Monika 's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 17 Apr 2025 01:02:27 -0700 60 Monika 's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Katabasis 210223811 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 400 R.F. Kuang Monika 0 to-read 4.03 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Monika
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Notes on Infinity 217387909 Harvard students Zoe and Jack find themselves propelled into the intoxicating biotech startup world when they announce they’ve discovered the cure for ageing.

Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard University. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel anti-ageing drug.

Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.]]> 400 Austin Taylor 1250376106 Monika 0 to-read 4.03 Notes on Infinity
author: Austin Taylor
name: Monika
average rating: 4.03
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date added: 2025/04/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Crown of Oaths and Curses (The Mortal Fates #1)]]> 63119009
On the road to ultimate honor and glory, I lost everything.

Now, in a world ravaged by the whims of those who rule, I must turn my back on a lifetime of friendships and loyalties to face my own fate.

The Savage Prince.

Heir to the high-fae throne of the Southern Lands, he is known for his brutality and cold heart. But with the kingdom on the brink of ruin, I have no choice but to seek him out.

The war between the fae and the witches rages, and there’s no end in sight. My destiny is clear—help the prince defeat his enemies before it’s too late.

One small problem.

I am Rookesbane Eveningstar.

The Favored Child returned, a Witch of the Woods.

The greatest enemy of my Fates-blessed mate.




*The Crown of Oaths and Curses is a full-length MF epic fantasy romance with material that may be difficult for some readers. This book will end on a cliffhanger. It's recommended for 18+ due to language and sexual situations. Book 1 of a 3-book series.]]> 663 J. Bree Monika 0 to-read 4.24 2023 The Crown of Oaths and Curses (The Mortal Fates #1)
author: J. Bree
name: Monika
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Razorblade Tears 54860585 A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.

The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss.

Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.

Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250252708]]> 336 S.A. Cosby Monika 0 to-read 4.08 2021 Razorblade Tears
author: S.A. Cosby
name: Monika
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Monika 0 to-read 4.27 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Monika
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty]]> 25622895 The New Yorker

In the heart of New York City, a group of artistic friends struggles with society's standards of beauty. At the center are Barb and Lily, two women at opposite ends of the beauty spectrum, but with the same problem: each fears she will never find a love that can overcome her looks. Barb, a stunningly beautiful costume designer, makes herself ugly in hopes of finding true love. Meanwhile, her friend Lily, a brilliantly talented but plain-looking musician, goes to fantastic lengths to attract the man who has rejected her—with results that are as touching as they are transformative.

To complicate matters, Barb and Lily discover that they may have a murderer in their midst, that Barb’s calm disposition is more dangerously provocative than her beauty ever was, and that Lily's musical talents are more powerful than anyone could have imagined. Part literary whodunit, part surrealist farce, The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty is a smart, modern-day fairy tale. With biting wit and offbeat charm, Amanda Filipacchi illuminates the labyrinthine relationship between beauty, desire, and identity, asking at every turn: what does it truly mean to allow oneself to be seen?]]> 336 Amanda Filipacchi 0393352307 Monika 0 to-read 3.10 2015 The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty
author: Amanda Filipacchi
name: Monika
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Rabbit Hole 125476780 Conspiracy theories from Reddit seduce a disaster-prone woman into an obsession with solving her older sister’s cold-case disappearance.

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

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

A biting critique of the internet’s voyeurism, Rabbit Hole is an outrageous and heartrending character study of a mind twisted by grief—and a page-turning mystery as addictive as a late-night Reddit binge.]]> 374 Kate Brody 1641294876 Monika 0 to-read 3.03 2024 Rabbit Hole
author: Kate Brody
name: Monika
average rating: 3.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Lions of Al-Rassan 104101
Meanwhile, in the north, the conquered Jaddites' most celebrated � and feared � military leader, Rodrigo Belmonte, driven into exile, leads his mercenary company south.

In the dangerous lands of Al-Rassan, these two men from different worlds meet and serve � for a time � the same master. Sharing their interwoven fate � and increasingly torn by her feelings � is Jehane, the accomplished court physician, whose own skills play an increasing role as Al-Rassan is swept to the brink of holy war, and beyond.

Hauntingly evocative of medieval Spain, The Lions of Al-Rassan is both a brilliant adventure and a deeply compelling story of love, divided loyalties, and what happens to men and women when hardening beliefs begin to remake � or destroy � a world.]]> 528 Guy Gavriel Kay 0060733497 Monika 0 to-read 4.29 1995 The Lions of Al-Rassan
author: Guy Gavriel Kay
name: Monika
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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]]> The Bee Sting 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Monika 0 to-read 3.92 2023 The Bee Sting
author: Paul Murray
name: Monika
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow, #3)]]> 62991463
Always mindful of the debt she owes, the girl finds her worth as a weapon in the hand of the Prince. Her victories make him a king, then an emperor. The bards sing her name and her enemies fear it. But the war never ends and the cost keeps rising—how many times will she repeat her own story?]]> 31 Alix E. Harrow 166250957X Monika 0 to-read 4.32 2022 The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow, #3)
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Monika
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne, #1)]]> 60581370
The lost Heir of Jasad, Sylvia never wants to be found. She can’t think about how Nizahl’s armies laid waste to her kingdom and continue to hunt its people—not if she wants to stay alive. But when Arin, the Nizahl Heir, tracks a group of Jasadi rebels to her village, staying one step ahead of death gets trickier.

In a moment of anger Sylvia’s magic is exposed, capturing Arin’s attention. Now, to save her life, Sylvia will have to make a deal with her greatest enemy. If she helps him lure the rebels, she’ll escape persecution.

A deadly game begins. Sylvia can’t let Arin discover her identity even as hatred shifts into something more. Soon, Sylvia will have to choose between the life she wants and the one she left behind. The scorched kingdom is rising, and it needs a queen.

In this Egyptian-inspired debut fantasy, a fugitive queen strikes a deadly bargain with her greatest enemy and finds herself embroiled in a complex game that could resurrect her scorched kingdom or leave it in ashes forever. ]]> 523 Sara Hashem 0316477869 Monika 0 to-read 3.95 2023 The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne, #1)
author: Sara Hashem
name: Monika
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/29
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]]> To a Darker Shore 127283423 When her best friend is sacrificed to the devil, she’ll go to hell and back for him

Plain, poor, plus-size, and autistic, Alesta grew up trying to convince her beauty-obsessed kingdom that she’s too useful to be sacrificed. Their god blessed their island Soladisa as a haven for his followers, but to keep the devil at bay, the church sends a child sacrifice to hell’s entrance every season—often poor or plain girls just like Alesta.

With a head full of ideas for inventions, Alesta knows her best shot at making it to adulthood is to design something impressive for the festival exhibition so she might win a spot in the university—acceptance could guarantee her safety. But Alesta’s flying machine demonstration goes awry, a failure that will surely mean death. What happens is Her best friend and heir to the throne, Kyrian, takes the blame expecting leniency but ends up sacrificed in her place.

