Shannon's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:22:28 -0700 60 Shannon's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Don't Sleep with the Dead 211004130 Don't Sleep with the Dead, a standalone companion novella to The Chosen and the Beautiful, her acclaimed reimagining of The Great Gatsby.

Nick Carraway―paper soldier and novelist―has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late thirties. He's good at watching, and he's even better at pretending: pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he's forgotten the events of that summer in 1922.

On the eve of the second World War, however, Nick learns that someone's been watching him pretend and that memory goes both ways. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn't done with him.

In all paper there is memory, and Nick's ghost has come home.]]> 112 Nghi Vo 125036261X Shannon 0 to-read 3.73 2025 Don't Sleep with the Dead
author: Nghi Vo
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Victories Greater Than Death (Unstoppable #1)]]> 53205810
But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina’s destiny ’t quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed. Luckily, Tina is surrounded by a crew she can trust, and her best friend Rachael, and she is still determined to save all the worlds. But first she’ll have to save herself.

Buckle up your seatbelt for this thrilling sci-fi adventure set against an intergalactic war from international bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders.]]> 288 Charlie Jane Anders 1250317312 Shannon 4 I really enjoyed this 3.46 2021 Victories Greater Than Death (Unstoppable #1)
author: Charlie Jane Anders
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed this
]]> <![CDATA[Sourcery (Discworld, #5; Rincewind, #3)]]> 34499 276 Terry Pratchett 0061020672 Shannon 4 3.90 1988 Sourcery (Discworld, #5; Rincewind, #3)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes, #0)]]> 65213543 When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn't always what we seek.

In Bookshops & Bonedust, a prequel to Legends & Lattes, author Travis Baldree takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and second-hand books.

Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't going as planned.

Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she's packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from the action that she worries she'll never be able to return to it.

What's a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn't possibly imagine.

Still, adventure isn't all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.]]> 336 Travis Baldree 1250886104 Shannon 0 to-read 4.13 2023 Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes, #0)
author: Travis Baldree
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)]]> 39325105 Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to Gideon the Ninth, turns a galaxy inside out as one necromancer struggles to survive the wreckage of herself aboard the Emperor's haunted space station.

She answered the Emperor's call.

She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.

In victory, her world has turned to ash.

After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath � but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.

Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?]]> 512 Tamsyn Muir 1250313228 Shannon 0 to-read 4.30 2020 Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Daisy Jones & The Six 40597810 Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n� roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.]]> 368 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798622 Shannon 4 4.20 2019 Daisy Jones & The Six
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)]]> 42036538
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.]]> 448 Tamsyn Muir 1250313198 Shannon 4 4.19 2019 Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
No clue what was going on but what I understood was really cool..will reread when my brain is better
]]> <![CDATA[How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic (The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic)]]> 59094739 The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic, Emily Croy Barker's new novel opens a portal into a brilliantly realized world of enchantment, love, and danger. For readers of Philip Pullman, Deborah Harkness, Catherynne Valente, and Susanna Clarke.

Nora knows she needs to move on, and forget about magic. She's back in graduate school, and her life is going surprisingly well. She doesn't need to think about other worlds, about enchantments and demons, or about magicians-even though she once aspired to become one herself. Most of all, she really should forget the magician Aruendiel, who shared the secrets of magic with her but fiercely guarded the deepest secrets of his heart.

Then a chance encounter gives Nora the opportunity to slip between worlds again-and the next phase of her magical education begins.

"I'm not sure what I love more about How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic-its immersive world of enchantments, so lavishly imagined, or its characters, who are wise and funny and flawed, who win me over with their compelling voices, their wit and heart. A splendid follow-up to The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic-a sparkling, smart, irresistible read."-Sally Rosen Kindred, author of Book of Asters and Where the Wolf

"In Emily Croy Barker's new novel, magic happens exquisitely, seductively, dangerously."-Richard Horan, author of Goose Music and Seeds]]> 440 Emily Croy Barker 1736407120 Shannon 4 3.62 2021 How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic (The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic)
author: Emily Croy Barker
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
I have no idea why I enjoy these books so much. The pacing is off sometimes and people act kinda like they would act in situations ( imperfectly) rather than how we think they would
]]> <![CDATA[The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic, #1)]]> 16158565 The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic is sure to capture the imaginations of readers everywhere.

