Jenna's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 02 Apr 2025 17:52:38 -0700 60 Jenna's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Fable for the End of the World]]> 209594872 The Last of Us meets The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in this standalone dystopian romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks everything.

By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.

Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt—enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.

Melinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.

When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs—the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she’s had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother, she might stand a chance of staying alive.

For Melinoë, this is a game she can’t afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.

As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there’s more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she’s capable of more than killing.

And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.]]> 384 Ava Reid 0063211556 Jenna 0 to-read 3.83 2025 Fable for the End of the World
author: Ava Reid
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> <![CDATA[How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith]]> 62121600
The decisive moments in life are those pivot points when we’re called on to push past our fears and act with strength. With How We Learn to Be Brave , Bishop Mariann Budde teaches us to respond with clarity and grace even in the toughest times. Being brave is not a singular occurrence; it’s a journey that we can choose to undertake every day.
Here, Bishop Budde explores the full range of decisive moments, from the most visible and dramatic (the decision to go), to the internal and personal (the decision to stay), to brave choices made with an eye toward the future (the decision to start), those born of suffering (the decision to accept that which we did not choose), and those that come unexpectedly (the decision to step up to the plate). Drawing on examples ranging from Harry Potter to the Gospel According to Luke, she seamlessly weaves together personal experiences with stories from scripture, history, and pop culture to underscore both the universality of these moments and the particular call each one of us must heed when they arrive.
With Bishop Budde’s wisdom, readers will learn to live and to respond according to their true beliefs and in ways that align with their best selves. How We Learn to Be Brave will provide much-needed fortitude and insight to anyone searching for answers in uncertain times.]]> 201 Mariann Edgar Budde 0593539214 Jenna 4 4.31 2023 How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith
author: Mariann Edgar Budde
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> The Hole 51283868
One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole—a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.]]> 92 Hiroko Oyamada 0811228878 Jenna 3 3.47 2013 The Hole
author: Hiroko Oyamada
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> All the Colors of the Dark 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Jenna 0 to-read 4.23 2024 All the Colors of the Dark
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> Whereabouts 53438824
This is the first novel she has written in Italian and translated into English. It brims with the impulse to cross barriers. By grafting herself onto a new literary language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic achievement.]]> 157 Jhumpa Lahiri 0593318315 Jenna 4 3.76 2018 Whereabouts
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
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]]> Roman Stories 125077431
In “The Boundary,� one family vacations in the Roman countryside, though we see their lives through the eyes of the caretaker’s daughter, who nurses a wound from her family’s immigrant past. In “P’s Parties,� a Roman couple, now empty nesters, finds comfort and community with foreigners at their friend’s yearly birthday gathering—until the husband crosses a line. And in “The Steps,� on a public staircase that connects two neighborhoods and the residents who climb up and down it, we see Italy’s capital in all of its social and cultural variegations, filled with the tensions of a changing visibility and invisibility, random acts of aggression, the challenge of straddling worlds and cultures, and the meaning of home.

These are splendid, searching stories, written in Jhumpa Lahiri’s adopted language of Italian and seamlessly translated by the author and by Knopf editor Todd Portnowitz. Stories steeped in the moods of Italian master Alberto Moravia and guided, in the concluding tale, by the ineluctable ghost of Dante Alighieri, whose words lead the protagonist toward a new way of life.]]> 224 Jhumpa Lahiri Jenna 4 3.77 2023 Roman Stories
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
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]]> Blood Sweat Tears 210557075
Including stories from:
Heather Anderson, author of Thirst and Mud, Rocks, Blazes.
Katie Ives, author of Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams
Bronwyn Preece, author of knee deep in high water : riding the Muskwa-Kechika
Christine Reed, author of Alone in Wonderland]]> 294 Christine Reed 1734841826 Jenna 0 to-read 4.61 Blood Sweat Tears
author: Christine Reed
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.61
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide]]> 173187
After the German eugenics campaign of the 1920s for forced sterilization of the "unfit," it was but one step to "euthanasia," which in the Nazi context meant systematic murder of Jews. Building on interviews with former Nazi physicians and their prisoners, Lifton presents a disturbing portrait of careerists who killed to overcome feelings of powerlessness.

He includes a chapter on Josef Mengele and one on Eduard Wirths, the "kind, decent" doctor (as some inmates described him) who set up the Auschwitz death machinery. Lifton also psychoanalyzes the German people, scarred by the devastation of World War I and mystically seeking regeneration. This profound study ranks with the most insightful books on the Holocaust.]]> 561 Robert Jay Lifton 0465049052 Jenna 0 to-read 4.12 1986 The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
author: Robert Jay Lifton
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[You Could Make This Place Beautiful]]> 61273812 You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.]]> 320 Maggie Smith 1982185856 Jenna 0 to-read 4.03 2023 You Could Make This Place Beautiful
author: Maggie Smith
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World]]> 40876575 Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today.

After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way—and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders the world over. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today.

Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, and beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he champions ideas whose time have come.

Every progressive milestone of civilization—from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy—was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.]]> 262 Rutger Bregman 0316471909 Jenna 0 to-read 4.24 2014 Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
author: Rutger Bregman
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love]]> 60746476 From the globally-recognized personal finance educator and social media star behind Her First $100K, an inclusive guide to all things money--from managing debt to investing and voting with your dollars

Tori Dunlap was always good with money. As a kid, she watched her prudent parents balance their checkbook every month and learned to save for musical tickets by gathering pennies in an Altoids tin. But she quickly discovered that her experience with money was pretty unusual, especially among her female friends.

It wasn't our fault. Investigating this financial literacy and wealth gap, Tori found that girls are significantly less likely to receive a holistic financial education; we're taught to restrain our spending, while boys are taught about investing and rewarded for pursuing wealth. In adulthood, women are hounded by the unfounded stereotype of the frivolous spenders whose lattes are to blame for the wealth gap. And when something like, say, a global pandemic happens, we're the first to have jobs cut and the last to re-enter the workforce. It's no wonder money is a source of anxiety and a barrier to equality for so many of us.

But what if money didn't mean restriction, and instead, choice? The ability to luxuriously travel, quit toxic jobs, donate to important organizations, retire early? The freedom to live the life you want, and change the world while you do it?

Tori founded Her First $100K to teach women to overcome the unique obstacles standing in the way of their financial freedom. In Financial Feminist, she distills the principles of her shame- and judgment-free approach to paying off debt, figuring out your value categories to spend mindfully, saving money without monk-like deprivation, and investing in order to spend your retirement tanning in Tulum.

Featuring journaling prompts, deep-dives into the invisible aspects of the financial landscape, and interviews with experts on everything money--from predatory credit card companies to the racial wealth gap and voting with your dollars--Financial Feminist is the ultimate guide to making your money work harder for you (rather than the other way around.)]]> 306 Tori Dunlap 0063260263 Jenna 3 4.08 2022 Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love
author: Tori Dunlap
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World]]> 58950736 From a New York Times investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist, “an essential book for our times� (Ezra Klein), tracking the high-stakes inside story of how Big Tech’s breakneck race to drive engagement—and profits—at all costs fractured the world

We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for our minds, for our children, and for our democracies. But the truth is that its reach and impact run far deeper than we have understood. Building on years of international reporting, Max Fisher tells the gripping and galling inside story of how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks, in their pursuit of unfettered profits, preyed on psychological frailties to create the algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. As Fisher demonstrates, the companies� founding tenets, combined with a blinkered focus maximizing engagement, have led to a destabilized world for everyone.

Traversing the planet, Fisher tracks the ubiquity of hate speech and its spillover into violence, ills that first festered in far-off locales to their dark culmination in America during the pandemic, the 2020 election, and the Capitol Insurrection. Through it all, the social-media giants refused to intervene in any meaningful way, claiming to champion free speech when in fact what they most prized were limitless profits. The result, as Fisher shows, is a cultural shift toward a world in which people are polarized not by beliefs based on facts, but by misinformation, outrage, and fear.