To stop the sacrifices forever, Alesta plans to kill the monster that killed her friend. Prepared to save her kingdom or die trying, she travels to the depths of hell only to find Kyrian—alive, but monstrously transformed. There is no escaping hell or their growing feelings for one another, and the deeper they descend into hell, the closer they come to uncovering a truth about the sacrifices that threatens to invoke the wrath of not only monsters but the gods as well.]]> 403 Leanne Shwartz 1645678415 Monika 0 to-read 4.23 2024 To a Darker Shore
author: Leanne Shwartz
name: Monika
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/24
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]]> White Nights 203425834 White Nights, the debut short story collection from poet Urszula Honek, is a series of thirteen interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland. Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them. Urszula relates to us, with the sincerest care and honesty, a localised, yet so clearly universal, story of ruin and hope: a story where the protagonists do not ask to be understood, but merely to be seen and to be heard. Kate Webster’s brilliant translation of Urszula’s poetic, yet often earthen, prose brings us to places that, though they are seldom seen in literature, we may never forget.]]> 160 Urszula Honek 1916913008 Monika 0 to-read 3.78 2022 White Nights
author: Urszula Honek
name: Monika
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/24
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]]> Dangerous Liaisons 326768
Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious—and deadly—than the players could have ever predicted.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 418 Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 0140449574 Monika 0 to-read 4.05 1782 Dangerous Liaisons
author: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
name: Monika
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1782
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]]> Green Dot 127282597
At twenty-four, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She’s sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup that Arthur has a wife—and that she has no idea Hera exists.

With its daringly specific and intimate voice, Green Dot is a darkly hilarious and deeply felt examination of the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century and the winding, tortuous, and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.]]> 320 Madeleine Gray 1250890594 Monika 0 to-read 3.62 2024 Green Dot
author: Madeleine Gray
name: Monika
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/15
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]]> <![CDATA[A Father's Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook]]> 208691963 How one father, determined to reclaim his daughter’s memory, brought down Alex Jones.


On December 14, 2012, Robbie Parker’s daughter, Emilie, was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in an unthinkable tragedy that changed both Robbie’s life and our country forever. By December 15, Alex Jones was live on air telling his listeners that the shooting was a hoax.




So begins Parker’s David and Goliath story, a story of hope and resilience in a time defined by hatred and division. A Father's Fight is a moving testament to the power of a father’s love and perseverance in the face of insurmountable grief.




Over the next decade, while Robbie and his family tried to grieve the loss of their daughter, Jones’s rabid fans harassed and accused them of being crisis actors. The hatred turned Robbie further and further inward; away from his wife, his daughters, and from himself; to a place of isolation where he thought he could hide. But four years after Sandy Hook and three thousand miles away from Newton, an Info War listener accosted Robbie. “How do you live with yourself? You liar,� he said before following Robbie for blocks. It became clear to Robbie that he could no longer avoid this horrible, terrifying reality.




Not long after, seventeen students were murdered by a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. In a terrible twist of fate, Robbie knew one of the parents who had lost their child. They told Robbie they were already bombarded with hateful messages, making it impossible to grieve. It was then that Robbie realized he needed to stand up to Jones if he ever hoped to heal. To reclaim his daughter’s memory and himself he would need to take down one of the nation’s most influential bullies. With the help of the courageous group of Sandy Hook parents, fierce lawyers, and a community of supporters, he did just that.




A Father's Fight is more than a memoir. A Father's Fight is a stirring portrait of an unbreakable human spirit.]]> 250 Robbie Parker Monika 0 to-read 4.59 A Father's Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook
author: Robbie Parker
name: Monika
average rating: 4.59
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]]> Stoner 166997
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]> 292 John Williams 1590171993 Monika 0 to-read 4.35 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Monika
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/17
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]]> Plainsong (Plainsong, #1) 77156
In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known.

From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.

Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a novel to care about, believe in, and learn from.]]> 301 Kent Haruf 0375705856 Monika 0 to-read 4.02 1999 Plainsong (Plainsong, #1)
author: Kent Haruf
name: Monika
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/17
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]]> The Things We Cannot Say 40899464
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents� farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.

Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.]]> 448 Kelly Rimmer 1525831518 Monika 0 to-read 4.51 2019 The Things We Cannot Say
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Monika
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/13
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]]> Dragoste şi respect 43901243
Un mesaj revolutionar
"Sunt casatorita de 35 de ani, dar nu am mai auzit de la nimeni o astfel de invatatura."
"Asta era ceea ce-mi lipsea!"
"Lectura acestei carti a fost pentru mine ca o iluminare."
"Toate s-au legat, dupa ce am citit Dragoste si Respect."
"Ca si consilier pe probleme de familie, nici un alt material pana la aceasta carte nu mi-a starnit mai mult admiratia."
"Ceva extraordinar vei afla, citind aceasta carte."

Un mesaj simplu
Dorinta cea mai mare a oricarei sotii este sa se simta iubita. Cand aceasta dorinta ii este indeplinita, ea este fericita. Dorinta cea mai mare a oricarui sot este sa se simta respectat. Cand aceasta dorinta ii este indeplinita, el este fericit.
Cand ori una ori alta dintre aceste dorinte nu este indeplinita, lucrurile incep sa mearga din rau in mai rau. "Dragoste si Respect" descopera cauzele pentru care sotii ajung sa reactioneze negativ unul fata de celalalt, aratandu-le si cum sa rezolve repede, fara dificultate si biblic conflictele care apar intre ei.

Un mesaj care da rezultate
Cu o experienta in consiliere de peste trei decenii, precum si cu o pregatire biblica si de specialitate adecvate, Dr. Emerson Eggerichs impreuna cu sotia lui, Sarah, au ajuns deja cu mesajul cartii "Dragoste si Respect" peste tot in America, schimband prin acesta modul in care partenerii de viata isi vorbesc, gandesc si se trateaza unul pe celalalt.
Ce-ti doresti pentru casnicia ta? Doresti sa va bucurati de buna intelegere? Doresti sa te simti aproape de partenerul de viata? Doresti sa te simti apreciat? Doresti sa cunosti viata de casnicie asa cum a conceput-o Dumnezeu? De ce sa nu incerci atunci putina "Dragoste si Respect"?

Dr. Emerson Eggerichs este presedintele Love and Respect Ministries, a primit Master of Divinity de la Dubuque Seminary si Ph.D. in asistenta copilului si familiei de la Michigan State University. A fost pastor senior al Trinity Church din East Lansing, inainte de a se dedica full-time zidirii de casnicii sanatoase prin lansarea in 1999 a seriei de conferinte "Dragoste si Respect". Emerson si sotia sa, Sarah, locuiesc in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, si au trei copii.]]> 312 Emerson Eggerichs 973896010X Monika 0 to-read 4.50 2004 Dragoste şi respect
author: Emerson Eggerichs
name: Monika
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> <![CDATA[O femeie după inima lui Dumnezeu]]> 219157194 Cu grație și căldură, Elizabeth George împărtășește în această carte învățături biblice practice cu privire la modul în care poți urmări prioritățile lui Dumnezeu privitoare la:

●umblarea ta cu Domnul - crești prin iubire față de Scriptură și ucenicizare
●slujirea ta - învață să slujești altora și să devii o femeie care încurajează
●casa ta - creează o atmosferă care hrănește și o tapiserie a frumuseții
●soțul tău - dezvoltă-ți o dedicare adâncă pentru a-l sluji și a-l cinsti
●copiii tăi - roagă-te cu credincioșie pentru ei și învață-i Cuvântul lui Dumnezeu

Permite-I lui Dumnezeu să-Și împlinească cea mai mare dorință pe care o are pentru tine. Lasă-L să te transforme, pregătindu-ți inima și mintea pentru a accepta lucrarea Sa extraordinară.