During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, eager to forget about her disastrous breakup and stalled dissertation, Nora Fischer wanders off and somehow finds herself in another realm. There, she meets glamorous Ilissa—who introduces Nora to a decadent new world—and her gorgeous son Raclin. But when the elegant veneer of this dreamland shatters, Nora finds herself in a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. And the only way she can survive is by learning real magic herself.]]> 563 Emily Croy Barker 0670023663 Shannon 5 3.51 2013 The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic, #1)
author: Emily Croy Barker
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Netherford Hall (Love in Netherford, #1)]]> 213388309 Pride and Prejudice and Witches

After a mysterious fire at their home in Regency London displaces Gentlewitch Edith Rookwood and her now much-reduced family to their ancestral seat of Netherford Hall in Kent, she faces a new threat in the form of her tenant—the chaotic and lovely Poppy Brightwell.

The repairs on the old pile are prohibitive, Edith’s standing is uncertain, and her inheritance has been challenged by a forgotten American branch of the family. It is clear she needs to marry, soon and wisely—but the lively girl from Harrow House gradually comes to occupy all of her thoughts.

As tenants, rivals, suitors and enemies start to circle Netherford, and dark secrets about both women’s pasts come to light, Edith and Poppy must confront what it means to fight for love and family, and to be their authentic selves.]]> 350 Natania Barron 1837863350 Shannon 4 3.66 2024 Netherford Hall (Love in Netherford, #1)
author: Natania Barron
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Get a Girlfriend (When You're a Terrifying Monster) (Monster Girlfriend, #1)]]> 61056810
Trillin ’t technically a person. She’s a tiny breakaway piece of consciousness from the all-devouring Endless, doomed to eventually rejoin it. But when a human witch stumbles into her world, Trillin suddenly has a new reason to figure out individuality–one shape-shifting tentacle at a time.

Sian is sure important magical discoveries are just around the corner, if she can just get her portals to work reliably. Reaching the dimension of the Endless without being eaten on sight is a dream come true, and Sian is determined to explore every bit of it. For science, of course, not for the strangely adorable life-form who keeps popping up and trying to� flirt?

But Trillin’s world can be a dangerous place, and keeping Sian safe might risk drawing the attention of the Endless itself–which will swallow Trillin up along with all her dreams of humanity. Together, can this unlikely duo escape the Endless, figure out the optimum number of appendages, and maybe even find love?

How to Get a Girlfriend (When You’re a Terrifying Monster) is a sweet, low-heat F/F sapphic romance between a witch scientist and a shape-shifting Cthulhu monster. HEA guaranteed!]]> 115 Marie Cardno 1991150350 Shannon 3 3.61 2022 How to Get a Girlfriend (When You're a Terrifying Monster) (Monster Girlfriend, #1)
author: Marie Cardno
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
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review:
It was ok but I didn't love it
]]> Camp Damascus 61884782 A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective� gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.]]> 246 Chuck Tingle 1250874629 Shannon 5 3.90 2023 Camp Damascus
author: Chuck Tingle
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> Most Ardently 111673641 A trans boy searches for a future―and a romance―in which he can live and love openly as himself in this heartrending young-adult reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, part of the Remixed Classics series.

London, 1812 . Oliver Bennet feels trapped—not just by the endless corsets, petticoats, and skirts he's forced to wear on a daily basis, but also by society's expectations. The world, and the vast majority of his family and friends, think Oliver is a girl named Elizabeth. He is therefore expected to mingle at balls wearing a pretty dress, entertain suitors regardless of his interest in them, and ultimately become someone's wife.

But Oliver can't bear the thought of such a fate. He finds solace in the few times he can sneak out of his family's home and explore the city rightfully dressed as a young gentleman. It's during one such excursion when Oliver becomes acquainted with Darcy, a sulky young man who had been rude to "Elizabeth" at a recent social function. But in the comfort of being out of the public eye, Oliver comes to find that Darcy is actually a sweet, intelligent boy with a warm heart, not to mention attractive.

As Oliver spends more time as his true self, often with Darcy, part of him dares to hope that his dream of love and life as a man can be possible. But suitors are growing bolder―and even threatening―and his mother is growing more desperate to see him settled into an engagement. Oliver will have to choose: settle for safety, security, and a life of pretending to be something he's not, or risk it all for a slim chance at freedom, love, and a life that can be truly his own.]]> 304 Gabe Cole Novoa 1250869803 Shannon 3 3.96 2024 Most Ardently
author: Gabe Cole Novoa
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning]]> 199388132 We can bury the girlboss, but what comes next? The former executive editor of Teen Vogue tells the story of her personal workplace reckoning and argues for collective responsibility to reimagine work as we know it.