His narrative is about more than the villains, however. Fisher also weaves together the stories of the heroic outsiders and Silicon Valley defectors who raised the alarm and revealed what was happening behind the closed doors of Big Tech. Both panoramic and intimate, The Chaos Machine is the definitive account of the meteoric rise and troubled legacy of the tech titans, as well as a rousing and hopeful call to arrest the havoc wreaked on our minds and our world before it’s too late.]]> 400 Max Fisher 031670332X Jenna 0 to-read 4.28 2022 The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World
author: Max Fisher
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Moonshot: A NASA Astronaut’s Guide to Achieving the Impossible]]> 124949047
When you think of a NASA astronaut, the image that probably comes to mind is one of the All-American athletic, charismatic, ready to take on the stars. But former NASA astronaut turned business speaker and bestselling author Mike Massimino was pretty much the opposite. He was the underdog, one of the weakest swimmers during NASA training and a “gangly, scrawny, working-class kid from Long Island with bad eyesight and a fear of heights." Still, after working hard and working smart, Massimino had a successful career as an astronaut. Now, he uses his experience to bring readers valuable, actionable, and entertaining advice for how to get back up and make possible the seemingly impossible--now on Earth.

Moonshot shares Massimino’s hard-earned lessons and how to apply them in work and life.Using humor and a unique storytelling ability, he inspires readers to identify the passion in their work, use teamwork and innovation to solve problems, provide leadership in the face of adversity, and never give up when pursuing a goal. Written with characteristic wit and a big heart, Mike operates as our mission control to navigate us as we achieve our own personal and professional moonshots.

Like Admiral McRaven’s Make Your Bed and Voss’s Never Split the Difference brought military and hostage negotiation lessons to civilian life, Moonshot distills stories and insights from NASA into an accessible, compact, actionable guide of how to get the little things right to accomplish our big goals.]]> 210 Mike Massimino 030683264X Jenna 4 4.23 Moonshot: A NASA Astronaut’s Guide to Achieving the Impossible
author: Mike Massimino
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans]]> 54304028
In Hunt, Gather, Parent, Doucleff sets out with her three-year-old daughter in tow to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world’s most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She sees that these cultures don’t have the same problems with children that Western parents do. Most strikingly, parents build a relationship with young children that is vastly different from the one many Western parents develop—it’s built on cooperation instead of control, trust instead of fear, and personalized needs instead of standardized development milestones.

Maya parents are masters at raising cooperative children. Without resorting to bribes, threats, or chore charts, Maya parents rear loyal helpers by including kids in household tasks from the time they can walk. Inuit parents have developed a remarkably effective approach for teaching children emotional intelligence. When kids cry, hit, or act out, Inuit parents respond with a calm, gentle demeanor that teaches children how to settle themselves down and think before acting. Hadzabe parents are world experts on raising confident, self-driven kids with a simple tool that protects children from stress and anxiety, so common now among American kids.

Not only does Doucleff live with families and observe their techniques firsthand, she also applies them with her own daughter, with striking results. She learns to discipline without yelling. She talks to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explains how these strategies can impact children’s mental health and development. Filled with practical takeaways that parents can implement immediately, Hunt, Gather, Parent helps us rethink the ways we relate to our children, and reveals a universal parenting paradigm adapted for American families.]]> 352 Michaeleen Doucleff 1982149671 Jenna 0 to-read 4.11 2021 Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans
author: Michaeleen Doucleff
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/10
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]]> The Birth Partner 315788 337 Penny Simkin 1558321950 Jenna 0 to-read 4.30 1989 The Birth Partner
author: Penny Simkin
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Nurture: A Modern Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, Early Motherhood―and Trusting Yourself and Your Body]]> 33606654 "What a gift to new and expecting moms. You have no idea the mountain and rollercoaster you're about to embark on, but Nurture somehow gives you a peek in and gives you essential information to help ground you." –Catherine McCord, founder of Weelicious and One Potato

A comprehensive and judgement-free pregnancy companion: Nurture is the only all-in-one pregnancy and birthing book for modern mothers-to-be and their partners who want a more integrative approach. Author Erica Chidi Cohen has assisted countless births and helped hundreds of families ease into their new roles through her work as a doula. Nurture covers everything from the beginning months of pregnancy to the baby's first weeks.
Includes supportive self-care and mindfulness exercises, trimester-specific holistic remedies, nourishing foods and recipes for every month of pregnancy, and expert tips for every birth environment.
More than 40 charming and helpful illustrations, charts, and lists can be found throughout.
Covers dozens of important topics that every modern mom needs to know including fetal development, making choices for a hospital, home or birth center birth, the basics of breastfeeding, tips on what to expect postpartum, and more.
Nurture is an all-inclusive pregnancy and birthing guide that gives soon-to-be mothers and their partners the information they need to make decisions, feel confident, and enjoy the beauty of creating new life.

Nurture is a thoughtful and helpful gift for expecting mothers and their partners.

Erica Chidi Cohen is co-founder and CEO of Loom in Los Angeles, CA. She began her work in San Francisco, volunteering as a doula within the prison system, working with pregnant inmates. She went on to build a successful doula and health education practice in Los Angeles and has been featured in Women's Health, Vogue, Goop, The Cut and Marie Claire.]]> 400 Erica Chidi 1452152632 Jenna 0 4.31 Nurture: A Modern Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, Early Motherhood―and Trusting Yourself and Your Body
author: Erica Chidi
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read, favorites, medicine, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Whole-Brain Child: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind]]> 10353369
In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson demystify the meltdowns and aggravation, explaining the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. The “upstairs brain,� which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids can seem—and feel—so out of control. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth. Raise calmer, happier children using twelve key strategies, including

� Name It to Tame It: Corral raging right-brain behavior through left-brain storytelling, appealing to the left brain’s affinity for words and reasoning to calm emotional storms and bodily tension.
� Engage, Don’t Enrage: Keep your child thinking and listening, instead of purely reacting.
� Move It or Lose It: Use physical activities to shift your child’s emotional state.
� Let the Clouds of Emotion Roll By: Guide your children when they are stuck on a negative emotion, and help them understand that feelings come and go.
� SIFT: Help children pay attention to the Sensations, Images, Feelings, and Thoughts within them so that they can make better decisions and be more flexible.
� Connect Through Conflict: Use discord to encourage empathy and greater social success.

Complete with clear explanations, age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles, and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child shows you how to cultivate healthy emotional and intellectual development so that your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.]]> 192 Daniel J. Siegel 0553807919 Jenna 0 to-read 4.25 2011 The Whole-Brain Child: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind
author: Daniel J. Siegel
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Baby 411: Clear Answers & Smart Advice for Your Baby's First Year]]> 132903 512 Denise Fields 1889392200 Jenna 0 to-read 4.18 2004 Baby 411: Clear Answers & Smart Advice for Your Baby's First Year
author: Denise Fields
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy]]> 388126 624 Roger Harms 0060746378 Jenna 0 to-read 4.12 2004 Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
author: Roger Harms
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[How Do You Feel?: One Doctor's Search for Humanity in Medicine]]> 207294221 A poignant and thought-provoking memoir following one psychiatrist and four of her patients as they deal with the unspoken mental and physical costs of caring for others—perfect for fans of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and The In-Between.For Dr. Jessi Gold, everything was absolutely fine—until it suddenly wasn’t. As an assistant professor, practicing psychiatrist, university wellness leader, regular media expert, and dedicated friend and family member, Jessi was used to being constantly busy. After all, people—her patients, colleagues, and loved ones—needed her, so who was she to say no to any opportunity to help, be that an extra therapy session, corporate wellness talk, or favor for a friend. She was a doctor, trained to serve, to put the needs of others before her own. But when Jessi is so mentally overwhelmed that she commits an unthinkable error during a patient session, she’s forced to reevaluate everything that the medical system has taught her. While reassessing her own complex relationship to the health-care industry, Jessi begins to examine it through the eyes of some of her healthcare worker patients—a thirty-something resident with OCD, a pregnant nurse suffering from PTSD, an aspiring medical student with crippling test anxiety, and an experienced ER physician who feels completely overwhelmed. In their discussions of burnout, perfectionism, empathy, and the emotional burden of working in health care, and through her own personal therapy sessions, Jessi recognizes that she is not alone in struggling to maintain her humanity, in a field that she chose because of its humanity in the first place. Expertly weaving research expertise with unforgettable stories and raw emotion, How Do You Feel? demonstrates the unbridled capacity that we as humans have for connecting, learning, and growing. At once deeply personal, but also utterly universal, it reminds us all that when caring for others, we first have to remember to care for ourselves.]]> 288 Jessi Gold 1982199776 Jenna 0 to-read 4.19 How Do You Feel?: One Doctor's Search for Humanity in Medicine
author: Jessi Gold
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.19
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]]> <![CDATA[Difficult Gifts: A Physician's Journey to Heal Body and Mind]]> 56597346
Difficult Gifts is an honest, friendly, and unique memoir written by a thirty-something woman who doesn't like memoirs, especially ones about cancer. But when life gave her an unexpected difficulty, she found the gifts of it worth sharing.
This story is a fresh, upbeat, and vulnerable portrayal of a physician becoming a patient. Courtney takes us on a journey to Thailand and into the mind of a person facing a difficult gift: a gift we never want to receive, but one that can teach, change, inspire, and motivate us to live fully, beautifully, and gratefully- all the way to the end, whenever that may be.

