adams
name: John
average rating: 4.78
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Land of Milk and Honey 214932073 The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.]]> 240 C Pam Zhang 0593538250 John 0 to-read 3.55 2023 Land of Milk and Honey
author: C Pam Zhang
name: John
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Five Survive 61313902 Eight hours.
Six friends.
One sniper . . .

Eighteen year old Red and her friends are on a road trip in an RV, heading to the beach for Spring Break. It’s a long drive but spirits are high. Until the RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere. There’s no mobile phone reception and nobody around to help. And as the wheels are shot out, one by one, the friends realise that this is no accident. There’s a sniper out there in the dark watching them and he knows exactly who they are. One of the group has a secret that the sniper is willing to kill for.

A game of cat-and-mouse plays out as the group desperately tries to get help and to work out which member of the group is the target. Buried secrets are forced to light in the cramped, claustrophobic setting of the RV, and tensions within the group will reach deadly levels. Not everyone will survive the night.]]> 391 Holly Jackson 0755504402 John 2 4.09 2022 Five Survive
author: Holly Jackson
name: John
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves:
review:
An excellent plot that turns into a very convoluted plot.
]]> <![CDATA[Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen]]> 209615830 From visionary director Jon M. Chu comes a powerful, inspiring memoir of belonging, creativity, and learning to see who you really are.
Long before he directed Wicked, In The Heights, or the groundbreaking film Crazy Rich Asians, Jon M. Chu was a movie-obsessed first-generation Chinese American, helping at his parents� Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley and forever facing the cultural identity crisis endemic to children of immigrants. Growing up on the cutting edge of twenty-first-century technology gave Chu the tools he needed to make his mark at USC film school, and to be discovered by Steven Spielberg, but he soon found himself struggling to understand who he was. In this book, for the first time, Chu turns the lens on his own life and work, telling the universal story of questioning what it means when your dreams collide with your circumstances, and showing how it’s possible to succeed even when the world changes beyond all recognition.With striking candor and unrivaled insights, Chu offers a firsthand account of the collision of Silicon Valley and Hollywood—what it’s been like to watch his old world shatter and reshape his new one. Ultimately, Viewfinder is about reckoning with your own story, becoming your most creative self, and finding a path all your own.]]> 304 Jon M. Chu 0593448944 John 3 4.25 Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen
author: Jon M. Chu
name: John
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife]]> 199798896 A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death—and what might follow—by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm.

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet, the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,� his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.� That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.

This experience spurred Junger—a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical—to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions?

In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.]]> 176 Sebastian Junger 1668050838 John 3 3.76 2024 In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife
author: Sebastian Junger
name: John
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Rabbit Hole 209457793 Conspiracy theories from Reddit seduce a disaster-prone woman into an obsession with solving her older sister’s cold-case disappearance.

Ten years ago Theodora “Teddy� Angstrom’s older sister, Angie, went missing. Her case remains unsolved. Now Teddy’s father, Mark, has killed himself. Unbeknownst to Mark’s family, he had been active in a Reddit community fixated on Angie, and Teddy can’t help but fall down the same rabbit hole.

Teddy’s investigation quickly gets her in hot water with her gun-nut boyfriend, her long-lost half brother, and her colleagues at the prestigious high school where she teaches English. Further complicating matters is Teddy’s growing obsession with Mickey, a charming amateur sleuth who is eerily keen on helping her solve the case.

A biting critique of the internet’s voyeurism, Rabbit Hole is an outrageous and heartrending character study of a mind twisted by grief—and a page-turning mystery as addictive as a late-night Reddit binge.]]> 384 Kate Brody 1641296208 John 0 to-read 2.95 2024 Rabbit Hole
author: Kate Brody
name: John
average rating: 2.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Joyful Recollections of Trauma: A Hilariously Cathartic Memoir-in-Essays of Childhood Turmoil, Self Healing, and Finding Happiness]]> 197449225 256 Paul Scheer 0063293714 John 4 4.15 2024 Joyful Recollections of Trauma: A Hilariously Cathartic Memoir-in-Essays of Childhood Turmoil, Self Healing, and Finding Happiness
author: Paul Scheer
name: John
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves:
review:

]]> The Age of Grievance 176443156
The twists and turns of American politics today have become nearly impossible to predict, but the tone is a troubling given. It’s one of grievance. A perilous share of Americans across the full breadth of the political spectrum respond to every big disappointment, every little frustration, every way in which the world doesn’t hew precisely to their liking by deciding that they’ve been wronged, identifying the people responsible for that and raging at the injustice of it all. The blame game is the country’s most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb.

Grievance isn’t always and necessarily bad. It has often done enormous good. The United States is a nation born of grievance, in the revolt of royal subjects unwilling to accept a bad deal, and across the nearly 250 years of our existence as a country, grievance has been the engine of morally urgent change. But what happens when all sorts of grievances—the greater ones, the lesser ones, the authentic, the invented—are jumbled together? When grievances become all-encompassing lenses, all-purpose reflexes, default settings? When people take their grievances to extreme and even violent lengths that they didn’t before?

A violent mob storms the US Capitol, rejecting the results of a presidential election and embracing the fiction that it was rigged. Conspiracy theories flourish. Politicians appeal not to our better angels but to our worst impulses, encouraging selfishness instead of selflessness, trading inspiration for retribution. Fox News, the country’s most watched cable news network, and Tucker Carlson, its sneering star, knowingly peddle lies in the service of profit. The Supreme Court loses touch with the country, overturning Roe v. Wade and shrugging off Clarence Thomas’s transgressions. College students chase away speakers and college administrators dismiss instructors for dissenting from progressive orthodoxy. Will Smith slaps Chris Rock. And there’s a potentially devastating erosion of the civility, common ground and compromise necessary for our democracy to survive.

How did we get here? What does it say about us, and where does it leave us? Timely, important, and enlightening, The Age of Grievance examines these critical questions and charts a path forward for a nation that may be growing tired of outrage.]]> 288 Frank Bruni 1668016435 John 4 4.07 2024 The Age of Grievance
author: Frank Bruni
name: John
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/27
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves:
review:
Provides practical solutions to our divisions.
]]> <![CDATA[The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning]]> 195888511
Is the Constitution a living document that needs to evolve with the times? Or should we try to divine the original meaning that our Founding Fathers intended, and hew to that as strictly as possible, as present-day originalists suggest?

In The Year of Living Constitutionally , A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He exercises his Second Amendment rights by marching around Manhattan with a colonial musket. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opinions on parchment and handing them out in Times Square. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household by lighting candles, boiling mutton, and—because women were not allowed to sign contracts—taking over the household finances from his much more business-savvy wife.

The book blends unforgettable adventures—traveling to the Capitol to personally deliver a list of grievances to Congress, consenting to quarter soldiers in his apartment, and battling Redcoats as part of a Revolutionary War reenactment group--with dozens of interviews from constitutional experts from both sides of the debate. Much like he did with the Bible in The Year of Living Biblically , Jacobs provides a crash course on our Constitution as he experiences the benefits and perils of living like it’s the 1790s. In the process, he showcases the potentially dangerous effects originalism has on our democracy as well as the progress we’ve made since the time of its writing in 1789, when, for instance, life expectancy was forty-five years and married women couldn’t own property.