Vei găsi pace și bucurie durabile într-o viață de rugăciune, o viață a priorităților, o viață trăită ca o femeie după inima lui Dumnezeu.]]> 312 Elizabeth George 9737908384 Monika 0 to-read 0.0 1997 O femeie după inima lui Dumnezeu
author: Elizabeth George
name: Monika
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> cele 5 limbaje ale iubirii 56068503 Falling in love is easy. Staying in love—that's the challenge. How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life?

In the #1 New York Times international bestseller The 5 Love Languages, you'll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman's proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today.

The 5 Love Languages is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work.]]> 153 Gary Chapman Monika 0 to-read 4.42 1990 cele 5 limbaje ale iubirii
author: Gary Chapman
name: Monika
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> The Curators 202655373
A dark, lyrical blend of historical fiction and magical realism, The Curators examines a critically underexplored event in American history through unlikely eyes. All of Atlanta is obsessed with the two-year-long trial and subsequent lynching of Jewish factory superintendent Leo Frank in 1915. None more so than thirteen-year-old Ana Wulff and her friends, who take history into their own hands—quite literally—when they use dirt from Ana’s garden to build and animate a golem in Frank’s image. They’ll do anything to keep his story alive, but when their scheme gets out of hand, they must decide what responsibility requires of them. The Curators tells the story of five zealous girls and the cyclonic power of their friendship as they come of age in a country riven by white supremacy.]]> 296 Maggie Nye 0810147327 Monika 0 to-read 4.16 The Curators
author: Maggie Nye
name: Monika
average rating: 4.16
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]]> Grey Dog 198385737
The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd � spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist � accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past � riddled with grief and shame � has never seemed so far away.

But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something ancient and beastly � which she calls the grey dog � is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory begins to fail. Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, and begins to wonder which is more dangerous: the grey dog, or herself.]]> 400 Elliott Gish 177041732X Monika 0 to-read 3.86 2024 Grey Dog
author: Elliott Gish
name: Monika
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Sacrificial Animals 195790677
The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.

But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices. Nick puts the time to good use and his flirtation with Emilia quickly blooms into romance. Though not long after the affair turns intimate, Nick begins to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may have sinister, and possibly even ancient, motivations.

Punctuated by scenes from Nick’s adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.]]> 320 Kailee Pedersen 1250328241 Monika 0 to-read 3.32 2024 Sacrificial Animals
author: Kailee Pedersen
name: Monika
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fury of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #3)]]> 61755703 The Fury of the Gods is the earth-shattering final book in John Gwynne's bestselling Norse-inspired epic fantasy series, packed with myth, magic and bloody vengeance

THE FINAL BATTLE FOR THE FATE OF VIGRIÐ APPROACHES

Varg has overcome the trials of his past and become an accepted member of the Bloodsworn, but now he and his newfound comrades face their biggest challenge yet: slaying a dragon.

Elvar is struggling to consolidate her power in Snakavik, where she faces threats from within and without. As she fights to assert her authority in readiness for the coming conflict, she faces a surely insurmountable task: reining in the ferocity of a wolf god.

As Biorr and his warband make their way north, eager for blood, Gudvarr pursues a mission of his own, hoping to win Lik-Rifa's favour and further his own ambitions.

All paths lead to Snakavik, where the lines are being drawn for the final battle - a titanic clash that will shake the foundations of the world, and bear witness to the true fury of the gods.]]> 528 John Gwynne 0356514293 Monika 0 to-read 4.46 2024 The Fury of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #3)
author: John Gwynne
name: Monika
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Lady Macbeth 202102084 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.

The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men.

The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed.

The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of strategy, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive.

But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armor. She does not know that her magic is greater and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world.

She does not know this yet. But she will.]]> 295 Ava Reid 0593722566 Monika 0 to-read 3.46 2024 Lady Macbeth
author: Ava Reid
name: Monika
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Necrology 210359893 2024 Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist for Fantasy

“It’s amazing what the spirit can cope with to preserve the body. My spirit is a mighty oak that just won’t fall.�

In a fantastical aftermath of the Salem witch trials, magical women known as the Dirty have signed a contract swearing off their innate magic in exchange for freedom from violence by non-magical Freemen. Two hundred years later, in a Catskills orphanage, headmistress Whitetail has sprouted antlers—proof of a violated contract. When her wealthy benefactor visits, proposing marriage, her appearance sparks abuse. Rushing to her teacher’s defense, eight-year-old Rabbit curses the Beard dead, and Whitetail’s arrested on trumped-up charges. As Whitetail awaits her trial and execution, Rabbit is groomed as the Freemen’s star witness and learns of the terrifying reality to which they aspire. With her magic at stake and a loose tooth in her mouth, Rabbit has little left to lose. And a revolution to gain.]]> 380 Meg Ripley 1951971140 Monika 0 to-read 3.83 Necrology
author: Meg Ripley
name: Monika
average rating: 3.83
book published:
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]]> The Lies We Conjure 203579246
Ruby and her sister, Wren, are normal, middle-class Colorado high school students working a summer job at the local Renaissance Fest to supplement their meager college savings.

So when an eccentric old lady asks them to impersonate her long-absent grandchildren at a fancy dinner party at the jaw-dropping rate of two grand―each―for a single night� Wren insists it’s a no-brainer. Make some cash, have some fun, do a good deed.

But less than an hour into the evening at the mysterious Hegemony Manor, Ruby is sure she must have lost her mind to have agreed to this.]]> 400 Sarah Henning 1250841062 Monika 0 to-read 3.68 2024 The Lies We Conjure
author: Sarah Henning
name: Monika
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> My Darling Dreadful Thing 193544852
Spirits are drawn to salt, be it blood or tears.

Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the light of Roos' life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos' backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.

Soon, Roos is whisked away to the crumbling estate Agnes inherited upon the death of her husband, where an ill woman haunts the halls, strange smells drift through the air, and mysterious stone statues reside in the family chapel. Something dreadful festers in the manor, but still, the attraction between Roos and Agnes is undeniable.

Then, someone is murdered.

Poor, alone, and with a history of 'hysterics', Roos is the obvious culprit. With her sanity and innocence in question, she'll have to prove who—or what—is at fault or lose everything she holds dear.

"A Sapphic seance of preternatural proportions, My Darling Dreadful Thing summons a stunning new literary voice to be reckoned with. Johanna van Veen reaches beyond the veil to conjure up a gothic shocker like no other."—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters

©2024 Johanna van Veen (P)2024 Tantor]]> 375 Johanna van Veen 1728281547 Monika 0 to-read 3.85 2024 My Darling Dreadful Thing
author: Johanna van Veen
name: Monika
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Diavola 126918202 Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.

It isn’t easy when she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone—including her blandly docile husband and two kids—falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails—the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.

(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)]]> 296 Jennifer Marie Thorne Monika 0 to-read 3.84 2024 Diavola
author: Jennifer Marie Thorne
name: Monika
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Shards 60880820 A sensational new novel from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city.

Bret Easton Ellis's masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.

17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling pre-occupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them--and Bret in particular--with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends--or his own mind--to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.

Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero LA, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at 17-sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.
]]> 595 Bret Easton Ellis 059353560X Monika 0 to-read 3.98 2023 The Shards
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Monika
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]> 40163119
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.]]> 441 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385521316 Monika 0 to-read 4.47 2018 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Monika
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Everyone I Know is Dying 204041701
When she’s having sex with her boss, Iris likes to have the lights on so he can see how much younger she is than his wife. She likes watching her colleagues eat unhealthy lunches at their desk while her stomach aches with emptiness. She likes coasting at work knowing she’s going to land a big promotion anyway.

So why when it arrives does she find herself sprawled on her hallway floor, crying uncontrollably? Why, instead of a sense of triumph, does a crippling depression threaten to overwhelm her? Why does the support and stability of her family and friends feel so suffocating? And why, torn between her flatmate George � good, kind, reliable George � and cold, indifferent Patrick, does she only seem capable of making choices that cause her pain?]]> 352 Emily Slapper 0008629129 Monika 0 to-read 3.43 2024 Everyone I Know is Dying
author: Emily Slapper
name: Monika
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/29
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]]> Blue Sisters 195430687 Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.]]> 342 Coco Mellors 0593723767 Monika 0 currently-reading 3.93 2024 Blue Sisters
author: Coco Mellors
name: Monika
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/28
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]]> Ordinary Human Failings 62601701
FINALIST FOR THE FALLON BOOK CLUB SELECTION

When we look beyond the headlines, everyone has a story to tell

It's 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the "peasants" - ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star looks set to rise when he stumbles across a scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents loved across the neighbourhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and 'bad apples': the Greens.

At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life - and love - got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there's nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.]]> 218 Megan Nolan 1787332500 Monika 0 to-read 3.73 2023 Ordinary Human Failings
author: Megan Nolan
name: Monika
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/28
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]]> <![CDATA[If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English]]> 57693584
A dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa. In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to tell about it?]]> 186 Noor Naga 164445081X Monika 0 to-read 3.95 2022 If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English
author: Noor Naga
name: Monika
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/26
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]]> Hurricane Season 46041168 A New York Times Notable Book (2020)
A Guardian Best Book of 2020
A Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020

The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse—by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals—propels the whole village into an investigation of how and why this murder occurred. Rumors and suspicions spread. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters that most would write off as utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.

Like Roberto Bolano’s 2666or Faulkner’s greatest novels, Hurricane Season takes place in a world filled with mythology and violence—real violence, the kind that seeps into the soil, poisoning everything around: it’s a world that becomes more terrifying and more terrifyingly real the deeper you explore it.]]> 224 Fernanda Melchor 0811228037 Monika 0 to-read 3.93 2017 Hurricane Season
author: Fernanda Melchor
name: Monika
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/26
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]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Monika 0 to-read 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Monika
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/26
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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 Monika 4 3.86 2022 What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Monika
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/09/24
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So so weird, could have been weirder
]]> <![CDATA[The Fall of the House of Usher]]> 175516
"The Fall .. " recounts the terrible events that befall the last remaining members of the once-illustrious Usher clan before it is -- quite literally -- rent asunder. With amazing economy, Poe plunges the reader into a state of deliciously agonizing suspense. It's a must-read for fans of the golden era of horror writing. "The Fall .." is one of Poe's best known short stories - if not the best.

Librarian's note: this entry is for the short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher." Collections of short stories by the author, such as "The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales," can be found elsewhere on ŷ.]]> 36 Edgar Allan Poe 1594561796 Monika 0 3.90 1839 The Fall of the House of Usher
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Monika
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1839
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/09/24
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Funniest and cuntiest book ever
]]> The Once and Future Witches 49504061
But when the Eastwood sisters--James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna--join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There's no such thing as witches. But there will be.]]> 517 Alix E. Harrow 0316422045 Monika 0 to-read 4.01 2020 The Once and Future Witches
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Monika
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Go as a River 63922274 A sweeping, heart-stopping epic of a young woman's journey to becoming, set against the harsh beauty of mid-century Colorado

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

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

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

Go as a River is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettable characters and a breathtaking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate.]]> 320 Shelley Read 1954118236 Monika 0 to-read 4.20 2023 Go as a River
author: Shelley Read
name: Monika
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/21
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]]> Listen for the Lie 127279000 What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all and, if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. But after Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer.

It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast Listen for the Lie and its too-good looking host, Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one who did it.

The truth is out there, if we just listen.]]> 352 Amy Tintera 1250880319 Monika 0 to-read 4.07 2024 Listen for the Lie
author: Amy Tintera
name: Monika
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/21
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]]> Didion and Babitz 207293782 Joan Didion is revealed at last in this outrageously provocative and profoundly moving new work on the mutual attractions—and mutual antipathies—of Didion and Didion’s fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz. “Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?� —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972 Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in a closet in the back of an apartment full of wrack, ruin, and filth was a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. These boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. journals, photos, scrapbooks, manuscripts, letters. inside a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and was centered on a two-story house rented by Joan Didion and her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood. 7406 Franklin Avenue, a combination salon-hotbed-living end where writers and artists mixed with movie stars, rock n� rollers, drug trash. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American Joan Didion, cool and reserved behind her oversized sunglasses and storied marriage, a union as tortured as it was enduring. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the breaking and then the remaking—and thus the true making—of another great American Eve Babitz, goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, nude of Marcel Duchamp, consort of Jim Morrison (among many, many others), who burned so hot she finally almost burned herself alive. The two formed a complicated a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity; a friendship that was as rare as true love, as rare as true hate. Didion, in spite of her confessional style, her widespread fame, is so little known or understood. She’s remained opaque, elusive. Until now. With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz—Babitz’s brilliance of observation, Babitz’s incisive intelligence, and, most of all, Babitz’s diary-like letters—as the key to unlocking the mighty and mysterious Didion.]]> 352 Lili Anolik 1668065487 Monika 0 to-read 3.21 2024 Didion and Babitz
author: Lili Anolik
name: Monika
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions]]> 209786389
A fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty there is very little room to prove doubt. Framed shares ten true stories of men who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families, wives, and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free. In each of the stories, John Grisham and Jim McCloskey recount the dramatic hard-fought battles for exoneration. They take a close look at what leads to wrongful convictions in the first place, and the racism, misconduct, flawed testimony, and the corrupt court system that can make them so hard to reverse.

Told with page-turning suspense as only John Grisham can deliver, Framed is the story of overcoming adversity when the battle already seems lost, and the deck is stacked against you.]]> 368 John Grisham 0385550448 Monika 0 to-read 4.08 2024 Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
author: John Grisham
name: Monika
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
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]]> An Academy for Liars 203956639 A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger.

Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.

Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.

After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.

As Lennon continues in her studies her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton College, and the way her mentor’s tragic and violent past intertwines with it. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns. For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption . . . and it's a test she's terrified she is going to fail.]]> 464 Alexis Henderson 0593638301 Monika 0 to-read 3.45 2024 An Academy for Liars
author: Alexis Henderson
name: Monika
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
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]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Monika 0 to-read 3.34 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Monika
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)]]> 203164357 The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize � a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the ‘sidekick� is DC Reggie Chase.

The crumbling house - Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton - suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.

Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace.

All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.

A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers.]]> 320 Kate Atkinson 0385547994 Monika 0 to-read 3.69 2024 Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Monika
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Madwoman 204593567 A gripping story of motherhood and motherloss and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive, MADWOMAN marks the arrival of a major fiction talent.

The world is not made for mothers.
Yet mothers made the world�

Clove hasgone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.