Winner of multiple awards, Difficult Gifts has been called a "life changing memoir to be read multiple times" that "teaches us how to live." - ŷ Reviews]]> 208 Courtney Burnett 163489409X Jenna 0 to-read 4.71 2021 Difficult Gifts: A Physician's Journey to Heal Body and Mind
author: Courtney Burnett
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 Jenna 5 4.21 2023 Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
author: Naomi Klein
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
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God what a timely, important book. Still, after taking it really slow, this book is hard to define. It's a cultural critique and a deep dive into how the U.S. got to this current point, how people succumbed to a collective fever dream, and an analysis of the role of tech and media in that spiral. I think Emily May's review is spot on. Since finishing it, have been suggesting this book to everyone I know.
]]> <![CDATA[Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win]]> 210246742 A clear and concise guide to the politics of post-Roe America, for readers eager to understand the attacks on our bodies and freedom—and to do something about it

In this, her most urgent book yet, New York Times–bestselling author Jessica Valenti dispels misinformation and cuts through the headline overwhelm to illuminate the full-scale assault conservative lawmakers have launched on women’s freedom—and fundamental human rights. Valenti provides the language to talk about abortion with confidence and the facts to convince.

American voters overwhelmingly support abortion rights and have for decades. In the years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, that support has been growing, as nearly seventy-percent of Americans want abortion to be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, and sixty-three percent want abortion medication to be legal. Abortion is among the key tools conservatives use to roll back decades of advances for women, but here Valenti arms readers with the truth needed to fight back and win, not only at the dinner table but at the polling station and all the way to the Supreme Court.]]> 256 Jessica Valenti 0593800230 Jenna 0 to-read 4.70 2024 Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win
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]]> <![CDATA[The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having―or Being Denied―an Abortion]]> 49680209
“Dr. Diana Greene Foster brings what is too often missing from the public debate around science, data, and the real-life experiences of people from diverse backgrounds…This should be required reading for every judge, member of Congress, and candidate for office—as well as anyone who hopes to better understand this complex and important issue.� —Cecile Richards, cofounder of Supermajority, former president of Planned Parenthood, and author of Make Trouble

A groundbreaking and illuminating look at the state of abortion access in America and the first long-term study of the consequences—emotional, physical, financial, professional, personal, and psychological—of receiving versus being denied an abortion on women’s lives.

What happens when a woman seeking an abortion is turned away? Diana Greene Foster, PhD, decided to find out. With a team of scientists—psychologists, epidemiologists, demographers, nursing scholars, and public health researchers—she set out to discover the effect of receiving versus being denied an abortion on women’s lives. Over the course of a ten-year investigation that began in 2007, she and her team followed a thousand women from more than twenty states, some of whom received their abortions, some of whom were turned away.

Now, for the first time, the results of this landmark study—the largest of its kind to examine women’s experiences with abortion and unwanted pregnancy in the United States—have been gathered together in one place. Here Foster presents the emotional, physical, and socioeconomic outcomes for women who received their abortion and those who were denied. She analyzes the impact on their mental and physical health, their careers, their romantic lives, their professional aspirations, and even their existing and future children—and finds that women who received an abortion were almost always better off than women who were denied one. Interwoven with these findings are ten riveting first-person narratives by women who share their candid stories.

As the debate about abortion rights intensifies, The Turnaway Study offers an in-depth examination of the real-world consequences for women of being denied abortions and provides evidence to refute the claim that abortion harms women. With brilliant synthesis and startling statistics—that thousands of American women are unable to access abortions; that 99% of women who receive an abortion do not regret it five years later� The Turnaway Study is a necessary and revelatory look at the impact of abortion access on people’s lives .]]> 368 Diana Greene Foster 1982141565 Jenna 0 to-read 4.58 2020 The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having―or Being Denied―an Abortion
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average rating: 4.58
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mind after Eden: Psychiatry in a Post-Fall World]]> 61891307 How should the Christian view the use of psychiatric medications? What is depression and anxiety? Is it a physical disease requiring medical intervention or a spiritual issue? Should Christians see a secular therapist or practice mindfulness? Pulling from his experience in medicine both as a student and in clinical practice, Adam weaves an integrated picture of what it means to be a physical body and an immaterial soul living in a fallen world.
There is hope in our gospel and common graces given by our loving Heavenly Father, to be stewarded well, as we await His making all things new.]]> 168 Adam O'Neill Jenna 0 to-read 4.33 The Mind after Eden: Psychiatry in a Post-Fall World
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]]> <![CDATA[The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines]]> 52527565 Brian Deer exposes a conspiracy of fraud and betrayal behind attacks on a mainstay of medicine: vaccination.

From San Francisco to Shanghai, from Vancouver to Venice, controversy over vaccines is erupting around the globe. Fear is spreading. Banished diseases have returned. And a militant “anti-vax� movement has surfaced to campaign against immunization. But why?

In The Doctor Who Fooled the World, award-winning investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes the truth behind the crisis. With the page-turning tension of a detective story, he unmasks the players and unearths the facts. Where it began. Who was responsible. How they pulled it off. Who paid.

At the heart of this dark narrative is the rise of the so-called “father of the anti-vaccine movement�: a British-born doctor, Andrew Wakefield. Banned from medicine, thanks to Deer’s discoveries, he fled to the United States to pursue his ambitions, and now claims to be winning a “war.�

In an epic investigation, spread across fifteen years, Deer battles medical secrecy and insider cover-ups, smear campaigns and gagging lawsuits, to uncover rigged research and moneymaking schemes, the heartbreaking plight of families struggling with disability, and the scientific scandal of our time.

2021 winner: Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY), and 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award]]> 416 Brian Deer 191161780X Jenna 0 to-read 4.10 2020 The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines
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]]> No Logo 647 No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing—and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement.

As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today's schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how "culture jammers" utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in "Joe Chemo" for "Joe Camel").

No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing.

"This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable." —Naomi Klein, from her Introduction]]> 528 Naomi Klein 0312421435 Jenna 0 to-read 3.89 2000 No Logo
author: Naomi Klein
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2000
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]]> <![CDATA[This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate]]> 21913812
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global bestsellers Shock Doctrine and No Logo, exposes the myths that are clouding climate debate.

You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring.

It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era.]]> 566 Naomi Klein 1451697384 Jenna 0 to-read 4.15 2014 This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
author: Naomi Klein
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism]]> 1237300 The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.]]> 558 Naomi Klein 0805079831 Jenna 0 to-read 4.27 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
author: Naomi Klein
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]]> <![CDATA[AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors]]> 204866266 Explores the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the healthcare industry

AI The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare provides a timely and authoritative overview of the current impact and future potential of AI technology in healthcare. With a reader-friendly narrative style, this comprehensive guide traces the evolution of AI in healthcare, describes methodological breakthroughs, drivers and barriers of its adoption, discusses use cases across clinical medicine, administration and operations, and life sciences, and examines the business models for the entrepreneurs, investors, and customers.

Detailed yet accessible chapters help those in the business and practice of healthcare recognize the remarkable potential of AI in areas such as drug discovery and development, diagnostics, therapeutics, clinical workflows, personalized medicine, early disease prediction, population health management, and healthcare administration and operations. Throughout the text, author Ronald M. Razmi, MD offers valuable insights on harnessing AI to improve health of the world population, develop more efficient business models, accelerate long-term economic growth, and optimize healthcare budgets.