Now more than ever, Americans need to understand the meaning and value of the Constitution. As conservative politicians and Supreme Court Justices continue to argue for a more literal interpretation of the Constitution, A.J. Jacobs provides an entertaining yet illuminating look into how this storied document fits into our democracy today.]]> 304 A.J. Jacobs 0593136748 John 4 3.99 2024 The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning
author: A.J. Jacobs
name: John
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Bear 45869112 From National Book Award in Fiction finalist Andrew Krivak comes a gorgeous fable of Earth’s last two human inhabitants and a girl's journey home.

In an Eden-like future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They own a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches his daughter how to fish and hunt and the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can learn to listen. A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature’s dominion.]]> 224 Andrew Krivak 1942658702 John 4 3.86 2020 The Bear
author: Andrew Krivak
name: John
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/04
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:
A postapocalyptic fairy tale or myth or legend--something that goes beyond human and seems to be part of the bones of the earth--that primarily is made up of vibes. Kind of depressing vibes, even though I know that it is not necessarily the intent.
]]> Even If Everything Ends 62919370 Life goes on in the face of a climate crisis in this astonishing and unforgettable debut novel that follows four characters as they struggle to survive in a burning world.

Even when the climate crisis escalates beyond our worst nightmares and people become refugees, the world keeps turning and life carries on as usual: teenaged love stories, marital collapses, identity crises, and revolts against hopeless parents continue to play out.

Didrik is a forty-year-old media consultant whose misguided efforts to become the family hero render him a pathetic vision of masculine incompetence. Melissa is an influencer with a suitcase full of lost dreams after denying climate change for years. André is the nineteen-year-old loser son of an international sports star who uses the erupting violence around him to orchestrate his own personal vengeance on his negligent father. And Vilja is Didrik’s teenaged daughter who steps into a leadership role in the face of adult ineptitude.

“Simultaneously nerve-wracking, astute, and consumedly entertaining� (Sydsvenskan, Sweden) and through these four related stories, Even If Everything Ends eloquently illustrates a picture of a very near future that is at once extraordinary and entirely realistic.]]> 448 Jens Liljestrand 1668005018 John 3 3.36 2021 Even If Everything Ends
author: Jens Liljestrand
name: John
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:
This book is a Swedish perspective on the climate crisis through four interlocked stories, with most of the narrative focused on fictional wildfires in the north of Sweden causing mass societal disruptions. The stories all don't hit in equal measure but it is nice knowing that humans all over the world are idiots.
]]> The Teacher 195967140 A mind-bending, psychological thriller from Freida McFadden, the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Housemaid!

Lesson #1: trust no one

Eve has a good life. She gets up each day, gets a kiss from her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except�

Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye.

Addie can't be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that's what everyone says.

But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet.

From the New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden comes a story of twisting secrets and long-awaited revenge.]]> 379 Freida McFadden 1728296218 John 2 3.82 2024 The Teacher
author: Freida McFadden
name: John
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:

]]> The Guest List 52656911
The bride � The plus one � The best man � The wedding planner � The bridesmaid � The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 319 Lucy Foley John 3 3.82 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: John
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:

]]> I Curse You With Joy 201851633 Tiffany Haddish is back with her highly anticipated new essay collection, I Curse You With Joy

It’s been a minute since readers last sat down with Tiffany Haddish. Since The Last Black Unicorn, Haddish has catapulted to A-List fame as the breakout star of Girls Trip. She’s walked the Oscars red carpet, released a hit stand-up special with Netflix, and made history as the first black female comedian to host Saturday Night Live and Shark Week.

But it hasn’t been all VIP parties and free diving with apex predators. In these humorous and heartfelt essays, Tiffany gets real about the highs and lows of life. Believe it or not, there was a time when Tiffany didn’t totally know who Tiffany was. Before she found her groove, she was on stage dressed like her snobby airline coworkers telling halfhearted dick jokes. She tanked.

It took a fake penis, some help from friends, and a little encouragement from Bob Saget, but eventually Tiffany figured out Tiffany. I Curse You With Joy celebrates all the lessons she learned along the way—the joy and the pain. Tiffany reckons with the legacy of her childhood trauma, the challenges of being a black woman in the entertainment industry, and her bittersweet reunion with her estranged father after nearly twenty years apart. And don’t worry, she’s got plenty of advice to share, too.

I Curse You With Joy is Tiffany Haddish unfiltered. (We know what you’re thinking...how much more unfiltered can she get?) These essays lay it all bare, bringing readers into Tiffany’s inner circle where joy, honesty, humor, and heart are the order of the day.]]> 271 Tiffany Haddish 1635769450 John 4 Enjoyable. 3.94 2025 I Curse You With Joy
author: Tiffany Haddish
name: John
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves:
review:
Enjoyable.
]]> Nimona 19351043
Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from N.D. Stevenson. Featuring an exclusive epilogue not seen in the web comic, along with bonus conceptual sketches and revised pages throughout, this gorgeous full-color graphic novel is perfect for the legions of fans of the web comic and is sure to win Noelle many new ones.

Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are.

But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.]]> 272 N.D. Stevenson John 4 4.16 2015 Nimona
author: N.D. Stevenson
name: John
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/21
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood]]> 176443727 Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall, About Last Night, and Glory, creator of the show thirtysomething, and executive producer of My So-Called Life, gives a dishy, behind-the-scenes look at working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.

“I’ll be dropping a few names,� Ed Zwick confesses in the introduction to his book. “Over the years I have worked with self-proclaimed masters-of-the-universe, unheralded geniuses, hacks, sociopaths, savants, and saints.�

He has encountered these Hollywood types during four decades of directing, producing, and writing projects that have collectively received eighteen Academy Award nominations (seven wins) and sixty-seven Emmy nominations (twenty-two wins). Though there are many factors behind such success, including luck and the contributions of his creative partner Marshall Herskovitz, he’s known to have a special talent for bringing out the best in the people he’s worked with, especially the actors. In those intense collaborations, he’s sought to discover the small pieces of connective tissue, vulnerability, and fellowship that can help an actor realize their character in full.

Talents whom he spotted early include Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Denzel Washington, Claire Danes, and Jared Leto. Established stars he worked closely with include Leonardo DiCaprio, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Daniel Craig, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Jennifer Connelly. He also sued Harvey Weinstein over the production of Shakespeare in Love —and won. He shares personal stories about all these people, and more.

Written mostly with love, sometimes with rue, this memoir is also a meditation on working, sprinkled throughout with tips for anyone who has ever imagined writing, directing, or producing for the screen. Fans with an appreciation for the beautiful mysteries—as well as the unsightly, often comic truths—of crafting film and television won’t want to miss it.]]> 304 Ed Zwick 1668046997 John 4 3.97 2024 Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood
author: Ed Zwick
name: John
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/19
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan]]> 6658129
At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime . . . crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of eighty-hour workweeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face to face with Japan’s most infamous yakuza boss—and the threat of death for him and his family—Adelstein decided to step down . . . momentarily. Then, he fought back.