“As I sat in the front row that day, I was 80 percent faking it with a 100-percent-real Gucci bag.� Samhita Mukhopadhyay had finally made it: she had her dream job, dream clothes—dream life. But time and time again, she found herself sacrificing time with family and friends, paying too much for lattes, and limping home after working twelve hours a day. Success didn’t come without costs, right? Or so she kept telling herself. And Mukhopadhyay wasn’t alone: Far too many of us are taught that we need to work ourselves to the bone to live a good life. That we just need to climb up the corporate ladder, to “lean in� and “hustle,� to enact change. But as Mukhopadhyay shows, these definitions of success are myths—and they are seductive ones.

Mukhopadhyay traces the origins of these myths, taking us from the sixties to the present. She forms a critical overview of workplace feminism, looking at stories from her own professional career, analysis from activists and experts, and of course, experiences of workers at different levels. As more individuals continue to question whether their professional ambitions can lead to happiness and fulfillment in the first place, Mukhopadhyay asks, What would it mean to have a liberated workplace? Mukhopadhyay emerges with a vision for a workplace culture that pays fairly, recognizes our values, and gives people access to the resources they need.

A call to action to redefine and reimagine work as we know it, The Myth of Making It is a field guide and manifesto for all of us who are tired, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of hustle culture.]]> 256 Samhita Mukhopadhyay 059344809X Shannon 3 3.75 The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning
author: Samhita Mukhopadhyay
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> Navigational Entanglements 195790820
Using the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies� vitality, Navigators guide space ships safely across the a realm of unreality populated by unfathomable, dangerous creatures called Tanglers. In return for their service, the navigator clans get wealth and power―but they get the blame, too. So when a Tangler escapes the Hollows and goes missing, the empire calls on the jockeying clans to take responsibility and deal with the problem.

Việt Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is rather unfortunate because, as a junior apprentice in the Rooster clan, when her elders send her on a joint-clan mission to locate the first escaped Tangler in living memory, she can’t exactly say no.

Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan usually likes people. It says so on her “information gathering”―right after “poisoning� and “stabbing.� So she’s pretty sure she’s got the measure of this they’re the screw-ups, the spares; there ’t a single sharp tool in this shed.

But when their imperial envoy is found dead by clan poison, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together―fast―before they end up cooling their heels in a jail cell while the invisible Tangler wreaks havoc on a civilian city and the reputation of all four clans.]]> 165 Aliette de Bodard 1250324882 Shannon 4 3.77 2024 Navigational Entanglements
author: Aliette de Bodard
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

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

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Shannon 4 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Queen of Fury (Queens of Fate, #2)]]> 207299470 One by one the kings of Braetan kneel before King Arthur under a banner of peace.

Hwyfar, eldest daughter of King Leodegraunce and famed libertine of Carelon, has returned to Avillion to find her father ruined by madness and a usurper poised to take the throne. Reluctantly she takes the mantle of Queen Regent to protect her kingdom, but she’ll need an army—which King Arthur pledges to send her, providing she marries one of his knights and surrenders the crown.

Arthur’s forces arrive under the command of Gawain of Orkney, who Hwyfar remembers as a brute; but she comes to realise he is not the man she thought he was, and finds herself irresistibly drawn to him. But Arthur has plans for her, and has commanded Gawain to keep well away—and in Arthur’s court, without the King’s blessing, love is treason.

Hwyfar and Gawain must navigate both a world of ancient forests and corrupt magic, and the political machinations of two courts, if they have any hope of escaping Arthur’s ever-tightening grasp.]]> 352 Natania Barron 1837860637 Shannon 5 4.33 2024 Queen of Fury (Queens of Fate, #2)
author: Natania Barron
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
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]]> <![CDATA[You Could Make This Place Beautiful]]> 61273812 You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.]]> 320 Maggie Smith 1982185856 Shannon 4 4.03 2023 You Could Make This Place Beautiful
author: Maggie Smith
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/12/04
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]]> <![CDATA[What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma]]> 58214328 A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life.

"Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know."

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.

Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.]]> 352 Stephanie Foo 0593238109 Shannon 4 4.50 2022 What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
author: Stephanie Foo
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves:
review:

]]> The Water Outlaws 61884755 Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.