Addressing the potential impact of AI on the clinical practice of medicine, the business of healthcare, and opportunities for investors, AI The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in

Discusses what AI is currently doing in healthcare and its direction in the next decade Examines the development and challenges for medical algorithms Identifies the applications of AI in diagnostics, therapeutics, population health, clinical workflows, administration and operations, discovery and development of new clinical paradigms and more Presents timely and relevant information on rapidly expanding generative AI technologies, such as Chat GPT Describes the analysis that needs to be made by entrepreneurs and investors as they evaluate building or investing in health AI solutions Features a wealth of relatable real-world examples that bring technical concepts to life Explains the role of AI in the development of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics during the COVID-19 pandemic
AI The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare. A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors is a must-read for healthcare professionals, researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, medical and nursing students, and those building or designing systems for the commercial marketplace. The book's non-technical andreader-friendly narrative style also makes it an ideal read for everyone interested in learning about how AI will improve health and healthcare in the coming decades.]]> 0 Ronald M. Razmi 1394240171 Jenna 0 to-read 4.27 AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors
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]]> <![CDATA[The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel]]> 199798115
Through deep and perceptive dispatches from tourist spots around the globe—from Hawaii to Saudi Arabia, Amsterdam to Angkor Wat� The New Tourist lifts the veil on an industry that accounts for one in ten jobs worldwide and generates nearly ten percent of global GDP. How did a once-niche activity become the world’s most important means of contact across cultures? When does tourism destroy the soul of a city, and when does it offer a place a new lease on life? Is “last chance tourism� prompting a powerful change in perspective, or driving places we love further into the ground?

Filled with revelations about an industry that shapes how we view the world, The New Tourist spotlights painful truths but also delivers a message of that the right kind of tourism—and the right kind of tourist—can be a powerful force for good.]]> 288 Paige McClanahan 1668011778 Jenna 4 to-read 3.79 The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel
author: Paige McClanahan
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.79
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rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Toward a New Psychology of Women]]> 296310
In the years since its original publication, this best-selling classic became famous for its groundbreaking demonstration of how sexual stereotypes restrict our psychological development. Toward a New Psychology of Women revolutionized the concepts of strength and weakness, dependency and autonomy, emotion, success, and power, selling more than 200,000 copies and changing the lives of women across the globe.

In this updated second edition, Dr. Jean Baker Miller reflects on where women are today, addressing both the enormous progress in some areas and the challenges still to be met. Celebrating the questions that have been raised and the actions women have taken, as well as looking toward future change, Miller affirms the strength and diversity of womanhood.]]> 192 Jean Baker Miller 0807029092 Jenna 0 to-read 4.06 2005 Toward a New Psychology of Women
author: Jean Baker Miller
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.06
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]]> Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Jenna 0 to-read, dystopian-future 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
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]]> <![CDATA[Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind]]> 61871754
“Jay is a leading expert on the history of Western drug use, and Psychonauts is the latest in a series of excellent studies in which he has investigated the roots of a kind of psychoactive exploration that we tend to associate with the nineteen-fifties and sixties.”—Clare Bucknell, New Yorker

“Captivating. . . . A welcome reconsideration of the role drugs play in life, medicine, and science.”� Publishers Weekly

Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. Accounts in journals and literary fiction inspired a fascinated public to make their own experiments—in scientific demonstrations, on exotic travels, at literary salons, and in occult rituals.

But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear.

From Sigmund Freud’s experiments with cocaine to William James’s epiphany on nitrous oxide, Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism. Today, as we embrace novel cognitive enhancers and psychedelics, the experiments of the original psychonauts reveal the deep influence of mind-altering drugs on Western science, philosophy, and culture.]]> 376 Mike Jay 0300257945 Jenna 0 to-read 3.84 Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind
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]]> <![CDATA[Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics]]> 199434578 226 Brendan Graham Dempsey Jenna 0 to-read 4.18 Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics
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]]> <![CDATA[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism]]> 75560036
Capitalism is dead. Welcome to technofeudalism. The perfect Christmas gift for the political visionaries in your life.

In his boldest and most far-reaching book, the visionary economist and number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis shows how the owners of big tech became the world's feudal overlords � replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system that enslaves our minds, defies democracy and rewrite the rules of global power.

But as Varoufakis also reveals, technofeudalism contains new opportunities to thwart and overturn it, bringing into focus more clearly than ever the revolution we need to escape our digital prison.

‘An epochal, once-in-a-millennium shift . . . this isn't just new technology. This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power� Observer

‘An urgent demand to seize the means of computation� CORY DOCTOROW

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR]]> 224 Yanis Varoufakis Jenna 0 to-read 4.04 2023 Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Keep House While Drowning]]> 60139504 How to Keep House While Drowning will introduce you to six life-changing principles that will revolutionize the way you approach home care—without endless to-do lists. Presented in 31 daily thoughts, this compassionate guide will help you begin to get free of the shame and anxiety you feel over home care.

Inside you will learn:
· How to shift your perspective of care tasks from moral to functional;
· How to stop negative self-talk and shame around care tasks;
· How to give yourself permission to rest, even when things aren’t finished;
· How to motivate yourself to care for your space.]]> 151 K.C. Davis 166800285X Jenna 0 to-read 4.22 2022 How to Keep House While Drowning
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name: Jenna
average rating: 4.22
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]]> <![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 Jenna 0 to-read 3.92 2023 The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
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average rating: 3.92
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]]> The Psychology of Money 41881472 242 Morgan Housel 0857197681 Jenna 0 to-read 4.27 2020 The Psychology of Money
author: Morgan Housel
name: Jenna
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]]> <![CDATA[If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood]]> 45299992
After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.

For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

]]> 431 Gregg Olsen 1542005248 Jenna 0 to-read 3.99 2019 If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood
author: Gregg Olsen
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hundred Years' War on Palestine]]> 52960854
Accepted interpretations of the confrontation tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same land. Drawing on archival materials and the accounts of generations of family members—judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists�The Hundred Years' War on Palestine instead shows that this war has always been colonial in nature, waged against the native population first by the Zionist movement and then by Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.

Neither a chronicle of victimization nor a whitewash of mistakes made by Palestinian leaders, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine offers both a compelling family history and an original, illuminating view of the Middle East's most intractable conflict.]]> 319 Rashid Khalidi 1250787653 Jenna 0 to-read 4.45 2020 The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
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average rating: 4.45
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]]> <![CDATA[The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America]]> 397483
Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison.

The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims.

Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. - John Moe]]> 464 Erik Larson 0609608444 Jenna 0 to-read 4.02 2003 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
author: Erik Larson
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.02
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]]> Pageboy 60473073 Pageboy is a groundbreaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. A generation-defining actor and one of the most famous trans advocates of our time, Elliot will now be known as an uncommon literary talent, as he shares never-before-heard details and intimate interrogations on gender, love, mental health, relationships, and Hollywood.]]> 271 Elliot Page Jenna 0 to-read 3.72 2023 Pageboy
author: Elliot Page
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.72
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]]> <![CDATA[What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)]]> 58724626
What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.]]> 165 T. Kingfisher 1250830753 Jenna 0 to-read 3.86 2022 What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.86
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]]> The Unmaking of June Farrow 66087062 A woman risks everything to end her family’s centuries-old curse, solve her mother’s disappearance, and find love in this mesmerizing novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Spells for Forgetting.

In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors.

It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere—the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own.

After her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’s decades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realizes she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.

With The Unmaking of June Farrow, Adrienne Young delivers a brilliant novel of romance, mystery, and a touch of the impossible—a story you will never forget.]]> 320 Adrienne Young 0593598679 Jenna 0 to-read 4.13 2023 The Unmaking of June Farrow
author: Adrienne Young
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.13
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]]> <![CDATA[Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)]]> 60657589
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.]]> 336 Heather Fawcett 059350013X Jenna 0 to-read 3.98 2023 Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)
author: Heather Fawcett
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.98
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]]> Bright Young Women 101124639
The survivors, including key witness Pamela Schumacher, will be forever changed by this night. They have all become victims. But they tell their perspectives here, they remain masters of their stories. And they hunt the perpetrator on their own - against resistance from the justice system and the police; against public opinion, which idolizes the serial killer.]]> 384 Jessica Knoll 1501153226 Jenna 0 to-read 3.99 2023 Bright Young Women
author: Jessica Knoll
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.99
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]]> First Lie Wins 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn’t like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]> 340 Ashley Elston Jenna 0 to-read 3.97 2024 First Lie Wins
author: Ashley Elston
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Covenant of Water 180357146 From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 715 Abraham Verghese 0802162177 Jenna 0 to-read 4.34 2023 The Covenant of Water
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Jenna 0 to-read 3.83 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas]]> 42660463 here.

Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas is the hilarious, poignant and entertaining story of the life of a junior doctor at the most challenging time of the year. With twenty-five tales of intriguing, shocking and incredible Christmas incidents, the British public will finally appreciate the sacrifices made and the challenges faced by the unsung heroes of the NHS.

Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas will be fully illustrated (as tastefully as possible) and will delight all of Adam’s fans throughout the festive period of Christmas 2019 and for many years to come.]]> 144 Adam Kay Jenna 4 4.09 2019 Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas
author: Adam Kay
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
A short follow-up to the author's first book, but still fun, funny, and irreverant (per the profession). I don't think I'll be choosing Ob/Gyn as my speciality for a number of reasons, so it was an interesting glimpse into the "obs-gynae" world. Also, learning more about the NHS in the late 2000s is bananas.
]]> <![CDATA[This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor]]> 35510008 Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know � and more than a few things you didn't � about life on and off the hospital ward.

As seen on ITV's Zoe Ball Book Club

This edition includes extra diary entries and a new afterword by the author.

]]> 285 Adam Kay Jenna 4 to-read 4.40 2017 This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
author: Adam Kay
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:
Enjoyable and quick read, a nice memoir to top off the year. It was interesting to look inside the NHS since I'm only familiar with the US system. I really hope some things have changed since 2010 (like caps on duty hours). I think the author and I have the exact same sense of humor? Interested in the TV show now.
]]> <![CDATA[King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering Masculinity Through the Lens of Archetypal Psychology - A Journey into the Male Psyche and Its Four Essential Aspects]]> 91781 Moore and Gillette identify four archetypes of masculine energies from myth and literature: the Lover, brimming with vitality and sensitivity; the Magician, guider of the processes of inner and outer transformation; the selfless and wise King identified with Adam or primordial man; and the Warrior, whose energies often go awry in destructive activity. Dream analysis, meditation, Jungian "active imagination" and ritual processes are among the tools set forth in a clear, concise map to territories of masculine selfhood.]]> 180 Robert L. Moore 0062506064 Jenna 0 to-read 4.12 1990 King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering Masculinity Through the Lens of Archetypal Psychology - A Journey into the Male Psyche and Its Four Essential Aspects
author: Robert L. Moore
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Power of Myth 35519 293 Joseph Campbell 0385418868 Jenna 0 to-read 4.26 1988 The Power of Myth
author: Joseph Campbell
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love]]> 52626691
Kaur takes readers through her own riveting journey—as a brown girl growing up in California farmland finding her place in the world; as a young adult galvanized by the murders of Sikhs after 9/11; as a law student fighting injustices in American prisons and on Guantánamo Bay; as an activist working with communities recovering from xenophobic attacks; and as a woman trying to heal from her own experiences with police violence and sexual assault. Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists, Kaur reclaims love as an active, public, and revolutionary force that creates new possibilities for ourselves, our communities, and our world. See No Stranger helps us imagine new ways of being with each other—and with ourselves—so that together we can begin to build the world we want to see.]]> 389 Valarie Kaur 0525509097 Jenna 0 to-read 4.55 2020 See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love
author: Valarie Kaur
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Think Like a Freak 17331349
Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally—to think, that is, like a Freak.

Levitt and Dubner offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether your interest lies in minor lifehacks or major global reforms. As always, no topic is off-limits. They range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain. Along the way, you’ll learn the secrets of a Japanese hot-dog-eating champion, the reason an Australian doctor swallowed a batch of dangerous bacteria, and why Nigerian e-mail scammers make a point of saying they’re from Nigeria.

Some of the steps toward thinking like a

First, put away your moral compass—because it’s hard to see a problem clearly if you’ve already decided what to do about it. Learn to say “I don’t know”—for until you can admit what you don’t yet know, it’s virtually impossible to learn what you need to. Think like a child—because you’ll come up with better ideas and ask better questions. Take a master class in incentives—because for better or worse, incentives rule our world. Learn to persuade people who don’t want to be persuaded—because being right is rarely enough to carry the day. Learn to appreciate the upside of quitting—because you can’t solve tomorrow’s problem if you aren’t willing to abandon today’s dud.Levitt and Dubner plainly see the world like no one else. Now you can too. Never before have such iconoclastic thinkers been so revealing—and so much fun to read.]]> 0 Steven D. Levitt 0062218360 Jenna 4 3.83 2014 Think Like a Freak
author: Steven D. Levitt
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
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[Audiobook verison] Some great takeaways from this one. Love their books and podcast, so I appreciated the advice all in one place. Particularly fond of the idea that in order to get better results we need to ask better questions. For example, in becoming a famous competitive eater, Takeru Kobayashi changed the question from "How do I eat more hotdogs?" to "How do I make hotdogs easier to eat". Gonna apply this one to medical school.
]]> Frankenstein: The 1818 Text 35031085 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780143131847.

Mary Shelley's seminal novel of the scientist whose creation becomes a monster.

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.]]> 260 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 0143131842 Jenna 0 to-read 4.02 1818 Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1818
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride]]> 6033525
In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.]]> 352 Daniel James Brown 0061348104 Jenna 0 to-read 4.24 2009 The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride
author: Daniel James Brown
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places]]> 17165633 A Hilarious Collection of Essays from one of America's Most Gifted Humorists!

Follow New York Times bestselling author Mary Roach -- but be careful not to trip -- as she weaves through personal anecdotes and everyday musings riddled with her uncanny wit and amazingly analytical eye. These essays, which found a well-deserved home within the pages of Reader's Digest as the column "My Planet," detail the inner workings of hypochondriacs, hoarders, and compulsive cheapskates. (Did we mention neurotic interior designers and professional list-makers?) For Roach, humor is hidden in the most unlikely places, which means that nothing is off limits. Whether she is dwelling on her age or talking about the pros and cons of a bedroom night light -- "A married couple can best be defined as a unit of people whose sleep habits are carefully engineered to keep each other awake" -- Roach finds a lesson, a slice of sarcasm, or a dash of something special that makes each day comical and absolutely priceless.

In keeping with our mission -- curating the best reads in the land -- Reader's Digest editors neatly packaged these timeless (and hilarious) Roach essays together for the first time. Whether you read this cover-to-cover or during spare moments over morning coffee, flip to a page in this volume and try not to smile.]]> 191 Mary Roach 1621450716 Jenna 0 to-read 3.59 2013 My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places
author: Mary Roach
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law]]> 56769577
Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem—and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.]]> 308 Mary Roach 1324001933 Jenna 4 3.81 2021 Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
author: Mary Roach
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Jenna 5 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/09
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
I laughed, I cried, I had an existential panic attack. I have previously enjoyed John's YA books for the prose and this was no exception. I am taking a deeper dive into his podcast specifically because of this beautiful work.
]]> <![CDATA[This Road I Ride: Sometimes It Takes Losing Everything to Find Yourself]]> 26530349 This Road I Ride is the remarkable story of one woman’s solo journey around the world by bicycle. Juliana Buhring had been mired in a dark hole of depression after the death of a man she loved, and when an acquaintance suggested they honor his memory by biking across Canada, she thought, “Canada? Why not the world?� And why not alone. She had never seriously ridden a bicycle before. She had no athletic experience or corporate sponsorship, but with just eight months of preparation, Juliana Buhring departed from Naples, Italy, in July 2012 aiming to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. She set out believing she might not ever return, but that she had nothing to lose. Over 152 days, Juliana’s ride spanned four continents and 18,060 miles. She traversed small-town and big-mountain America, Australian desert expanses, South Asian rainforests and villages, and Turkish plains. She suffered innumerable breakdowns, severe food poisoning, hostile pursuers, and the international longing for a good Italian espresso. When she crossed the finish line into Naples before the end of the year, she officially became the fastest woman to cycle the world (beating prior men’s records, to boot). Accomplishing what she never thought she could, buoyed by the outpouring of support from friends and strangers, Juliana rediscovered herself. In the process she proved that there are no extraordinary people―there are only people who decide to do extraordinary things. 15 illustrations]]> 240 Juliana Buhring 039329255X Jenna 4 4.08 2016 This Road I Ride: Sometimes It Takes Losing Everything to Find Yourself
author: Juliana Buhring
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> Greenbanks 12438240 387 Dorothy Whipple 1903155851 Jenna 0 to-read 4.37 1932 Greenbanks
author: Dorothy Whipple
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1932
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Someone You Can Build a Nest In]]> 182775231
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly dangerous—and deadly—Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.]]> 320 John Wiswell 0756418860 Jenna 4 4.08 2024 Someone You Can Build a Nest In
author: John Wiswell
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
review:
What a fun little undersold gem. It was a slightly confusing in the last 1/3, but overall, I really enjoyed the concept, the characters, and the story.
]]> <![CDATA[The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)]]> 58416952 At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic � the Hierarchy � may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus � what they call Will � to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.]]> 639 James Islington 1982141190 Jenna 0 to-read 4.60 2023 The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)
author: James Islington
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 Jenna 0 to-read 4.28 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Sorceress Comes to Call 195790847 A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic

Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.