But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As weracebetween her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced tofinally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?]]> 336 Chelsea Bieker 0316573299 Monika 0 to-read 3.71 2024 Madwoman
author: Chelsea Bieker
name: Monika
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
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]]> Colored Television 201102398 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593544372

A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,� she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse content� for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.� She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.]]> 277 Danzy Senna Monika 0 to-read 3.53 2024 Colored Television
author: Danzy Senna
name: Monika
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
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]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Monika 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Monika
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
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]]> The Summer Pact 195888459 In the wake of tragedy, a group of friends make a pact that will cause them to reunite a decade later and embark upon a life-changing adventure together—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Meant to Be.

Four freshmen arrive at college from completely different worlds: Lainey, a California party girl with a flair for drama; Tyson, a brilliant scholar and law school hopeful from D.C.; Summer, a recruited athlete and perfectionist from the Midwest; and Hannah, a mild-mannered southerner who is content to quietly round out the circle of big personalities. Soon after moving into their shared dorm, they strike up a conversation in a study lounge, and the seeds of friendship are planted.

As their college years fly by, their bond intensifies and the four become inseparable. But as graduation nears, their lives are forever changed after a desperate act leads to tragic consequences. Stunned and heartbroken, a pact is made to be there for each other in their time of need, no matter how separated they are by circumstances or distance.

Ten years later, Hannah is anticipating what should be one of the happiest moments of her life when everything is suddenly turned upside down. Calling on her closest friends, it soon becomes clear that they are facing their own crossroads. True to their promise, they agree to take a time out from lives headed in wrong directions and embark on a journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and acceptance.

In this tender portrayal of grief, love, and hope, Emily Giffin asks: When things fall apart, who will be at our sides to help pick up the pieces?]]> 352 Emily Giffin 0593600290 Monika 0 to-read 3.27 2024 The Summer Pact
author: Emily Giffin
name: Monika
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> If Beale Street Could Talk 38463 197 James Baldwin 0307275930 Monika 0 to-read 4.28 1974 If Beale Street Could Talk
author: James Baldwin
name: Monika
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/20
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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 Monika 0 to-read 3.92 2023 The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
author: Michael Finkel
name: Monika
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Cross the Line (Lights Out, #1)]]> 208516646 Her brother’s best friend sends her heart racing in this sparkling Formula 1 romance.

Formula 1 driver Dev Anderson’s career is on the line. After a social media disaster leaves him with an angry team and sponsors threatening to jump ship, he needs someone to help save his image. At a party in Monaco, he bumps into the woman who can fix it all. There’s just one problem: she’s his best friend’s little sister. And, okay, maybe there’s another problem—he kissed her last year and hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Recent college grad Willow Williams needs a job. She may have a talent for seeing the bright side of any bad situation, but it’s hard to stay positive when she’s struggling to get hired. So when Dev offers her a temporary solution, she can’t help but say yes. Even if it means ignoring the crush she’s had on him since childhood.

Willow and Dev are determined to keep things strictly professional, regardless of old feelings and the blazing chemistry between them. But in the glittering and high-stakes world of Formula 1, some lines are meant to be crossed…]]> 416 Simone Soltani 0593818148 Monika 2 3.57 2024 Cross the Line (Lights Out, #1)
author: Simone Soltani
name: Monika
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
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review:
nothing in this book could ever happen in any universe, ever. so unbelievably bad. felt like the author watched a couple races and ran with it, without fact checking anything she wrote, especially the technical stuff. everything revolved around one character, and im not talking about willow, and nothing even happened in the end. no drama, no fights, no nothing. boring.
]]> <![CDATA[When the Moon Hatched (Moonfall, #1)]]> 202507554 moons.

They certainly did not expect them to fall.

As a valued Elding Blade of the rebellion group Fíur du Ath, Raeve’s job is to kill. To complete orders and never get caught. When a renowned bounty hunter is employed by The Crown to capture a member of the Ath, Raeve’s world is turned upside down. Blood spills, hearts break, and Raeve finds herself at the mercy of the Guild of Nobles—a group of dual-beaded elementals who intend to turn her into a political statement. Only death will set her free.

Crushed beneath a mourning weight, Kaan Vaegor took the head of a king and donned his melted crown. Now on a tireless quest to assuage the never-ebbing ache in his chest, his hunt for a moonshard lures him into the belly of Gore’s notorious prison where he stumbles upon something that rips apart his perception of reality. A shackled miracle with eyes full of rage and blood on her hands.

The echo of the past sings louder than the Creators themselves, and even Raeve can’t ignore the truths blaring at her from a warmer, happier time.
However.
There’s more to this song than meets the eye, and some truths �
They’re too poisonous to swallow.

When the Moon Hatched is a fast-paced fantasy romance for fans of witty banter and strong, sassy protagonists. Beneath the cover is an immersive, vibrant world with mysterious creatures, a unique magic system, and a love that blazes through the ages. ]]> 718 Sarah A. Parker Monika 0 to-read 3.98 2024 When the Moon Hatched (Moonfall, #1)
author: Sarah A. Parker
name: Monika
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> Lola in the Mirror 167582092
'Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what's my future? What's my past?' A girl and her mother are on the lam. They've been running for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in the kitchen with the knife in his throat. They've found themselves a home inside an orange 1987 Toyota HiAce van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River � just two of the 100,000 Australians sleeping rough every night. The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But the girl has a dream. Visions in black ink and living colour. A vision of a life as a groundbreaking artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen 'Lady' Flora Box. A life of love with the boy in the brown suit who's waiting for her in the middle of the bridge that stretches across a flooding and deadly river. A life far beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there's only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person's name is Lola and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can sometimes ever do. She must look in the mirror. A big, moving, blackly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love, fate, life and death and all the things we see when we look in the mirror. All of the past, all of the present, and all of our possible futures. 'Mirror, mirror, please don't lie. Tell me who you are. Tell me who am I.']]> 512 Trent Dalton 146071332X Monika 0 to-read 4.37 2023 Lola in the Mirror
author: Trent Dalton
name: Monika
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/04
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]]> The Rachel Incident 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Monika 0 to-read 4.06 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Monika
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/04
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]]> The Berry Pickers 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Monika 0 to-read 4.04 2023 The Berry Pickers
author: Amanda Peters
name: Monika
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/04
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]]> The Last Sane Woman 199780064 A beguiling debut novel about friendship and failure, written with unusual craft and spryness by an acclaimed poet

Nicola is a few years out of a fine arts degree, listless and unenthusiastically employed in London. She begins to spend her hours at a university archive dedicated to women's art, because she 'wants to read about women who can't make things'.

There she discovers one side of a correspondence beginning in 1976 and spanning a dozen years, written from one woman � a ceramics graduate, uncannily like Nicola � to her friend, who is living a contrasting and conventionally moored life. As she reads on, an acute sense of affinement turns to obsession, and she abandons one job after another to make time for the archive.

The litany of coincidences in the letters start to chime uncomfortably, and Nicola's feeling of ownership begets a growing dread: what if she doesn't like what the letters lead to?]]> 240 Hannah Regel 180429537X Monika 0 to-read 3.84 2024 The Last Sane Woman
author: Hannah Regel
name: Monika
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)]]> 186074
The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.]]> 662 Patrick Rothfuss 075640407X Monika 0 to-read 4.52 2007 The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)
author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: Monika
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/02
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]]> Crime and Punishment 8590719 720 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0141908351 Monika 0 currently-reading 4.36 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Monika
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1866
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Catcher in the Rye 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919�2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Monika 2 3.81 1951 The Catcher in the Rye
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Monika
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 2
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> <![CDATA[The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby]]> 200740797 Some women won't be painted out of history . . .