In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein tells the riveting, often humorous tale of his journey from an inexperienced cub reporter—who made rookie mistakes like getting into a martial-arts battle with a senior editor—to a daring, investigative journalist with a price on his head. With its vivid, visceral descriptions of crime in Japan and an exploration of the world of modern-day yakuza that even few Japanese ever see, Tokyo Vice is a fascination, and an education, from first to last.]]> 335 Jake Adelstein 0307378799 John 2 3.87 2009 Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
author: Jake Adelstein
name: John
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
review:
The author comes off like a slimeball.
]]> <![CDATA[The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam (Good Thief's Guide, #1)]]> 966825 -The Raleigh News & Observer

Charlie Howard travels the globe writing suspense novels for a living, about an intrepid burglar named Faulks. To supplement his income---and to keep his hand in---Charlie also has a small side business: stealing for a very discreet clientele on commission.

When a mysterious American offers to pay Charlie 20,000 euros if he steals two small monkey figurines to match the one he already has, Charlie is suspicious; he doesn't know how the American found him, and the job seems too good to be true. And, of course, it is. Although the burglary goes off without a hitch, when he goes to deliver the monkeys he finds that the American has been beaten to near-death, and that the third figurine is missing.

Back in London, his long-suffering literary agent, Victoria (who is naive enough to believe he actually looks like his jacket photo), tries to talk him through the plot problems in both his latest manuscript and his real life---but Charlie soon finds himself caught up in a caper reminiscent of a Cary Grant movie, involving safe-deposit boxes, menacing characters, and, of course, a beautiful damsel in distress.

Publishers Weekly called Chris Ewan's The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam one of the best books for grownups.]]> 240 Chris Ewan 0312376332 John 3 3.44 2007 The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam (Good Thief's Guide, #1)
author: Chris Ewan
name: John
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/07
date added: 2024/05/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet]]> 6797515
In the mid-nineteenth century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his father’s nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his father’s will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.

But once there he is confronted with an art world that refused to validate his style, extreme poverty, and a war that led him away from his home and friends. But there were bright spots as his deep, enduring friendships with men named Renoir, Cézanne, Pissarro, Manet � a group that together would come to be known as the Impressionists, and that supported each other through the difficult years. But even more illuminating was his lifelong love, Camille Doncieux, a beautiful, upper-class Parisian girl who threw away her privileged life to be by the side of the defiant painter and embrace the lively Bohemian life of their time.

His muse, his best friend, his passionate lover, and the mother to his two children, Camille stayed with Monet—and believed in his work—even as they lived in wretched rooms, were sometimes kicked out of those, and often suffered the indignities of destitution. She comforted him during his frequent emotional torments, even when he would leave her for long periods to go off on his own to paint in the countryside.

But Camille had her own demons � secrets that Monet could never penetrate, including one that when eventually revealed would pain him so deeply that he would never fully recover from its impact. For though Camille never once stopped loving the painter with her entire being, she was not immune to the loneliness that often came with being his partner.

A vividly-rendered portrait of both the rise of Impressionism and of the artist at the center of the movement, Claude and Camille is above all a love story of the highest romantic order.]]> 338 Stephanie Cowell 0307463214 John 3 3.83 2010 Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet
author: Stephanie Cowell
name: John
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves:
review:
The subject matter is interesting but the writing? Not so much.
]]> Origin (Robert Langdon, #5) 32307358 This an alternate cover for B01LY7FD0D

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend a major announcement--the unveiling of a discovery that "will change the face of science forever." The evening's host is Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old billionaire and futurist whose dazzling high-tech inventions and audacious predictions have made him a renowned global figure. Kirsch, who was one of Langdon's first students at Harvard two decades earlier, is about to reveal an astonishing breakthrough . . . one that will answer two of the fundamental questions of human existence.

As the event begins, Langdon and several hundred guests find themselves captivated by an utterly original presentation, which Langdon realizes will be far more controversial than he ever imagined. But the meticulously orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos, and Kirsch's precious discovery teeters on the brink of being lost forever. Reeling and facing an imminent threat, Langdon is forced into a desperate bid to escape Bilbao. With him is Ambra Vidal, the elegant museum director who worked with Kirsch to stage the provocative event. Together they flee to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch's secret.

Navigating the dark corridors of hidden history and extreme religion, Langdon and Vidal must evade a tormented enemy whose all-knowing power seems to emanate from Spain's Royal Palace itself . . . and who will stop at nothing to silence Edmond Kirsch. On a trail marked by modern art and enigmatic symbols, Langdon and Vidal uncover clues that ultimately bring them face-to-face with Kirsch's shocking discovery . . . and the breathtaking truth that has long eluded us. Origin is stunningly inventive--Dan Brown's most brilliant and entertaining novel to date]]> 482 Dan Brown John 3
Merged review:

There are some essential questions that you may be asking about the newest Dan Brown novel. 1) Is there a secretive cult? Yes. 2) Is there an exotic locale? Yes. 3) Does the action take span in less than a day? Yes. 4) Does it have a throwaway female partner that will never be mentioned again? Yes. 5) Does anyone reference the fact that in the last novel, Inferno, a third of the Earth's population was rendered sterile? No. 6) Is there a reference to Frozen's "Let It Go"? Unfortunately, yes. The latest Robert Langdon novel follows the tropes as before, and there is lot to roll eyes at. But I will say that I appreciate that the mysteries Brown centers his novels around aren't so much "whodunit" as much as intellectual conundrums about religion, philosophy, art, and science and that's admirable, even if the premise sometimes feels a little silly.]]> 3.87 2017 Origin (Robert Langdon, #5)
author: Dan Brown
name: John
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2017/10/09
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves:
review:
There are some essential questions that you may be asking about the newest Dan Brown novel. 1) Is there a secretive cult? Yes. 2) Is there an exotic locale? Yes. 3) Does the action take span in less than a day? Yes. 4) Does it have a throwaway female partner that will never be mentioned again? Yes. 5) Does anyone reference the fact that in the last novel, Inferno, a third of the Earth's population was rendered sterile? No. 6) Is there a reference to Frozen's "Let It Go"? Unfortunately, yes. The latest Robert Langdon novel follows the tropes as before, and there is lot to roll eyes at. But I will say that I appreciate that the mysteries Brown centers his novels around aren't so much "whodunit" as much as intellectual conundrums about religion, philosophy, art, and science and that's admirable, even if the premise sometimes feels a little silly.

Merged review:

There are some essential questions that you may be asking about the newest Dan Brown novel. 1) Is there a secretive cult? Yes. 2) Is there an exotic locale? Yes. 3) Does the action take span in less than a day? Yes. 4) Does it have a throwaway female partner that will never be mentioned again? Yes. 5) Does anyone reference the fact that in the last novel, Inferno, a third of the Earth's population was rendered sterile? No. 6) Is there a reference to Frozen's "Let It Go"? Unfortunately, yes. The latest Robert Langdon novel follows the tropes as before, and there is lot to roll eyes at. But I will say that I appreciate that the mysteries Brown centers his novels around aren't so much "whodunit" as much as intellectual conundrums about religion, philosophy, art, and science and that's admirable, even if the premise sometimes feels a little silly.
]]> <![CDATA[People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present]]> 56769532 Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.

Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.]]> 237 Dara Horn 0393531562 John 3 4.34 2021 People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
author: Dara Horn
name: John
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau]]> 58985481 —R. E. BURRILLO, author of Behind the Bears Ears

Craig Childs bears witness to rock art of the Colorado Plateau —bighorn sheep pecked behind boulders, tiny spirals in stone, human figures with upraised arms shifting with the desert light, each one a portal to the open mouth of time. With a spirit of generosity, humility, and love of the arid, intricate landscapes of the desert Southwest, Childs sets these ancient communications in context, inviting readers to look and listen deeply.]]> 224 Craig Childs 1948814579 John 4 4.06 Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau
author: Craig Childs
name: John
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/23
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves:
review:
I always appreciate Child's mix of autobiography, research, interviews, travelogue, and social commentary. It connects the past to the present in such interesting ways.
]]> <![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar John 3 Mainly a vibes book. 3.86 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: John
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves:
review:
Mainly a vibes book.
]]> <![CDATA[Wild and Crazy Guys: How the Comedy Mavericks of the '80s Changed Hollywood Forever]]> 42880492 Animal House, Caddyshack, and Ghostbusters.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYNEW YORK.

"An enjoyable romp that vividly captures the manic ups and downs of the remarkable group of funny folk who gave us a golden age of small and big screen comedy, fromSNL toGroundhog Day."
—Peter Biskind,author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

Wild and Crazy Guys opens in 1978 with Chevy Chase and Bill Murray taking bad-tempered swings at each other backstage at Saturday Night Live, and closes 21 years later with the two doing a skit in the same venue, poking fun at each other, their illustrious careers, triumphs and prat falls. In between, Nick de Semlyen takes us on a trip through the tumultuous '80s, delving behind the scenes of movies such as National Lampoon's Vacation, Beverly Hills Cop, The Blues Brothers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and dozens more. Chronicling the off-screen, larger-than-life antics of Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, John Candy, and Rick Moranis, it's got drugs, sex, punch-ups, webbed toes, and Bill Murray being pushed into a swimming pool by Hunter S. Thompson while tied to a lawn chair. What's not to like?

Based on candid interviews from many of the stars themselves, as well as those in their immediate orbit, including directors John Landis, Carl Reiner, and Amy Heckerling, Wild and Crazy Guys is a fantastic insider account of the friendships, feuds, triumphs, and disasters experienced by these beloved comedians. Hilarious and revealing, it is both a hidden history of the most fertile period ever for screen comedy and a celebration of some of the most popular films of all time.

Praise for Wild and Crazy Guys:

"Eminently readable . . . Children of the 1980s, take note:this is a fond, engrossing look back at the making of movies that became cultural touchstones."
�Booklist(starred review).

"Nick de Semlyen smartly charts the pinballing career paths of the stars of this new comic wave. . . . His punchy, nonstop narrative . . . tells a [story] where art and commerce smash hard against each other, sometimes causing destruction, but sometimes making sparks fly."
�The Sunday Times (UK)]]> 352 Nick de Semlyen 1984826646 John 4 4.04 2019 Wild and Crazy Guys: How the Comedy Mavericks of the '80s Changed Hollywood Forever
author: Nick de Semlyen
name: John
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/14
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.ձ> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 John 5 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: John
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/07
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves:
review:
I think about so many parts of this book after reading. The parent-child relationship told in algorithms, the nature of love, the anxiety of parenting--there is so much to think about.
]]> <![CDATA[Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences]]> 112974854
They land on an idea: to retrace the thousands of miles Barbara trekked with Jedidiah’s father, travel writer Peter Jenkins, as part of the Walk Across America book trilogy that became a sensation in the 1970s. Beginning in New Orleans, they set off for the Oregon coast, listening to podcasts about outlaws and cult leaders—the only media they can agree on—while reliving the journey that changed Barbara’s life. Jedidiah discovers who Barbara was as a thirty-year-old writer walking across America and who she is now, as a parent who loves her son yet holds on to a version of faith that sees his sexuality as a sin.

Along the way, he peels back the layers of questions millions are asking: How do we stay in relationship when it hurts? When do boundaries turn into separation? When do we stand up for ourselves, and when do we let it go?

Tender, smart, and profound, Mother, Nature is a story of a remarkable mother-son bond and a moving meditation on the complexities of love.]]> 221 Jedidiah Jenkins 0593137264 John 4 4.02 2023 Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences
author: Jedidiah Jenkins
name: John
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story]]> 62047954 400 Sam Wasson 006303784X John 3 3.74 2023 The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story
author: Sam Wasson
name: John
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Chivalry 6578055
Selected Shorts is an award-winning series of classic and contemporary short fiction read by acclaimed actors. The readings are recorded live at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City. The Selected Shorts radio series is a co-production of Symphony Space and WNYC, New York Public Radio, and is heard on public radio stations nationwide."]]> 1 Neil Gaiman John 4 4.12 2022 Chivalry
author: Neil Gaiman
name: John
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/23
date added: 2024/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> The Fury 123206645 A masterfully paced thriller about a reclusive ex–movie star and her famous friends whose spontaneous trip to a private Greek island is upended by a murder � from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient.

This is a tale of murder.

Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it?

Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island.

I tell you this because you may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time � it caused a real stir in the tabloids, if you remember. It had all the necessary ingredients for a press a celebrity; a private island cut off by the wind…and a murder.

We found ourselves trapped there overnight. Our old friendships concealed hatred and a desire for revenge. What followed was a game of cat and mouse � a battle of wits, full of twists and turns, building to an unforgettable climax. The night ended in violence and death, as one of us was found murdered.

But who am I?

My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.]]> 298 Alex Michaelides 125075898X John 3 3.34 2024 The Fury
author: Alex Michaelides
name: John
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2024/02/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Sun Down Motel 45885644
Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn't right at the Sun Down, and before long she's determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden…]]> 327 Simone St. James 0440000173 John 3 3.99 2020 The Sun Down Motel
author: Simone St. James
name: John
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/11
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spook Street (Slough House, #4)]]> 30282181
But River has other things to worry about. A bomb goes off in the middle of a busy shopping center and kills forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.]]> 307 Mick Herron John 4 4.36 2017 Spook Street (Slough House, #4)
author: Mick Herron
name: John
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves:
review:
This is an incredibly entertaining series.
]]> <![CDATA[Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies]]> 28260588
From bestselling author Ross King, a brilliant portrait of legendary artist Claude Monet and the story of his most memorable achievement, the water lilies.