In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.]]> 496 S.L. Huang 1250180422 Shannon 5 3.75 2023 The Water Outlaws
author: S.L. Huang
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cure for Burnout: How to Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life]]> 185034564
In The Cure for Burnout , burnout management coach and TikTok influencer Emily Ballesteros combines scientific and cultural research, her expertise in organizational psychology, and the tried-and-true strategies she’s successfully implemented with clients around the globe to demystify burnout for our post-pandemic world � and set you on a path toward a life of personal and professional balance. Ballesteros outlines five areas in which you can build healthy habits to combat burnout � mindset, personal care, time management, boundaries , and stress management . She offers clear, easy-to-implement tools to help you find greater balance, energy, and fulfillment, showing you how

� break burnout habits that keep you in a pattern of chronic overwhelm
� create sustainable work/life balance through predictable personal care
� get more done in less time while creating forward momentum toward a meaningful life
� identify and set your personal and professional limits , guilt-free
� master your stress and detach from your stressors

The Cure for Burnout provides a holistic method for burnout management to address the epidemic of our always-on, chronically overextended culture, empowering us to reclaim control of our own lives once and for all.]]> 272 Emily Ballesteros 0593596315 Shannon 0 to-read 4.10 The Cure for Burnout: How to Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life
author: Emily Ballesteros
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Cemetery Boys (Cemetery Boys, #1)]]> 52339313
When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie up some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.]]> 344 Aiden Thomas 1250250463 Shannon 5 4.26 2020 Cemetery Boys (Cemetery Boys, #1)
author: Aiden Thomas
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
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]]> Brightfall 41946234
It's been a mostly quiet life since Robin Hood denounced Marian, his pregnant wife, and his former life and retreated to a monastery to repent his sins . . . although no one knows what he did that was so heinous he would leave behind Sherwood Forest and those he loved most.

But when friends from their outlaw days start dying, Father Tuck, now the Abbott of St. Mary's, suspects a curse and begs Marian to use her magic to break it. A grieving Marian bargains for protection for her children before she sets out with a soldier who's lost his faith, a trickster Fey lord and a sullen Robin Hood, angry at being drawn back into the real world.

Marian soon finds herself enmeshed in a maze of betrayals, tangled relationships and a vicious struggle for the Fey throne . . . and if she can't find and stop the spell-caster, no protection in Sherwood Forest will be enough to save her children.]]> 320 Jaime Lee Moyer 178747920X Shannon 4 3.66 2019 Brightfall
author: Jaime Lee Moyer
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Starter Villain 61885029
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389223 Shannon 4 4.09 2023 Starter Villain
author: John Scalzi
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Last Night at the Telegraph Club]]> 35224992 A story of love and duty set in San Francisco's Chinatown during the Red Scare.

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.� And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?�

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.]]> 409 Malinda Lo 0525555250 Shannon 5 4.21 2021 Last Night at the Telegraph Club
author: Malinda Lo
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Long Live Evil (Time of Iron #1)]]> 201626991
She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.

So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.

This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain's shoes, for an adventure that is both 'brilliant' (Holly Black) and 'supremely satisfying' (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue's gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.]]> 435 Sarah Rees Brennan 0316568716 Shannon 5 3.87 2024 Long Live Evil (Time of Iron #1)
author: Sarah Rees Brennan
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law]]> 56769577
Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem—and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.]]> 308 Mary Roach 1324001933 Shannon 4 3.81 2021 Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
author: Mary Roach
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It)]]> 125227576
Forget “try harder.� When your brain works differently, you need to try different .

Diagnosed with ADHD at age twelve, Jessica struggled with a brain that she didn’t understand. She lost things constantly, couldn’t finish projects, and felt like she was putting more effort in than everyone around her while falling further and further behind. At thirty-two years old—broke, divorced, and living with her mom—Jessica decided to look more deeply into her ADHD challenges. She reached out to experts, devoured articles, and shared her discoveries on YouTube.