Everybody knows that in 1938, runaway heiress artist Juliette Willoughby perished in an accidental studio fire in Paris, alongside her masterpiece Self Portrait As Sphinx.

Fifty years later, two Cambridge art history students are confounded when they stumble across proof that the fire was no accident but something more sinister. What they uncover threatens the very foundation of Juliette’s aristocratic family and revives rumors of the infamous curse that has haunted the Willoughbys for generations.

But what does their discovery mean? And how is it connected to a brutal murder in present-day Dubai?

A tale of love and madness, obsession and revenge, The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby unravels the riddle posed by a Sphinx who refuses to reveal her secrets . . .]]> 336 Ellery Lloyd 0063323001 Monika 0 to-read 4.09 2024 The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby
author: Ellery Lloyd
name: Monika
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/08
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]]> A Short Stay in Hell 11003233
In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.]]> 110 Steven L. Peck Monika 0 to-read 4.24 2011 A Short Stay in Hell
author: Steven L. Peck
name: Monika
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/18
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]]> The Firm (The Firm, #1) 452235
For a young lawyer on the make, it was an offer Mitch McDeere couldn’t a position at a law firm where the bucks, billable hours, and benefits are over the top. It’s a dream job for an up-and-comer—if he can overlook the uneasy feeling he gets at the office. Then an FBI investigation into the firm’s connections to the Mafia plunges the straight and narrow attorney into a nightmare of terror and intrigue.With no choice but to pit his wits, ethics, and legal skills against the firm’s deadly secrets—if he hopes to stay alive…]]> 501 John Grisham 044021145X Monika 5 4.26 1991 The Firm (The Firm, #1)
author: John Grisham
name: Monika
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/16
date added: 2024/05/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Daughters of Shandong 195888874
A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters� harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story

Daughters are the Ang family’s curse.

In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed.

Without an Ang male to punish, the land-seizing cadres choose Hai, as the eldest child, to stand trial for her family’s crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come, the women plan their escape. Starving and penniless but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to confront the family that abandoned them.

From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan, they witness the changing tide of a nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of their home and the life they’ve known also comes new freedom—to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story.

Told in assured, evocative prose, with impeccably drawn characters, Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations.]]> 400 Eve J. Chung 0593640535 Monika 0 to-read 4.46 2024 Daughters of Shandong
author: Eve J. Chung
name: Monika
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/12
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]]> I'm Glad My Mom Died 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!�), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy Monika 5 4.45 2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Monika
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/30
date added: 2024/05/01
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]]> Wide Sargasso Sea 25622780 Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

A new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting’s impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.]]> 176 Jean Rhys 0393352560 Monika 0 to-read 3.63 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea
author: Jean Rhys
name: Monika
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jane Eyre 10210 Alternate editions can be found here and here.

A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics.

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.]]> 532 Charlotte Brontë 0142437204 Monika 5 4.14 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Monika
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1847
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2024/04/28
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]]> They're Going to Love You 59721793 A magnetic tale of betrayal, art, and ambition, set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles

Carlisle Martin dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer just like her mother, Isabel, a former Balanchine ballerina. Since they live in Ohio, she only gets to see her father Robert for a few precious weeks a year when she visits Greenwich Village, where he lives in an enchanting apartment on Bank Street with his partner, James.

Brilliant but troubled, James gives Carlisle an education in all that he holds dear in life--literature, music, and most of all, dance. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and the sophistication of their lives, Carlisle's aspiration to become a dancer herself blooms, born of her desire to be asked to stay at Bank Street, to be included in Robert and James' world even as AIDS brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair creates a rift between them, with devastating consequences that reverberate for decades to come.

Nineteen years later, Carlisle receives a phone call which unravels the fateful events of her life, causing her to see with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she's become. They're Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.]]> 288 Meg Howrey 038554877X Monika 0 to-read 4.06 2022 They're Going to Love You
author: Meg Howrey
name: Monika
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family]]> 56376960
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.]]> 400 Robert Kolker 0525562648 Monika 0 to-read 4.17 2020 Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
author: Robert Kolker
name: Monika
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row]]> 6341062 304 Jarvis Jay Masters 0061730459 Monika 0 to-read 4.18 2009 That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row
author: Jarvis Jay Masters
name: Monika
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Storm We Made 60211228 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781668015148.

A novel about a Malayan mother who becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese forces during WWII—and the shocking consequences that rain upon her community and family.

Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.

Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.

A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fuijwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an “Asia for Asians.� Instead, Cecily helped usher in an even more brutal occupation by the Japanese. Ten years later as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction—and she will do anything to save them.]]> 339 Vanessa Chan Monika 0 to-read 3.80 2024 The Storm We Made
author: Vanessa Chan
name: Monika
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> Summer Sisters 57233514 here

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.

In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard’s world changes forever when Caitlin Somers chooses her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomes Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, an enchanting place where the two friends become “summer sisters.�

Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin begs Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go—because she wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend—her summer sister—still has the power to break her heart.

Praise for Summer Sisters

“Compulsively readable . . . [Blume’s] powers are prodigious.��The New York Times Book Review

“As warm as a summer breeze blowing through your hair, as nostalgic as James Taylor singing ‘How Sweet It Is.� You remember. So does Judy Blume. How sweet it was.��Chicago Tribune

“An exceptionally moving story that can leave the reader laughing and crying . . . sometimes at the same time . . . Blume creates a rich tapestry of characters.��The Denver Post

“Blume’s characters still tend to hover after the book is set aside. . . . She catches perfectly the well-armored love between longtime female friends.��The Seattle Times]]> 399 Judy Blume 0385337663 Monika 0 to-read 3.78 1998 Summer Sisters
author: Judy Blume
name: Monika
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy, #1)]]> 37969723
When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis's people but also of the ancient world at large.

Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war—the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead—all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis's perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker's latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives—and it is nothing short of magnificent.]]> 325 Pat Barker Monika 0 to-read 3.88 2018 The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy, #1)
author: Pat Barker
name: Monika
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Deep Sky 61884842 Yume Kitasei's The Deep Sky is an enthralling sci fi thriller debut about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew.

They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.

It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.

Asuka already felt like an impostor before the explosion. She was the last picked for the mission, she struggled during training back on Earth, and she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.

With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.

---

Content warnings are available at the author's website (see author bio).]]> 399 Yume Kitasei 1250875331 Monika 0 to-read 3.66 2023 The Deep Sky
author: Yume Kitasei
name: Monika
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Cannot Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art]]> 127280334 An eloquent and intimate debut memoir about navigating the gap between expectation and reality in modern motherhood.

I Cannot Control Everything Forever is Emily Bloom’s journey towards and through motherhood, a path that has become, for the average woman, laden with data and medical technology. Emily faces decisions regarding genetic testing and diagnosis, technologies that offer the illusion of certainty but carry the weight of hard decisions. Her desire to know more thrusts her back into the history of science, as she traces the discoveries that impacted the modern state of pregnancy and motherhood. With the birth of their daughter, who is diagnosed with congenital deafness and later, Type 1 diabetes, Emily and her husband find their life centered around medical data, devices, and doctor’s visits, but also made richer and fuller by parenting an exceptional child.