Claude Monet is perhaps the world’s most beloved artist, and among all his creations, the paintings of the water lilies in his garden at Giverny are most famous. Seeing them in museums around the world, viewers are transported by the power of Monet’s brush into a peaceful world of harmonious nature. Monet himself intended them to provide “an asylum of peaceful meditation.� Yet, as Ross King reveals in his magisterial chronicle of both artist and masterpiece, these beautiful canvases belie the intense frustration Monet experienced at the difficulties of capturing the fugitive effects of light, water, and color. They also reflect the terrible personal torments Monet suffered in the last dozen years of his life.

Mad Enchantment tells the full story behind the creation of the Water Lilies , as the horrors of World War I came ever closer to Paris and Giverny, and a new generation of younger artists, led by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, were challenging the achievements of Impressionism. By early 1914, French newspapers were reporting that Monet, by then 73 and one of the world’s wealthiest, most celebrated painters, had retired his brushes. He had lost his beloved wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean. His famously acute vision--what Paul Cezanne called "the most prodigious eye in the history of painting"--was threatened by cataracts. And yet, despite ill health, self-doubt, and advancing age, Monet began painting again on a more ambitious scale than ever before. Linking great artistic achievement to the personal and historical dramas unfolding around it, Ross King presents the most intimate and revealing portrait of an iconic figure in world culture--from his lavish lifestyle and tempestuous personality to his close friendship with the fiery war leader Georges Clemenceau, who regarded the Water Lilies as one of the highest expressions of the human spirit.]]> 416 Ross King 1632860120 John 4 4.03 2016 Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies
author: Ross King
name: John
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2024/01/31
shelves:
review:
What an interesting time in France. So many funny little stories (a politician's wife being abducted by an orangutan; a politician dying during fellatio) mixed with the exploration of Monet's later work.
]]> The Fraud 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith John 5 3.25 2023 The Fraud
author: Zadie Smith
name: John
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/01/14
shelves:
review:
Something in the way it was so richly drawn grabbed me.
]]> Making It So 101160634
From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations with his indelible command of stage and screen. Now, he presents his long-awaited memoir, Making It So, a revealing portrait of an artist whose astonishing life—from his humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England, to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim—proves a story as exuberant, definitive, and enduring as the author himself.]]> 469 Patrick Stewart 1982167734 John 4 4.28 2023 Making It So
author: Patrick Stewart
name: John
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/14
shelves:
review:
This was a really interesting look into the working class acting of England and seeing it as any trade. Really entertaining book.
]]> If You Would Have Told Me 77920725 New York Times Bestseller

�...I love him, and I respect him, and I need him. We all do.�
—from the foreword by Jamie Lee Curtis

If you would have told a young John Stamos flipping burgers at his dad’s fast-food joint that one day he’d be a household name and that, at the height of his success, he’d be living alone, divorced, with no kids, high on a cocktail of forgetting, he might’ve asked, “You want fries with that?�

John burst onto the scene in General Hospital, propelling him into the teen idol stratosphere, a place that’s often a point of no return. But Stamos beat the odds and over the past four decades has proved himself to be one of his generation’s most successful and beloved actors. Whether showing off his comedic chops on Full House or his dramatic skills on ER, pushing the boundaries on Broadway or living out his youthful dreams as an honorary Beach Boy, John has surprised everyone, most of all himself.

A universal story about friendship, love, loss, and the courage to embrace love once more, John Stamos’s memoir is filled with some of the most memorable names in Hollywood, both old and new. Funny, deeply poignant, and brutally honest, If You Would Have Told Me is a portrait of a boy who went from believing in Disney magic to a man who learns that we have to create our own magical moments in life.]]> 333 John Stamos 1250890977 John 3 3.78 2023 If You Would Have Told Me
author: John Stamos
name: John
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/05
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves:
review:
John Stamos seems like an entertainer from a different time, hanging out with Don Rickles and Frank Sinatra and the general "I'm-an-Entertainer!" vibe. He's so classic that he even married someone that is Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's age.
]]> <![CDATA[King Suckerman (D.C. Quartet, #2)]]> 307443 Brilliantly evoking the retrocool of seventies music, clothes, and movies, King Suckerman is bold, real, and violent -- a supercharged thriller in the hardboiled tradition of Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and Pulp Fiction. Here is George Pelecanos's strongest work to date -- a book that is certain to win him a whole new audience of admirers.

]]> 336 George P. Pelecanos 2020490684 John 4 Great dialogue. 3.98 1997 King Suckerman (D.C. Quartet, #2)
author: George P. Pelecanos
name: John
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves:
review:
Great dialogue.
]]> The Woman in Me 63133205 The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]> 288 Britney Spears 1668009048 John 2 3.83 2023 The Woman in Me
author: Britney Spears
name: John
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/18
date added: 2023/12/18
shelves:
review:
I wonder how much the ghostwriter had to do to make this feel coherent.
]]> <![CDATA[Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens]]> 152034931 A rollicking historyof England's earliest kings and queens, a story ofnarcissists, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars,and more, fromaward-winning British actor and comedian David Mitchell

Think you know the kings and queens of England? Think again.

In Unruly , David Mitchell explores how early England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects� destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky bastards who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

Taking us right back to King Arthur ( he didn’t exist), Mitchell tells the founding story of post-Roman England right up to the reign of Elizabeth I ( she dies), as the monarchy began to lose its power. It’s a tale of bizarre and curious ascensions, inadequate self-control, and at least one total Cnut, as the English evolved from having their crops stolen by the thug with the largest armed gang to bowing and paying taxes to a divinely anointed King.

How this happened, who it happened to, and why the hell it matters are all questions Mitchell answers with brilliance, wit, and the full erudition of a man who once studied history—and is damned if he’ll let it off the hook for the mess it’s made of everything.

A funny book that takes history seriously, Unruly is for anyone who has ever wondered how the monarchy came to be—and who is to blame.]]> 433 David Mitchell 0593728491 John 4 A fun way to learn history. 4.13 2023 Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens
author: David Mitchell
name: John
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/17
date added: 2023/12/17
shelves:
review:
A fun way to learn history.
]]> <![CDATA[60 Songs That Explain the '90s]]> 123204507 Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.]]> 288 Rob Harvilla 1538759462 John 4 to-read 3.88 2023 60 Songs That Explain the '90s
author: Rob Harvilla
name: John
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/04
date added: 2023/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:
Thematically linked songs are grouped together for analysis. Leans heavily into the personal, but that's, like, you know, like totally on 90s brand.
]]> A Pocketful of Happiness 60727827 Withnail and I in 1987. When his beloved wife Joan died in 2021 after almost forty years together, she set him a challenge: to find a pocketful of happiness in every day.

The result is this book.

Set between the present day and flashbacks to delightfully indiscreet diary entries recalling landmarks from his remarkable life and glittering career, this is an immensely personal and profound memoir that celebrates and cherishes life’s unexpected joys.
Funny, moving and perceptive, A Pocketful of Happiness is an insight into the life of a much loved British actor.]]> 352 Richard E. Grant 1398519472 John 4 4.32 2022 A Pocketful of Happiness
author: Richard E. Grant
name: John
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/17
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves:
review:
Incredibly cleareyed and honest.
]]> The Exchange (The Firm, #2) 123285511 #1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham delivers high-flying international suspense in a stunning new legal thriller that marks the return of Mitch McDeere, the brilliant hero of The Firm.