In How to ADHD , Jessica reveals the tools that have changed her life while offering an unflinching look at the realities of living with ADHD. The key to navigating a world not built for the neurodivergent brain, she discovered, ’t to fix or fight against its natural tendencies but to understand and work with them. She explains how ADHD affects everyday life, covering executive function impairments, rejection sensitivity, difficulties with attention regulation, and more. You’ll also find ADHD-specific strategies for adapting your environment, routines, and systems,

� Boost the signal and decrease the noise . Facilitate focus by putting your goals where you can see them and fighting distractions with distractions.
� Have less stuff to manage. Learn why you have trouble planning and prioritizing, and why doing more starts with doing less.
� Build your “time wisdom.� Work backward when you plan, and track how long it actually takes you to do something.
� Learn about your emotions. Understand how naming your emotions and letting yourself experience them can make them easier to regulate.

With quotes from Jessica’s online community, chapter summaries, and reading shortcuts designed for the neurodivergent reader, How to ADHD will help you recognize your strengths and challenges, tackle “bad brain days,� and be kinder to yourself in the process.]]> 464 Jessica McCabe 0593578945 Shannon 5 4.43 2024 How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It)
author: Jessica McCabe
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Kaiju Preservation Society]]> 57693406
What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that's found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too--and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389126 Shannon 4 3.93 2022 The Kaiju Preservation Society
author: John Scalzi
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Witchful Thinking (Elemental Love, #1)]]> 60383029
Lucinda Caraway loves living in Freya Grove, the mystic seaside town where charms, hexes, and magical beings of all kinds are the norm. She spends her days teaching high school history and her nights reading tea leaves and tending to her conjure garden. It’s a good life . . . but she can’t stop wishing for more.

Until one night, that wish turns into a spell, and suddenly Lucy can’t say no. Not to a public karaoke performance. Not to running a 10K. And, most alarmingly, not to her high school crush, Alexander Dwyer, who needs her help unjinxing his new house—which just happens to be right across the street from hers.

Alex has spent the last ten years traveling the world on adventures Lucy has only ever dreamed of, and he’s planning to leave again as soon as his house is safe to sell. But until Lucy can unhex herself, she and Alex are stuck together. And with so much magic in the air, maybe the next spell Lucy casts will be the one that convinces him to stay.
]]> 333 Celestine Martin 1538738074 Shannon 0 to-read 3.42 2022 Witchful Thinking (Elemental Love, #1)
author: Celestine Martin
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Witch Hat Atelier, Vol. 4 48664052
Can Coco and her friends pass their most harrowing test yet? Or will the nefarious Brimmed Caps end their journey towards witch-hood?!

Now that Coco has been fully accepted into Qifrey’s Atelier, it’s time for her and her colleagues to move onto the next test: The Sincerity of the Shield. Passing the test involves escorting some feathery friends to their nesting grounds, which sounds simple enough, except that the path before the young witches is a winding road filled with ancient magical traps! The test must also be completed in a group, and there’s one witch-in-training from outside of Qifrey’s atelier who doesn’t seem to have the confidence to make the cut. To top it all off, a Brimmed Cap lurks in the shadows, waiting to attack…]]> 192 Kamome Shirahama 1646591062 Shannon 0 manga 4.58 2018 Witch Hat Atelier, Vol. 4
author: Kamome Shirahama
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: manga
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet]]> 127921325
For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online , she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism.

By tracing how the internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms� power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It’s the real social history of the internet.

Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations have resulted in a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century.

Extremely Online is the inside, untold story of what we have done to the internet, and what it has done to us.]]> 382 Taylor Lorenz 1982146893 Shannon 0 to-read 3.80 2023 Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet
author: Taylor Lorenz
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Bright Sword 201750794
They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.]]> 673 Lev Grossman 0735224048 Shannon 5 3.94 2024 The Bright Sword
author: Lev Grossman
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves:
review:
I didn't think that I could read that long of a book with how tired I've been , but I sped through this book. Lev Grossman's works are always middle age coded even with young protags - about the dark side of a bright dream
]]> <![CDATA[Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV]]> 203020280 Cue The Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.

Nussbaum traces four paths of reality innovation—game shows, prank shows, soap operas, and clip shows—that united in the Survivor format, sparking a tumultuous Hollywood gold-rush. Along the way, we meet tricksters and innovators—from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; Bachelor mastermind Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray, the visionary behind The Real World—along with dozens of crew members and ordinary people whose lives became fodder for the reality revolution. We learn about the tools of the trade—like Candid Camera’s brilliant “reveal� and the notorious Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and the moral outrage that reality shows provoked. But Cue The Sun! also celebrates what made the genre so powerful: a jolt of authentic emotion.