After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.

Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.]]> 327 T. Kingfisher 1250244072 Jenna 0 to-read 4.06 2024 A Sorceress Comes to Call
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Book of Doors 156009464
Cassie Andrews works in a New York City bookshop, shelving books, making coffee for customers, and living an unassuming, ordinary life. Until the day one of her favorite customers—a lonely yet charming old man—dies right in front of her. Cassie is devastated. She always loved his stories, and now she has nothing to remember him by. Nothing but the last book he was reading.

But this is no ordinary book�

It is the Book of Doors.

Inscribed with enigmatic words and mysterious drawings, it promises Cassie that any door is every door. You just need to know how to open them.

Then she’s approached by a gaunt stranger in a rumpled black suit with a Scottish brogue who calls himself Drummond Fox. He’s a librarian who keeps watch over a unique set of rare volumes. The tome now in Cassie’s possession is not the only book with great power, but it is the one most coveted by those who collect them.

Now Cassie is being hunted by those few who know of the Special Books. With only her roommate Izzy to confide in, she has to decide if she will help the mysterious and haunted Drummond protect the Book of Doors—and the other books in his secret library’s care—from those who will do evil. Because only Drummond knows where the unique library is and only Cassie’s book can get them there.

But there are those willing to kill to obtain those secrets. And a dark force—in the form of a shadowy, sadistic woman—is at the very top of that list.]]> 404 Gareth Brown 0063323982 Jenna 0 to-read 4.01 2024 The Book of Doors
author: Gareth Brown
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)]]> 62202008 When two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection, they must face the depths of hell, in a war among gods, to seal their fate forever.

After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.

To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.

Shadow and Bone meets Lore in Rebecca Ross's Divine Rivals, an epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.]]> 356 Rebecca Ross Jenna 3 4.23 2023 Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves:
review:
Started out pretty decent then absolutely deflated halfway through. The entire plot felt like a rush to the relationship without a lot of substance or world building. Too much melodrama for my taste, but the main characters are teenagers so - idk? Not going to read the second one, but glad I checked it off the list. 3.5 stars. Not bad, but certainly not good.
]]> How to stand up to a dictator 58297471
Maria Ressa has spent decades speaking truth to power. But her work tracking disinformation networks seeded by her own government, spreading lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate, has landed her in trouble with the most powerful man in the country: President Duterte.

Now, hounded by the state, she has multiple arrest warrants against her name, and a potential 100+ years behind bars to prepare for—while she stands trial for speaking the truth.

How to Stand Up to a Dictator is the story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts, and how an invisible atom bomb has exploded online that is killing our freedoms. It maps a network of disinformation—a heinous web of cause and effect—that has netted the globe: from Duterte's drug wars, to America's Capitol Hill, to Britain's Brexit, to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare, to Facebook and Silicon Valley, to our own clicks and our own votes.

Told from the frontline of the digital war, this is Maria Ressa's urgent cry for us to wake up and hold the line, before it is too late.]]> 288 Maria Ressa 0753559218 Jenna 0 to-read 4.34 2022 How to stand up to a dictator
author: Maria Ressa
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, #1)]]> 61294947
But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.]]> 493 Shannon Chakraborty Jenna 4 4.36 2023 The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, #1)
author: Shannon Chakraborty
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
Y'all are absolutely sleeping on this one - what a fun ride! More historical fiction, but from a part of the world I've never known much about. Really enjoyed this one.
]]> The Familiar 133938808 Hipnotyzująca opowieść o ambicji, przetrwaniu i kobiecej sile w świecie, gdzie jedno błędne słowo może oznaczać śmierć.

Złoty Wiek. Hiszpania. W nędznym domu, na nędznej ulicy, w nowej stolicy � Madrycie � mieszka Luzia Cotado, która wykorzystuje swoje magiczne zdolności, by przetrwać ciężki los pomywaczki. Gdy inni odkrywają jej moc, dziewczyna zostaje wciągnięta w świat arystokratycznych intryg, gdzie może stać się pionkiem w grze o władzę� lub jego królową.

Jej pokazy początkowo są zwykłą rozrywką dla znudzonej elity. Wkrótce sprawy jednak przybierają niebezpieczny obrót, gdy Luzia przyciąga uwagę Antonio Péreza � obdarzonego złą sławą sekretarza hiszpańskiego króla. Król wciąż próbuje się podnieść po druzgocącej porażce swojej armii, ale nie ustaje w wysiłkach, by zdobyć przewagę nad Anglią. A Pérez, pragnący odzyskać zaufanie i przychylność króla, nie cofnie się przed niczym.

Zdeterminowana, by wykorzystać swoją jedyną szansę na lepsze życie, Luzia rzuca się w świat proroków, alchemistów, świętych, handlarzy, w wir magii, nauki i oszustwa. Ale wraz z rozgłosem przychodzi niebezpieczeństwo, że jej istnienie przyciągnie gniew inkwizytorów. Luzia będzie musiała użyć całego swojego sprytu i siły, by przetrwać � nawet jeżeli oznacza to zasięgnięcie pomocy u Guilléna Santagnela, zgorzkniałego nieśmiertelnika, którego własne sekrety mogą doprowadzić do śmierci ich obojga.]]> 387 Leigh Bardugo Jenna 4
I appreciate books like The Familiar that are interesting, immersive, and twists on historical fiction. Bardugo is becoming a favorite author based both on her creativity and prose. And while sometimes the endings lose traction and get muddled, I enjoy being along for the ride.]]> 4.00 2024 The Familiar
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
“But let it be my ambition and not my fear that seals my fate.�

I appreciate books like The Familiar that are interesting, immersive, and twists on historical fiction. Bardugo is becoming a favorite author based both on her creativity and prose. And while sometimes the endings lose traction and get muddled, I enjoy being along for the ride.
]]> <![CDATA[Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year]]> 12540 Crooked Little Heart) is a single mother and ex-alcoholic with a pleasingly warped social circle and a remarkably tolerant religion to lean on. She responds to the changes, exhaustion, and love Sam brings with aplomb or outright insanity. The book rocks from hilarious to unbearably poignant when Sam's burgeoning life is played out against a very close friend's illness. No saccharine paean to becoming a parent, this touches on the rage and befuddlement that dog sweeter emotions during this sea change in one's life.]]> 251 Anne Lamott 1400079098 Jenna 0 to-read 4.18 1993 Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
author: Anne Lamott
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Just Kids 341879 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 304 Patti Smith Jenna 4 to-read 4.19 2010 Just Kids
author: Patti Smith
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:
A re-read, but always deeply moving and a salve for my nostalgia of pre-social media art.
]]> Priestdaddy: A Memoir 33358751 The New York Times, was unusual in many respects. There was the an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange koans and warnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing, frequently semi-naked father, who underwent a religious conversion on a submarine and discovered a loophole which saw him approved for the Catholic priesthood by the future Pope Benedict XVI - despite already having a wife and children.