What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? The answer is in The Exchange, the riveting sequel to The Firm, the blockbuster thrillerthat launched the careerof America’s favorite storyteller. It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firmin the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favor that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the center of a sinister plot that has worldwideimplications—and once again endangers his colleagues, friends, and family. Mitch has becomea master at staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there’s nowhereto hide.]]> 338 John Grisham 0385548958 John 2 3.39 2023 The Exchange (The Firm, #2)
author: John Grisham
name: John
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/11/16
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves:
review:
This is such a weird sequel. One might expect that the story somehow connects and uses Mitch McDeere as the character we are familiar with. Instead it's like Grisham thought he'd write a Tom Clancy novel and Mitch McDeere is now Jack Ryan? I'd like to remind everyone that in The Firm, McDeere's greatest feat is photocopying things.
]]> <![CDATA[Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot, #24)]]> 16305
Ever since Arlena's arrival the air had been thick with sexual tension. Each of the guests had a motive to kill her. But Hercule Poirot suspects that this apparent 'crime of passion' conceals something much more evil.]]> 220 Agatha Christie 1579126286 John 3 3.99 1941 Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot, #24)
author: Agatha Christie
name: John
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1941
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/19
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation]]> 123410681
Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The Indigenous women’s basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 World’s Fair. Celebrating women like these who acted on their confidence outdoors, Wild Girls brings new context to misunderstood icons like Sacagawea and Pocahontas, and to underappreciated figures like Native American activist writer Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, farmworkers� champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.

This beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women’s independence, resourcefulness, and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, Wild Girls evokes landscapes as richly as the girls who roamed in them—and argues for equal access to outdoor spaces for young women of every race and class today.]]> 192 Tiya Miles 1324020873 John 3 3.52 2023 Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation
author: Tiya Miles
name: John
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves:
review:
Opening essay is great. Then a little too much like a Wikipedia entry.
]]> <![CDATA[Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever]]> 65650231
You asked whether Siskel & Ebert had given it “two thumbs up.�

On a cold Saturday afternoon in 1975, two men (who had known each other for eight years before they’d ever exchanged a word) met for lunch in a Chicago pub. Gene Siskel was the film critic for the Chicago Tribune . Roger Ebert had recently won the Pulitzer Prize—the first ever awarded to a film critic—for his work at the Chicago Sun-Times. To say they despised each other was an understatement.

When they reluctantly agreed to collaborate on a new movie review show with PBS, there was at least as much sparring off-camera as on. No decision—from which films to cover to who would read the lead review to how to pronounce foreign titles—was made without conflict, but their often-antagonistic partnership (which later transformed into genuine friendship) made for great television. In the years that followed, their signature “Two thumbs up!� would become the most trusted critical brand in Hollywood.

In Opposable Thumbs , award-winning editor and film critic Matt Singer eavesdrops on their iconic balcony set, detailing their rise from making a few hundred dollars a week on local Chicago PBS to securing multimillion-dollar contracts for a syndicated series (a move that convinced a young local host named Oprah Winfrey to do the same). Their partnership was cut short when Gene Siskel passed away in February of 1999 after a battle with brain cancer that he’d kept secret from everyone outside his immediate family—including Roger Ebert, who never got to say goodbye to his longtime partner. But their influence on in the way we talk about (and think about) movies continues to this day.]]> 352 Matt Singer 0593540158 John 4 4.03 2023 Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever
author: Matt Singer
name: John
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/20
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves:
review:
A marriage based in mutual disrespect.
]]> <![CDATA[Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Impostor Syndrome]]> 125930612
Aparna Nancherla is a superstar comedian on the rise—a darling of Netflix and Comedy Central’s comedy special lineups, a headliner at comedy shows and music festivals, a frequenter of late night television and the subject of numerous profiles. She’s also a successful actor who has written a barrage of thoughtful essays published by the likes of the New York Times . If you ask her, though, she’s a total fraud. She’d hate to admit it, but no one does impostor syndrome quite like Aparna Nancherla.

UNRELIABLE NARRATOR is a collection of essays that uses Aparna’s signature humor to illuminate an interior life, one constantly bossed around by her depression (whom she calls Brenda), laced with anxiety like a horror movie full of jump-scares, and plagued by an unrepenting love-hate relationship with her career as a painfully shy standup comedian. But luckily, crippling self-doubt comes with the gift of keen self-examination.These essays deliver hilarious and incredibly insightful meditations on body image, productivity culture, the ultra-meme-ability of mental health language, and who, exactly, gets to make art “about nothing.� Despite her own arguments to the contrary, UNRELIABLE NARRATOR is undeniable proof that Aparna is a force—as a comedian and author alike—to be reckoned with.]]> 304 Aparna Nancherla 1984879804 John 4 3.56 2023 Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Impostor Syndrome
author: Aparna Nancherla
name: John
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/26
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves:
review:
The interviews made it seem like it was going to be more memoir-ish but this is closer related to a series of essays on topics like mental health, representation, etc.
]]> None of This Is True 62334530
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 John 4 to-read 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: John
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:
Somehow gains sympathy for a man that started dating his girlfriend's 16 year old daughter?
]]> <![CDATA[MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios]]> 77264987
The unauthorized, behind-the-scenes story of the stunning rise―and suddenly uncertain reign―of the most transformative cultural phenomenon of our the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel Entertainment was a moribund toymaker not even twenty years ago. Today, Marvel Studios is the dominant player both in Hollywood and in global pop culture. How did an upstart studio conquer the world? In MCU , beloved culture writers Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards draw on more than a hundred interviews with actors, producers, directors, and writers to present the definitive chronicle of Marvel Studios and its sole, ongoing production, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For all its outward success, the studio was forged by near-constant conflict, from the contentious hiring of Robert Downey Jr. for its 2008 debut, Iron Man , all the way up to the disappointment of Ant-Man and the Quantumania and shocking departures of multiple Marvel executives in 2023. Throughout, the authors demonstrate that the original genius of Marvel was its resurrection and modification of Hollywood’s old studio system. But will it survive its own spectacular achievements? Dishy and authoritative, MCU is the first book to tell the Marvel Studios story in full―and an essential, effervescent account of American mass culture.]]> 528 Joanna Robinson 1631497510 John 4 4.19 2023 MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios
author: Joanna Robinson
name: John
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/14
date added: 2023/11/14
shelves:
review:
Really interesting to see it all put together in one place to see how everything came together.
]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 John 4 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: John
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/10
date added: 2023/11/12
shelves:
review:
What a strange book. But somehow alluring?
]]> <![CDATA[Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs]]> 62039305
Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food, they’re kids' food, they’re hangover food, and they’re deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America's Indigenous traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, but you can’t avoid the great American hot dog.

Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelog documenting a cross-country road trip researching them as they’re served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus, her pets, and her ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021. It’s a brief window into the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the resources to temper, but not the interest.