Through broad-ranging reporting, Nussbaum examines seven tumultuous decades, exploring the celebreality boom, reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, and the dark truth behind The Apprentice. A shrewd observer who cares about television, she is the ideal voice for the first substantive cultural history of the genre that has, for better or worse, made America what it is today.]]> 464 Emily Nussbaum 0525508996 Shannon 5 3.94 2024 Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV
author: Emily Nussbaum
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/15
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[To Hair and Back: My Journey Toward Self-Love One Strand at a Time]]> 35620962
If hair was a woman’s crowning glory, then why did Rhonda Eason have a mass of uncontrollable tumbleweed at best? At worst, it was a source of frustration and self-condemnation. Raised in a family of women born with tresses suitable for romance novel heroines, Rhonda was apathetic toward her kinky coils, and, in turn, herself. To Hair and Back � My Journey Toward Self-Love One Strand at a Time is a debut memoir that details her quest for the perfect head of hair and the discovery of something far more meaningful. In this endearing personal narrative, she explores the question: If I am not my hair, then who am I?

Beginning in a Detroit ghetto and traversing the globe, the author boldly reveals the joy, despair, pride, and public humiliation she experienced while in search of her best self. Through humorous self-introspection, Rhonda uses her passion for hair to explore the dynamics of her relationships, as well as themes of race and gender. To Hair and Back takes the reader on a journey of a child bullied because of her knotty roots through her adventurous life-long crusade in search of the perfect hair. Masked as a need for creativity and a remedy for boredom, Rhonda’s obsession with her ever-changing hairstyles becomes a metaphor that anyone who has ever struggled with issues of self-worth will find relatable.
]]> 320 Rhonda Eason 0999118811 Shannon 4 4.10 To Hair and Back: My Journey Toward Self-Love One Strand at a Time
author: Rhonda Eason
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Bird King 40642333 Alif the Unseen and writer of the Ms. Marvel series, G. Willow Wilson

Set in 1491 during the reign of the last sultanate in the Iberian peninsula, The Bird King is the story of Fatima, the only remaining Circassian concubine to the sultan, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker.

Hassan has a secret--he can draw maps of places he's never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan's surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan's gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls?

As Fatima and Hassan traverse Spain with the help of a clever jinn to find safety, The Bird King asks us to consider what love is and the price of freedom at a time when the West and the Muslim world were not yet separate.]]> 403 G. Willow Wilson 080212903X Shannon 4 3.68 2019 The Bird King
author: G. Willow Wilson
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Servant Mage 57693508
Along the way they get caught up in a conspiracy to kill the latest royal child and wipe out the Monarchist movement for good.

But Fellian has more than just her Lamplighting skills up her sleeve�

In Kate Elliott's Servant Mage, a lowly fire mage finds herself entangled in an empire-spanning conspiracy on her way to discovering her true power.]]> 164 Kate Elliott 1250769051 Shannon 3 3.48 2022 Servant Mage
author: Kate Elliott
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves:
review:
This seems unfinished, like it's the first half of a novel. I liked it well enough
]]> <![CDATA[The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)]]> 45047384
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 394 T.J. Klune Shannon 3 4.37 2020 The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves:
review:
A little too sweet and simple and well...black and white for me. Why does Linus' life have to be devoid of color beforehand? That makes the choice too easy and uninteresting. And of course, fantasy racism will always taste a bit strange and artificial.
]]> A Sorceress Comes to Call 195790847 A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic

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

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

Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.]]> 327 T. Kingfisher 1250244072 Shannon 5 4.06 2024 A Sorceress Comes to Call
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/19
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]]> The Spellshop 199269577 The Spellshop is Sarah Beth Durst’s romantasy debut–a lush cottagecore tale full of stolen spellbooks, unexpected friendships, sweet jams, and even sweeter love.

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.

When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.

In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.

But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.

Like a Hallmark rom-com full of mythical creatures and fueled by cinnamon rolls and magic, The Spellshop will heal your heart and feed your soul.]]> 384 Sarah Beth Durst Shannon 4 4.05 2024 The Spellshop
author: Sarah Beth Durst
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
review:
While some may find a world where everyone has good intentions a fantasy, this book was very cozy. There were some slow parts in the beginning before it got good
]]> <![CDATA[The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family]]> 5786745 "An extremely useful parenting handbook...

truly outstanding ... strongly recommended."


--Library Journal (starred review)





"A tremendous resource for parents and professionals alike."