As Emily learns, technology and data do not reduce the labor of caretaking. These things often fall, as the pandemic starkly revealed, on mothers. Trying to find a way out of the loneliness and individualism of 21st century parenthood, Emily finds joy in reaching outwards, towards art and literature–such as the maternal messiness of Louise Bourgeois or Greek myths about the power of fate–as well as the collective sustenance of friends and community.

With lyrical and enchanting prose, I Cannot Control Everything Forever is an inspired meditation on art, science, and motherhood.]]> 352 Emily C. Bloom 1250285682 Monika 0 to-read 4.14 I Cannot Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art
author: Emily C. Bloom
name: Monika
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/21
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]]> <![CDATA[All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess]]> 127282281 A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as mindfulness, decluttering, David Cronenberg, and consent.

In her debut essay collection, “brilliant and stylish� (The Washington Post) critic Becca Rothfeld takes on one of the most sacred cows of our time: the demand that we apply the virtues of equality and democracy to culture and aesthetics. The result is a culture that is flattened and sanitized, purged of ugliness, excess, and provocation.

Our embrace of minimalism has left us spiritually impoverished. We see it in our homes, where we bring in Marie Kondo to rid them of their idiosyncrasies and darknesses. We take up mindfulness to do the same thing to our heads, emptying them of the musings, thoughts, and obsessions that make us who we are. In the bedroom, a new wave of puritanism has drained sex of its unpredictability and therefore true eroticism. In our fictions, the quest for balance has given us protagonists who aspire only to excise their appetites. We have flipped our values, Rothfeld argues: while the gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, we strive to compensate with egalitarianism in art, erotics, and taste, where it does not belong and where it quashes wild experiments and exuberance.

Lush, provocative, and bitingly funny, All Things Are Too Small is a subversive soul cry to restore imbalance, obsession, gluttony, and ravishment to all domains of our lives.]]> 304 Becca Rothfeld 1250849918 Monika 0 to-read 3.60 2024 All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess
author: Becca Rothfeld
name: Monika
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/21
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]]> Clear 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 196 Carys Davies 1668030667 Monika 0 to-read 3.85 Clear
author: Carys Davies
name: Monika
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> Your Presence Is Mandatory 133938432
Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.

In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family. Spanning seven decades between World War II and the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, Your Presence Is Mandatory traces the effect Yefim's coverup had on the lives of Nina, their two children and grandchildren.

From Germany's prison camps and forced labor system to the Soviet culture of pride and paranoia, Sasha Vasilyuk shines a light on one family caught between two totalitarian regimes, and the grace they find in the course of their survival.]]> 336 Sasha Vasilyuk 1639731539 Monika 0 to-read 3.53 2024 Your Presence Is Mandatory
author: Sasha Vasilyuk
name: Monika
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Monika 0 to-read 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Monika
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
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]]> White Nights 1772910 82 Fyodor Dostoevsky Monika 5 favorites
Truly like nothing I've ever read before.]]> 4.16 1848 White Nights
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Monika
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1848
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:
"And you grieve that the momentary beauty has faded so soon never to return, that it flashed upon you so treacherously, so vainly, grieve because you had not even time to love her...And yet my night was better than my day!"

Truly like nothing I've ever read before.
]]> <![CDATA[The Perks of Being a Wallflower]]> 22628 offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see
what it looks like from the dance floor.

This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being A WALLFLOWER

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

(back cover)]]> 213 Stephen Chbosky Monika 5 favorites 4.24 1999 The Perks of Being a Wallflower
author: Stephen Chbosky
name: Monika
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/04
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:
"So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them."
]]> <![CDATA[Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2)]]> 22299763
Kaz Brekker and his crew of deadly outcasts have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives.

Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties.

A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world.]]> 561 Leigh Bardugo Monika 5 favorites 4.58 2016 Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Monika
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:
Leigh, you are truly a genius!
]]> <![CDATA[Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)]]> 23437156 Alternate cover of ISBN 9781627792127

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone...

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.]]> 480 Leigh Bardugo 1627792120 Monika 5 favorites 4.47 2015 Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Monika
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:
Theres not one review i could write that would give this book the justice it deserves.
]]> The Stationery Shop 42201995
Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?

A poignant, heartfelt new novel by the award-nominated author of Together Tea—extolled by the Wall Street Journal as a “moving tale of lost love� and by Shelf Awareness as “a powerful, heartbreaking story”—explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.]]> 312 Marjan Kamali 1982107480 Monika 5 favorites ______
It truly left me heartbroken and in pain. I simply have no words to explain how empty this made me feel.]]> 4.22 2019 The Stationery Shop
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Monika
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/22
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:
"It is when I think of the purple sky on the evening of our engagement, and the moments we shared, that I remember beauty in this world."
______
It truly left me heartbroken and in pain. I simply have no words to explain how empty this made me feel.
]]> The Night Circus 9361589
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.]]> 506 Erin Morgenstern Monika 5 favorites

"As I foretold you, we are all spirits, and
Are melted into thin air, into thin air:
(....)
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep" -Prospero, The tempest, Act IV, Scene I


"You already watched me, it would only be fair."
"I could watch you all night," he says.
"You have,"


"I have spent a great deal of my life struggling to keep myself in control. To know myself inside and out, everything kept in perfect order. I lose that when I'm with you. That frightens me, and-"
"I don't want you to be frightened," Marco interrupts.
"It frightens me how much I like it,"



Now, let. me. tell. you.
This book is filled with crack, I'm pretty sure. What the fuck?

]]> 4.00 2011 The Night Circus
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Monika
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/05
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:

"As I foretold you, we are all spirits, and
Are melted into thin air, into thin air:
(....)
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep" -Prospero, The tempest, Act IV, Scene I


"You already watched me, it would only be fair."
"I could watch you all night," he says.
"You have,"


"I have spent a great deal of my life struggling to keep myself in control. To know myself inside and out, everything kept in perfect order. I lose that when I'm with you. That frightens me, and-"
"I don't want you to be frightened," Marco interrupts.
"It frightens me how much I like it,"



Now, let. me. tell. you.
This book is filled with crack, I'm pretty sure. What the fuck?


]]> Alone With You in the Ether 54208009
Everything else, however, is slightly different.

Both obsessive, eccentric personalities, Aldo Damiani and Charlotte Regan struggle to be without each other from the moment they meet. The truth—that he is a clinically depressed, anti-social theoretician and she is a manipulative liar with a history of self-sabotage—means the deeper they fall in love, the more troubling their reliance on each other becomes.