When the expense of a medical procedure forces the 30-year-old Patricia to move back in with her parents, husband in tow, she must learn to live again with her family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of a childhood spent in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Told with the comic sensibility of a brasher, bluer Waugh or Wodehouse, this is at the same time a lyrical and affecting story of how, having ventured into the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.]]> 360 Patricia Lockwood 069818839X Jenna 0 to-read 3.85 2017 Priestdaddy: A Memoir
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Surviving Cyril 34553973
Unfortunately, her three-year-old decides Cyril is now his best buddy, and Robin can’t bear to take anything else away from her son. A few hot dogs and video games won’t do any permanent damage� right?

Cyril doesn’t magically transform into a good person—or even a decent one—but he does prove to be a better role model than Robin expected. Gradually, she also begins to realize that Cyril may be the one person who truly understands the magnitude of her loss.

He also knows far more about her husband’s death than he’s been letting on.

Ramsey Hootman’s trademark blend of humor and heart shines in this offbeat tale of love, loss, and exasperation—guaranteed to leave you breathless at the end.]]> 338 Ramsey Hootman 099880701X Jenna 0 to-read 4.02 Surviving Cyril
author: Ramsey Hootman
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)]]> 17199504 Welcome to Scion. No safer place.

The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe.

In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing.

When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal � and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.]]> 466 Samantha Shannon 1620401398 Jenna 3 to-read 3.81 2013 The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/11
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: to-read
review:
Love seeing the roots of one of my favorite authors. While the book isn't her best, you can see she has early talents for world-building, character development, and intrigue. Stand-alone, I'd give it a 3, but it's leagues above the other novels of its ilk (ACOTAR, Fourth Wing) so take that into consideration. Shannon makes me believe that I too can be a writer.
]]> <![CDATA[Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity]]> 61153739 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A groundbreaking manifesto on living better and longer that challenges the conventional medical thinking on aging and reveals a new approach to preventing chronic disease and extending long-term health, from a visionary physician and leading longevity expert

Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.

For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of aging that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late to help, prolonging lifespan at the expense of healthspan, or quality of life. Dr. Attia believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalized, proactive strategy for longevity, one where we take action now, rather than waiting.

This is not “biohacking,� it’s science: a well-founded strategic and tactical approach to extending lifespan while also improving our physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Dr. Attia’s aim is less to tell you what to do and more to help you learn how to think about long-term health, in order to create the best plan for you as an individual. In Outlive, readers will discover:

� Why the cholesterol test at your annual physical doesn’t tell you enough about your actual risk of dying from a heart attack.
� That you may already suffer from an extremely common yet underdiagnosed liver condition that could be a precursor to the chronic diseases of aging.
� Why exercise is the most potent pro-longevity “drug”—and how to begin training for the “Centenarian Decathlon.�
� Why you should forget about diets, and focus instead on nutritional biochemistry, using technology and data to personalize your eating pattern.
� Why striving for physical health and longevity, but ignoring emotional health, could be the ultimate curse of all.

Aging and longevity are far more malleable than we think; our fate is not set in stone. With the right roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.]]> 496 Peter Attia 0593236599 Jenna 0 to-read 4.33 2023 Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity
author: Peter Attia
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Eastbound 60853075
‘The fever burning through this story, its suspense and its lyrical escapes don’t curb its sensuality, and precision. [Kerangal’s] language has an incredible driving force. It is both like a stone made up of many crystals, mixing registers with fluidity, and juxtaposing the poetic and the trivial. The whole thing has a unique rhythm, a sense of breathless speed: the sort of graceful rockslide that only she can pull off. In flux between interior and exterior, this is the perfect voyage.� � Le Monde des Livres]]> 140 Maylis de Kerangal Jenna 4 3.94 2012 Eastbound
author: Maylis de Kerangal
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals]]> 54785515 The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless battle against distraction; we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,� Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.]]> 271 Oliver Burkeman 0374159122 Jenna 3 4.20 2021 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: non-fiction, psychology, self-improvement
review:
Interesting, but a bit repetitive. Book could be shorter with the action steps sooner, but Burkeman falls into the classic trap of "self-help" books in repeating the same information in different ways. Still, a good reminder and the tools are great suggestions.
]]> The Lost Daughter 1058564
But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family.]]> 140 Elena Ferrante 1933372427 Jenna 0 to-read 3.70 2006 The Lost Daughter
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution]]> 305826
"In order for all women to have real choices all along the line," Adrienne Rich writes, "we need fully to understand the power and powerlessness embodied in motherhood in patriarchal culture." Rich's investigation, in this influential and landmark book, concerns both experience and institution. The experience is her own - as a woman, a poet, a feminist, and a mother - but it is an experience determined by the institution, imposed in its many variations on all women everywhere. She draws on personal materials, history, research, and literature to create a document of universal importance.

One of our most distinguished poets, ADRIENNE RICH was born in Baltimore in 1929. Over the last forty years she has published more than seventeen volumes of poetry and five books of nonfiction prose, including Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations; On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Blood, Bread, and Poetry; and What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. She has received numerous awards, including the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Lambda Book Award, the National Book Award, and the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives in California.]]> 322 Adrienne Rich 0393312844 Jenna 0 to-read 4.23 Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
author: Adrienne Rich
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> Yes Please 20910157 Yes Please, she offers up a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much), like when to be funny and when to be serious. Powered by Amy’s charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book full of words to live by.]]> 329 Amy Poehler 0062268341 Jenna 4 3.85 2014 Yes Please
author: Amy Poehler
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: non-fiction, self-improvement, humor, favorites
review:

]]> The Orphanage by the Lake 202173601
AN ORPHANAGE FULL OF SECRETS

Hazel wants a new life.

She’s thirty years old, single, and her private investigation business is months away from folding.

Her luck takes a turn when Madeline Hemsley, a mysterious socialite, pays Hazel a visit with an offer too enticing to resist. An orphan girl has disappeared from a children’s home—The Orphanage By The Lake, as the locals call it—and Madeline wants Hazel to find her.

At first glance, it appears to be a standard runaway case, but as Hazel plunges into the investigation, she finds signs of something more: unexplained blood stains, cryptic symbols, sinister figures shadowing her every move. The more she digs, the more she realizes that The Orphanage By The Lake holds terrifying secrets, and even worse�

…so does Madeline.]]> 300 Daniel G. Miller 1737646366 Jenna 0 to-read 3.94 2024 The Orphanage by the Lake
author: Daniel G. Miller
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bear and the Nightingale (The Winternight Trilogy, #1)]]> 25489134
After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

The Bear and the Nightingale is a magical debut novel from a gifted and gorgeous voice. It spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent.]]> 319 Katherine Arden 1101885939 Jenna 3 4.07 2017 The Bear and the Nightingale (The Winternight Trilogy, #1)
author: Katherine Arden
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves:
review:

]]> Ex-Wife (McNally Editions) 73204073 An instant bestseller when it was published anonymously in 1929—the story of a divorce and its aftermath, which scandalized the Jazz Age.

It's 1924, and Peter and Patricia have what looks to be a very modern marriage. Both drink. Both smoke. Both work, Patricia as a head copywriter at a major department store. When it comes to sex with other people, both believe in “the honesty policy.� Until they don‘t. Or, at least, until Peter doesn‘t—and a shell-shocked, lovesick Patricia finds herself starting out all over again, but this time around as a different kind of single the ex-wife.

An instant bestseller when it was published anonymously in 1929, Ex-Wife captures the speakeasies, night clubs, and parties that defined Jazz Age New York—alongside the morning-after aspirin and calisthenics, the lunch-hour visits to the gym, the girl-talk, and the freedoms and anguish of solitude. It also casts a cool eye on the bedrooms and the doctor’s offices where, despite rising hemlines, the men still call the shots. The result is a unique view of what its author Ursula Parrott called “the era of the one-night stand�: an era very much like our own.]]> 231 Ursula Parrott 1946022578 Jenna 4 4.15 1929 Ex-Wife (McNally Editions)
author: Ursula Parrott
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1929
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Iris Green, Unseen 200329468 From the highly-acclaimed author ofThe Eternal Return of Clara Hartcomes a devastating heartbreak romance with a speculative twist. When Iris Green discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her with one of her best friends, she doesn’t justfeelinvisible � she actuallybecomesinvisible. And the less she can be seen herself, the more she sees about the people around her, discovering uncomfortable truths about them � and herself.