So grab a dog, lay out your picnic blanket, and dig into the delicious and inevitable product of centuries of violence, poverty, and ambition, now rolling around at your local 7-Eleven.]]> 301 Jamie Loftus 1250847745 John 4 3.90 2023 Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs
author: Jamie Loftus
name: John
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/25
date added: 2023/10/30
shelves:
review:
A sort of hot dog telescope view of America.
]]> A Novel Obsession 58395039
“I can’t help but compare our worth as writers, as lovers, as women. Is anything solely mine, or will I always dwell in someone else’s shadow?�

Twenty-four-year-old bookseller and New Yorker Naomi Ackerman, desperate to write a novel, struggles to find the right story to tell. When, after years of disastrous Tinder dates, she meets Caleb—a perfectly nice guy with a Welsh accent and a unique patience for all of her quirks—she feels she's finally stumbled onto a time-honored subject: love. But then Caleb's ex-girlfriend, Rosemary, enters the scene.

When Naomi learns that Rosemary is not safely tucked away overseas as she'd assumed but in fact lives in New York and works in the literary world, she is fundamentally threatened and intrigued in equal measure. On paper, Rosemary sounds like a better version of Naomi—but if they both fell for the same man, they must have something more essential in common.

Determined to figure out how their stories intertwine, Naomi's casual Instagram stalking morphs into a full-blown friendship under false pretenses. She can't seem to get herself to quit Rosemary, in whom she discovers an unexpected confidant—and she can't stop writing about her either, having now found a more interesting subject for her nascent novel. As her lies and half-truths spiral out of her control, and fact and fiction become increasingly difficult to separate, Naomi manipulates the most important people in her life—her family, her friends, Caleb, Rosemary, and, perhaps most devastatingly, herself—in pursuit of her craft. Ultimately, she’s forced to decide who and what she's willing to sacrifice to write them all the perfect ending.]]> 336 Caitlin Barasch 0593185595 John 4 3.47 2022 A Novel Obsession
author: Caitlin Barasch
name: John
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/03
date added: 2023/10/04
shelves:
review:

]]> I Have Some Questions for You 61053829
But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.]]> 438 Rebecca Makkai 0593490142 John 4 3.57 2023 I Have Some Questions for You
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: John
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/25
date added: 2023/09/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession]]> 62873378 One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.]]> 224 Michael Finkel 0525657320 John 3 3.92 2023 The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
author: Michael Finkel
name: John
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/09
date added: 2023/09/13
shelves:
review:
Took an interesting story and made it dry.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage]]> 62192505
“This book takes you so close to the action that you can smell the sweat, cigar smoke, and bad cologne that brought these movies to life.”—Paul Scheer

The Last Action Heroes opens in May 1990 in Cannes, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone waltzing together, cheered on by a crowd of famous faces. After years of bitter combat—Stallone once threw a bowl of flowers at Schwarzenegger’s head, and the body count in Schwarzenegger’s Commando was increased so the film would “have a bigger dick than Rambo ”—the world’s biggest action stars have at last made peace.

In this wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie, Nick de Semlyen charts Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War. He also reveals fascinating untold stories of the colorful characters who ascended in their high-kickers Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan, glowering tough guys Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal, and quipping troublemakers Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis. But as time rolled on, the era of the invincible action hero who used muscle, martial arts, or the perfect weapon to save the day began to fade. When Jurassic Park trounced Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero in 1993, the glory days of these macho men—and the vision of masculinity they celebrated—were officially over.

Drawing on candid interviews with the action stars themselves, plus their collaborators, friends, and foes, The Last Action Heroes is a no-holds-barred account of a period in Hollywood history when there were no limits to the heights of fame these men achieved, or to the mayhem they wrought, on-screen and off.]]> 352 Nick de Semlyen 059323880X John 4 4.10 2023 The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage
author: Nick de Semlyen
name: John
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/13
date added: 2023/09/13
shelves:
review:
This is a really fun book, especially if you grew up watching these movies, but even without that context, the pure nuttiness of unbridled masculinity and the deep insecurity of these stars is hilarious. There needs to be an Ed Wood-style film about Steven Seagal directing On Deadly Ground.
]]> <![CDATA[Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s]]> 18079520 The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports� most-revered—and dominant—dynasties.

The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin "Magic" Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lakers played basketball with gusto and pizzazz, unleashing their famed "Showtime" run-and-gun style on a league unprepared for their speed and ferocity—and became the most captivating show in sports and, arguably, in all-around American entertainment. The Lakers� roster overflowed with exciting all-star-caliber players, including center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and they were led by the incomparable Pat Riley, known for his slicked-back hair, his Armani suits, and his arrogant strut. Hollywood’s biggest celebrities lined the court and gorgeous women flocked to the arena. Best of all, the team was a winner. Between 1980 and 1991, the Lakers played in an unmatched nine NBA championship series, capturing five of them.

Bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost three hundred interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers� epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players� decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end—marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV�Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.]]> 496 Jeff Pearlman 1592407552 John 4 4.33 2014 Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s
author: Jeff Pearlman
name: John
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/01
date added: 2023/09/05
shelves:
review:
A fun overview of a great time in basketball.
]]> <![CDATA[The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act]]> 57693266
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER , TIME MAGAZINE , SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE , VOX, SALON, LIT HUB, AND VANITY FAIR

“Entertaining and illuminating.�-- The New Yorker * “Compulsively readable.�-- New York Times * “Delicious, humane, probing.�-- Vulture * “The best and most important book about acting I’ve ever read.�--Nathan Lane

The critically acclaimed cultural history of Method acting―an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood.

On stage and screen, we know a great performance when we see it. But how do actors draw from their bodies and minds to turn their selves into art? What is the craft of being an authentic fake? More than a century ago, amid tsarist Russia’s crushing repression, one of the most talented actors ever, Konstantin Stanislavski, asked these very questions, reached deep into himself, and emerged with an answer. How his “system� remade itself into the Method and forever transformed American theater and film is an unlikely saga that has never before been fully told.

Now, critic and theater director Isaac Butler chronicles the history of the Method in a narrative that transports readers from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles, from The Seagull to A Streetcar Named Desire to Raging Bull . He traces how a cohort of American mavericks--including Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and the storied Group Theatre--refashioned Stanislavski’s ideas for a Depression-plagued nation that had yet to find its place as an artistic powerhouse. The Group’s feuds and rivalries would, in turn, shape generations of actors who enabled Hollywood to become the global dream-factory it is today. Some of these performers the Method would uplift; others, it would destroy. Long after its midcentury heyday, the Method lives on as one of the most influential--and misunderstood--ideas in American culture.

Studded with marquee names--from Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and Elia Kazan, to James Baldwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Dustin Hoffman-- The Method is a spirited history of ideas and a must-read for any fan of Broadway or American film.]]> 512 Isaac Butler 1635574773 John 4 4.25 2022 The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act
author: Isaac Butler
name: John
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/16
date added: 2023/08/16
shelves:
review:
This was a thorough look at the development of method acting with some interesting anecdotes involving Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino. Exhaustive but not exhausting.
]]> Let Us Descend 87556695
“‘Let us descend,� the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’� � Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.]]> 305 Jesmyn Ward 198210449X John 0 to-read 3.68 2023 Let Us Descend
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: John
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me]]> 62365898 "Aisha Harris is one of our smartest, most entertaining modern cultural critics. The nine pieces offer insight on Stevie Wonder, the Spice Girls, Pen15, and New Girl--among many other pop artifacts, of course--which might as well be parlance for, 'Read me immediately.'"