An intimate study of time and space, ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER is a fantasy writer's magicless glimpse into the nature of love, what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.]]> 248 Olivie Blake Monika 5 favorites “No, not really.� She leaned over, taking a puff from the spliff between his fingers. “Art isn’t about explaining shit,� she said, coughing once. “It’s about sharing things—experiences, feelings. Art is something we do to feel human, not because we are.�
“Do you feel human?�
“In some interconnected way, like I’m part of a common species? Not often. You?�
“Almost never.�
“Well, it was a good try.�
She’d taken another hit, leaning her cheek against his shoulder, and he’d thought with a sudden, sparkling clarity: Whatever you are made of, Charlotte Regan, I am made of it, too.
__________
"Because you and I, we are so different, aren’t we, and yet we are more like each other than the rest of the world is like us, and for that I bless you, I condemn you, I sanctify you, I sustain you."
__________
“I want to tell you something,� Regan said, “but it’s going to be so fucking stupid.�
“I talk about stupid things all the time.�
“No, you talk about interesting things, they’re just weird. This, though, it’s just� it’s just so ridiculous. I shouldn’t even bother.�
“No, say it.� I want you to say everything, anything. I want to have your thoughts, I want to bottle them, I want to put them in my drawer for safekeeping.
__________
It was SO hard to chose which quotes to add here since I highlighted the whole book, but yeah. I feel like this review will never do it justice, not a single one will ever EVER can. This book was not only phenomenal, it was everything. Olivie is a genius I'm 100% sure. The way she writes..is nothing like I've ever read before. This was one of, if not, the best book I have ever read in my entire life, I want it tattooed on me. To have it forever in my heart. My words will never do it justice, will never replicate the feelings and emotions I had, and I still do, while i read the book. It was so intimate and raw and magical and the characters are so wonderful and I need their love and I want to experience it for the first time again. 6/5☆]> 4.00 2020 Alone With You in the Ether
author: Olivie Blake
name: Monika
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/24
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:
“What about art?� he countered. “Isn’t that storytelling?�
“No, not really.� She leaned over, taking a puff from the spliff between his fingers. “Art isn’t about explaining shit,� she said, coughing once. “It’s about sharing things—experiences, feelings. Art is something we do to feel human, not because we are.�
“Do you feel human?�
“In some interconnected way, like I’m part of a common species? Not often. You?�
“Almost never.�
“Well, it was a good try.�
She’d taken another hit, leaning her cheek against his shoulder, and he’d thought with a sudden, sparkling clarity: Whatever you are made of, Charlotte Regan, I am made of it, too.
__________
"Because you and I, we are so different, aren’t we, and yet we are more like each other than the rest of the world is like us, and for that I bless you, I condemn you, I sanctify you, I sustain you."
__________
“I want to tell you something,� Regan said, “but it’s going to be so fucking stupid.�
“I talk about stupid things all the time.�
“No, you talk about interesting things, they’re just weird. This, though, it’s just� it’s just so ridiculous. I shouldn’t even bother.�
“No, say it.� I want you to say everything, anything. I want to have your thoughts, I want to bottle them, I want to put them in my drawer for safekeeping.
__________
It was SO hard to chose which quotes to add here since I highlighted the whole book, but yeah. I feel like this review will never do it justice, not a single one will ever EVER can. This book was not only phenomenal, it was everything. Olivie is a genius I'm 100% sure. The way she writes..is nothing like I've ever read before. This was one of, if not, the best book I have ever read in my entire life, I want it tattooed on me. To have it forever in my heart. My words will never do it justice, will never replicate the feelings and emotions I had, and I still do, while i read the book. It was so intimate and raw and magical and the characters are so wonderful and I need their love and I want to experience it for the first time again. 6/5�
]]> If We Were Villains 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X Monika 5 favorites 4.11 2017 If We Were Villains
author: M.L. Rio
name: Monika
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/31
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> Hoțul de cărți 13197222 571 Markus Zusak 6066090860 Monika 5 favorites 4.49 2005 Hoțul de cărți
author: Markus Zusak
name: Monika
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> S. 278232 S. reveals one of the most horrifying aspects of any war: the rape and torture of civilian women by occupying forces. S. is the story of a Bosnian woman in exile who has just given birth to an unwanted child—one without a country, a name, a father, or a language. Its birth only reminds her of an even more grueling experience: being repeatedly raped by Serbian soldiers in the "women's room" of a prison camp. Through a series of flashbacks, S. relives the unspeakable crimes she has endured, and in telling her story—timely, strangely compelling, and ultimately about survival—depicts the darkest side of human nature during wartime. "S. may very well be one of the strongest books about war you will ever read. . . .The writing is taut, precise, and masterful."]]> 220 Slavenka Drakulić 0140298444 Monika 0 to-read 4.26 1999 S.
author: Slavenka Drakulić
name: Monika
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 46041199 A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old “millennial everywoman,� she has recently left her white-collar desk job—in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time—as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women—alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist.

In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child—to put them first.

Jiyoung’s painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons “family planning� birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the arrival of writer of international significance]]> 163 Cho Nam-Joo 1631496700 Monika 5 ________

Everyone needs to read this book, like, right now. It is a fictional story, however, the author backs it up with real statistics hence the importance of this book. It truly had me in a chokehold.
We follow the life of Kim Jiyoung, a woman born in Korea, struggling to find work, adapting to different environments, giving birth and raising a child, being a stay-at-home mom and living through a financial crisis. All while dealing with misogyny both from men and women. Hated every single male in this book.
Also, Jamie Chang translated this very beautifully. Her writing is exceptional and it makes me so excited to read other books by her and Cho Nam-Joo.
6/5☆]> 4.17 2016 Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
author: Cho Nam-Joo
name: Monika
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/08
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves:
review:
“Help out? What is it with you and ‘helping out?� You’re going to ‘help out� with chores. ‘Help out� with raising our baby. ‘Help out� with finding me a new job. Isn’t this your house, too? Your home? Your child? And if I work, don’t you spend my pay, too? Why do you keep saying ‘help out� like you’re volunteering to pitch in on someone else’s work?�
________

Everyone needs to read this book, like, right now. It is a fictional story, however, the author backs it up with real statistics hence the importance of this book. It truly had me in a chokehold.
We follow the life of Kim Jiyoung, a woman born in Korea, struggling to find work, adapting to different environments, giving birth and raising a child, being a stay-at-home mom and living through a financial crisis. All while dealing with misogyny both from men and women. Hated every single male in this book.
Also, Jamie Chang translated this very beautifully. Her writing is exceptional and it makes me so excited to read other books by her and Cho Nam-Joo.
6/5�
]]> Memory Piece 193759650
By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As a performance artist, Giselle must navigate an elite social world she never conceived of. As a coder thrilled by the internet’s early egalitarian promise, Jackie must contend with its more sinister shift toward monetization and surveillance. And as a community activist, Ellen confronts the increasing gentrification and policing overwhelming her New York City neighborhood. Over time their friendship matures and changes, their definitions of success become complicated, and their sense of what matters evolves.

Moving from the predigital 1980s to the art and tech subcultures of the 1990s to a strikingly imagined portrait of the 2040s, Memory Piece is an innovative and audacious story of three lifelong friends as they strive to build satisfying lives in a world that turns out to be radically different from the one they were promised.]]> 304 Lisa Ko 059354210X Monika 0 to-read 3.18 2024 Memory Piece
author: Lisa Ko
name: Monika
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ripe 62919394
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.]]> 288 Sarah Rose Etter 1668011638 Monika 0 to-read 3.60 2023 Ripe
author: Sarah Rose Etter
name: Monika
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Love Song for Ricki Wilde 173404023
Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.]]> 352 Tia Williams 153872670X Monika 0 to-read 3.97 2024 A Love Song for Ricki Wilde
author: Tia Williams
name: Monika
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Letters to Milena 39808497 272 Franz Kafka 1784874000 Monika 0 to-read 3.94 1952 Letters to Milena
author: Franz Kafka
name: Monika
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sociopath: A Memoir 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

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

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

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

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X Monika 0 to-read 3.74 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir
author: Patric Gagne
name: Monika
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Monika 0 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: Monika
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/06
shelves:
review:
"My divinity shines in me like the last rays of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but i see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands."
]]>