Can she find her way back to being fully present in her own life, before it’s too late and she disappears altogether?

A powerful novel about self discovery in the wake of a traumatic event
The Eternal Return of Clara Hartwas shortlisted for the YA book prize in 2023, the 2023 Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing and the Branford Boase Award Perfect for fans of Laura Nowlin'sIf He Had Been With Meand Dustin Thao'sYou've Reached Sam]]> 385 Louise Finch 0702335371 Jenna 0 to-read 3.95 2024 Iris Green, Unseen
author: Louise Finch
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> It Can't Happen Here 33546357 This a previously-published edition of ISBN13: 9780241310663.

'An eerily prescient foreshadowing of current affairs' Guardian

'Not only Lewis's most important book but one of the most important books ever produced in the United States' New Yorker

A vain, outlandish, anti-immigrant, fearmongering demagogue runs for President of the United States - and wins. Sinclair Lewis's chilling 1935 bestseller is the story of Buzz Windrip, 'Professional Common Man', who promises poor, angry voters that he will make America proud and prosperous once more, but takes the country down a far darker path. As the new regime slides into authoritarianism, newspaper editor Doremus Jessup can't believe it will last - but is he right? This cautionary tale of liberal complacency in the face of populist tyranny shows it really can happen here.]]> 400 Sinclair Lewis Jenna 0 to-read 3.68 1935 It Can't Happen Here
author: Sinclair Lewis
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Tortoise and the Hare 2233853
Imogen, the beautiful and much younger wife of distinguished barrister Evelyn Gresham, is facing the greatest challenge of her married life. Their neighbour Blanche Silcox, competent, middle-aged and ungainly - the very opposite of Imogen - seems to be vying for Evelyn's attention. And to Imogen's increasing disbelief, she may be succeeding.]]> 269 Elizabeth Jenkins 1844084949 Jenna 0 to-read 3.91 1954 The Tortoise and the Hare
author: Elizabeth Jenkins
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day]]> 2277185 234 Winifred Watson 190646202X Jenna 0 to-read 3.98 1938 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
author: Winifred Watson
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> You Like It Darker 201741005
From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new collection of twelve short stories, many never-before-published, and some of his best EVER.

“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,� writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to digest. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,� and in You Like It Darker, listeners will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.

“Two Talented Bastids� explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,� a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,� a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,� a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man� asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

King’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.]]> 480 Stephen King 1399725106 Jenna 0 to-read 4.18 2024 You Like It Darker
author: Stephen King
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Day I Fell Into a Fairytale]]> 55277908
Lana loves stories. Especially the ones she and her brother, Harrison, share in their make-believe games. But when Harrison decides he’s too grown-up to play with Lana she finds herself feeling lonely. Until something magical happens�

Hidden in the strange new supermarket in town, Lana discovers a portal to afairytale world! But these aren’t the happy-ever-after fairytales that Lana knows, they are darker and more dangerous, and the characters need Lana’s help to defeat an evil witch. But she can’t do it alone. Can she convince Harrison to believe in stories again and journey to the world with her. . . before it’s too late?

This is a story about stories, but it’s also about a brother and a sister finding their way back to each other through the power of imagination.]]> 304 Ben Miller 1471192431 Jenna 0 to-read 3.95 The Day I Fell Into a Fairytale
author: Ben Miller
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The New York Trilogy 51487
The New York Trilogy is the series that made New York Times-bestselling author Paul Auster a renowned writer of metafiction and a special sort of genre-rebelling detective fiction which the New York Review of Books has called “one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature.� Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, these uniquely stylized detective novels include City of Glass in which Quinn, a mystery writer, receives an ominous phone call in the middle of the night. He’s drawn into the streets of New York, onto an elusive case that’s more puzzling and more deeply-layered than anything he might have written himself. In Ghosts, Blue, a mentee of Brown, is hired by White to spy on Black from a window on Orange Street. Once Blue starts stalking Black, he finds his subject on a similar mission. In The Locked Room, Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind his wife and baby and nothing but a cache of novels, plays, and poems.

This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition includes an introduction from author and professor Luc Sante, as well as a pulp novel-inspired cover from Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist of Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers.




]]> 371 Paul Auster 0140131558 Jenna 0 to-read 3.86 1987 The New York Trilogy
author: Paul Auster
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Home-Maker 9772130 New Yorker)

First published in 1924 and an instant bestseller at the time, The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher is set in small-town New England. It is the moving story of Eva, who is almost literally dying of boredom as an obsessively house-proud mother and home-maker (a word that is in everyday use in America but not in Britain), and her husband Lester, who is miserable in his job and wishes he could spend more time with his children. When Lester falls off a roof and injures himself, the couple are forced to swap roles: he is wheelchair-bound at home and Eva goes to work in a department store. The rest of the novel explores the way their family life changes and develops in response to this very modern parenting arrangement.

The children gradually blossom and all sorts of practical ruses are devised to help them and Lester, now a house-husband, get through the day. For example, in one memorable scene, a nosy neighbour demands to know how Lester copes with having to clean the kitchen floor every day, a task which had previously brought Eva close to despair. Lester’s solution? 'The attic was piled to the eaves with old newspapers. Every day [the older children] Helen or Henry brings down a fresh supply. We spread them around two or three thick, drop our grease on them with all the peace of mind in the world, whisk them up at night before Eva comes in, and have a spotless floor to show her. What’s the matter with that?' What's the matter indeed.

In Lester, we see a Montessori Father being born (Dorothy Canfield Fisher was responsible for introducing the Montessori method to the U.S.). The scene where he surreptitiously watches his youngest child learning to use an egg-whisk is one of the great scenes in the literature of childhood, in what is 'a remarkable and brave novel' (Carol Shields).]]> 288 Dorothy Canfield Fisher 1906462135 Jenna 0 to-read 4.17 1924 The Home-Maker
author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1924
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> Incidents Around the House 199757490 A chilling horror novel about a haunting told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,� from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box

To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’sMommy,Daddo,and Grandma Ruth.But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”�

When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay.

Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents' marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.

But Other Mommy needs an answer.

Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror told by the child Bela. A story about a family as haunted as their home.]]> 367 Josh Malerman 0593723120 Jenna 0 to-read 3.61 2024 Incidents Around the House
author: Josh Malerman
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil]]> 52090 The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication.

This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence,

Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling and unsettled issues of the twentieth century that remains hotly debated to this day.]]> 312 Hannah Arendt Jenna 0 to-read 4.22 1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
author: Hannah Arendt
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Origins of Totalitarianism]]> 396931 Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history

The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.]]> 527 Hannah Arendt Jenna 0 to-read 4.30 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism
author: Hannah Arendt
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> I'm Thinking of Ending Things 40605223 Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why�

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.�

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.]]> 241 Iain Reid Jenna 0 to-read 3.53 2016 I'm Thinking of Ending Things
author: Iain Reid
name: Jenna
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Long Walk Out of the Woods: A Physician's Story of Addiction, Depression, Hope, and Recovery]]> 46022226 224 Adam B. Hill 1949481220 Jenna 0 to-read 4.45 Long Walk Out of the Woods: A Physician's Story of Addiction, Depression, Hope, and Recovery
author: Adam B. Hill
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/25
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]]> <![CDATA[A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos #0)]]> 60856683 A Day of Fallen Night, Samantha Shannon sweeps readers back to the universe of Priory of the Orange Tree and into the lives of four women, showing us a course of events that shaped their world for generations to come.

Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms � but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory's purpose.

To the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hróth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow � exactly where she wants to be.

The dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber. Now someone from her mother's past is coming to upend her fate.

When the Dreadmount erupts, bringing with it an age of terror and violence, these women must find the strength to protect humankind from a devastating threat.]]> 880 Samantha Shannon Jenna 5
Just. Wow.]]> 4.36 2023 A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos #0)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Jenna
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/06/25
shelves:
review:
This is one of the best high fantasy novels I have ever read. I could sink my teeth into her world building; it's juicy, rich, and poetic. And actual strong female and diverse characters! No more having to defend one-dimensional "strong" leads just because they speak their mind or pick up a weapon. These characters are complex, three dimensional, and flawed. I only had a few points of confusion and I'm not even going to factor them into this rating because the book *is just that good*. Shannon continues to get better and better.

Just. Wow.
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