--ELLE

Aisha Harris has made a name for herself as someone you can turn to for a razor-sharp take on whatever show or movie everyone is talking about. Now, she turns her talents inward, mining the benchmarks of her nineties childhood and beyond to analyze the tropes that are shaping all of us, and our ability to shape them right back.

In the opening essay, an interaction with Chance the Rapper prompts an investigation into the origin myth of her name. Elsewhere, Aisha traces the evolution of the "Black Friend" trope from its Twainian origins through to the heyday of the Spice Girls, teen comedies like Clueless, and sitcoms of the New Girl variety. And she examines the overlap of taste and identity in this era, rejecting the patriarchal ethos that you are what you like. Whatever the subject, sitting down with her book feels like hanging out with your smart, hilarious, pop culture-obsessed friend--and it's a delight.]]> 288 Aisha Harris 0063249944 John 4 3.81 2023 Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me
author: Aisha Harris
name: John
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/07
date added: 2023/08/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Underexposed!: The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made]]> 51075395
Foreword by Fred Dekker

For most films, it’s a long, strange road from concept to screen, and sometimes those roads lead to dead ends. In Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made , screenwriter and filmmaker Joshua Hull guides readers through development hell. With humor and reverence, Hull details the speed bumps and roadblocks that kept these films from ever reaching the silver screen. From the misguided and rejected, like Stanley Kubrick’s Lord of the Rings starring the Beatles; to films that changed hands and pulled a U-turn in development, like Steven Spielberg’s planned Oldboy adaptation starring Will Smith; to would-be masterpieces that might still see the light of day, like Guillermo del Toro’s In the Mountains of Madness , Hull discusses plotlines, rumored casting, and more.

To help bring these lost projects to life, 50 artists from around the world, in association with the online art collective PosterSpy, have contributed original posters that accompany each essay and give a glimpse of what might have been.]]> 256 Joshua Hull 1419744690 John 4 3.66 Underexposed!: The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made
author: Joshua Hull
name: John
average rating: 3.66
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/04
date added: 2023/08/07
shelves:
review:
An fun exploration of some great directors and their failed projects.
]]> Absolution 101404407
In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer “on loan� to US Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the “wretchedness� she sees all around her.

When Tricia miscarries, Charlene sweeps her into a cabal of well-dressed do-gooder American wives. Armed with baskets filled with candy and toys, they descend on hospitals, orphanages, and a leper colony on the coast, determined to relieve suffering, no matter the cost.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter reaches out to Tricia, now widowed and living in Washington. As the two relive their shared experience in Saigon, they are forced to come to terms with the ways their own lives have been shaped and stunted by Charlene’s pursuit of “inconsequential good.�

With a narrative impact that recalls Graham Greene’s The Quiet American , Alice McDermott confronts the unresolved mysteries and ironies of America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.]]> 324 Alice McDermott 0374610487 John 0 to-read 3.69 2023 Absolution
author: Alice McDermott
name: John
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Under the Golden Sun 61884918 A remarkable novel of family and love during a time of war, * Jenny Ashcroft's Under the Golden Sun follows a soul-searching young woman who takes a leap of faith and discovers a place to call home and someone to share her heart.



England, 1941. The world is at war. London is under siege as the German blitz pounds the city without warning, without mercy. Rose Hamilton did her part as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force until she was unfairly discharged following a tragic loss. Working as a secretary on a Devon farmland, Rose is out of harm's way, but she needs to contribute to something greater than herself to truly recover.

Answering a newspaper advertisement for a companion to accompany an orphaned child to Australia, Rose becomes enchanted with four-year-old Walter Lucknow. Shy, imaginative, and kind, the boy lost his parents and has been living in near seclusion with his elder great aunt. As heir to a wealthy Australian cattle station, Walter must return to his homeland and his mother's family.

Leaving her own family--and fianc�--Rose braves the long, dangerous voyage across Pacific waters where war is imminent to see Walter safely home. But upon arrival, Rose learns the truth about Walter's relationship to the Lucknows and the land he's supposed to inherit, a truth that haunts the boy's Uncle Max, a wounded pilot scarred inside and out. And as Max opens his heart up to Walter, Rose is drawn to the man's strength and compassion, finding herself torn between returning to England and staying with the child and man she's grown to love.

*New York Times bestselling author Karen White]]> 352 Jenny Ashcroft 1250793386 John 0 to-read 3.87 2020 Under the Golden Sun
author: Jenny Ashcroft
name: John
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The One That Got Away 61884908
Two years together.
Twenty years apart.
One day to change their story.

2000. Benjamin’s world is turned upside down the night he meets Clara. Instinctively, he knows that they are meant for each other, but a devastating mistake on their last night at university will take their lives in very different directions.

20 years later, Clara has a high-profile job and a handsome husband. But despite the trappings of success, she isn't happy, and she knows that a piece of her heart still belongs to Benjamin, the boy she fell in love with years earlier. The boy whose life she fears she ruined.

When a bombing is reported in the city where they first met, Clara is pulled back to a place she tries not to remember and the first love she could never forget. Searching for Benjamin, Clara is forced to confront the events that tore them apart. But is it too late to put right what went wrong?

Across the miles and spanning decades, Charlotte Rixon's The One That Got Away is a sweeping, poignant story about growing up, growing apart, the people who first steal our hearts, and the surprising, winding roads that love can take us on, for readers of Jill Santopolo, Rosie Walsh, and Colleen Hoover.]]> 336 Charlotte Rixon 1250285666 John 0 to-read 3.60 2023 The One That Got Away
author: Charlotte Rixon
name: John
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sparrow 98654347 Told from the perspective of an enslaved boy being raised in a Roman brothel, a stunning literary historical novel of identity, family, suffering, and freedom

In a brothel on the Spanish coast during the waning years of the Roman Empire, a young enslaved boy of unknown parentage is growing up. His world is a kitchen, then an herb-scented garden, followed by a loud and dangerous tavern, and finally, the mysterious upstairs where the “wolves� do their business.

The wolves, named after the muses and coming from across the vast empire, are Sparrow’s surrogate family. They are his mothers and his sisters, his guides in a rough life, his solace from it. When he is not being told stories by his beloved Euterpe, he runs errands for her lover, the cook, while trying to avoid the blows of their brutal overseer or the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene. But a hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the little community that has been his whole world.

Through meticulous research and bold imagination, James Hynes brings the entirety of a Roman city to vivid life, recreating old Pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity, and introduces readers to one of the most powerfully affecting and memorable characters of recent fiction. Sparrow is an enthralling, heartbreaking novel of identity, endurance, and love in a dangerous and changing time.]]> 394 James Hynes 1419771248 John 0 to-read 3.88 2023 Sparrow
author: James Hynes
name: John
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>