--Thomas Atwood, president and CEO, National Council for Adoption





The adoption of a child is always a joyous moment in the life of a family. Some adoptions, though, present unique challenges. Welcoming these children into your family--and addressing their special needs--requires care, consideration, and compassion.





Written by two research psychologists specializing in adoption and attachment, The Connected Child will help you:





Build bonds of affection and trust with your adopted child

Effectively deal with any learning or behavioral disorders

Discipline your child with love without making him or her feel threatened



"A must-read not only for adoptive parents, but for all families striving to correct and connect with their children."


--Carol S. Kranowitz, author of The Out-of-Sync Child



"Drs. Purvis and Cross have thrown a life preserver not only to those just entering uncharted waters, but also to those struggling to stay afloat."
--Kathleen E. Morris, editor of S. I. Focus magazine



"Truly an exceptional, innovative work . . . compassionate, accessible, and founded on a breadth of scientific knowledge and clinical expertise."
--Susan Livingston Smith, program director,

Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute



"The Connected Child is the literary equivalent of an airline oxygen mask and instructions: place the mask over your own face first, then over the nose of your child.This book first assists the parent, saying, in effect, 'Calm down, you're not the first mom or dad in the world to face this hurdle, breathe deeply, then follow these simple steps.' The sense of not facing these issues alone--the relief that your child's behavior is not off the charts--is hugely comforting. Other children have behaved this way; other parents have responded thusly; welcome to the community of therapeutic and joyful adoptive families."
--Melissa Fay Greene, author of There is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children

]]> 290 Karyn Purvis 0071509267 Shannon 3 4.43 2007 The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family
author: Karyn Purvis
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves:
review:
Good for parents, but the idea of teaching anyone this made me cringe so hard
]]> <![CDATA[She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)]]> 48727813 Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner
Astounding Award Winner
Lambda Literary Award Finalist
Hugo Award Finalist
Locus Award Finalist
Otherwise Award Finalist

"Magnificent in every way."—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree

"A dazzling new world of fate, war, love and betrayal."—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister

She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…�

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness�

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future her brother's abandoned greatness.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 Shelley Parker-Chan 1250621798 Shannon 4 3.87 2021 She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)
author: Shelley Parker-Chan
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Night Country (The Hazel Wood, #2)]]> 43565384 The New York Times bestselling sequel to Melissa Albert’s beloved The Hazel Wood!

In The Night Country, Alice Proserpine dives back into a menacing, mesmerizing world of dark fairy tales and hidden doors of The Hazel Wood. Follow her and Ellery Finch as they learn The Hazel Wood was just the beginning, and that worlds die not with a whimper, but a bang.

With Finch’s help, Alice escaped the Hinterland and her reclusive grandmother’s dark legacy. Now she and the rest of the dregs of the fairy tale world have washed up in New York City, where Alice is trying to make a new, unmagical life. But something is stalking the Hinterland’s survivors—and she suspects their deaths may have a darker purpose. Meanwhile, in the winking out world of the Hinterland, Finch seeks his own adventure, and—if he can find it—a way back home...]]> 331 Melissa Albert 1250246075 Shannon 0 to-read 3.70 2020 The Night Country (The Hazel Wood, #2)
author: Melissa Albert
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood, #1)]]> 34275232
Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began―and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.]]> 359 Melissa Albert 1250147905 Shannon 4 3.55 2018 The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood, #1)
author: Melissa Albert
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/25
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff]]> 35540769 You don't have to live overwhelmed by stuff--you can get rid of clutter for good!

While the world seems to be in love with the idea of tiny houses and minimalism, many of us simply can't purge it all and start from nothing. Yet a home with too much stuff is a home that is difficult to maintain, so where do we begin? Add in paralyzing emotional attachments and constant life challenges, and it can feel almost impossible to make real decluttering progress.

In Decluttering at the Speed of Life, decluttering expert and author Dana White identifies the mind-sets and emotional challenges that make it difficult to declutter. Then, in her signature humorous approach, she provides workable solutions to break through these struggles and get clutter out--for good!

But more than simply offering strategies, Dana dives deep into how to implement them, no matter the reader's clutter level or emotional resistance to decluttering. She helps identify procrasticlutter--the stuff that will get done eventually so it doesn't seem urgent--as well as how to make progress when there's no time to declutter.

Sections of the book include


Why You Need This Book (You Know Why)
Your Unique Home
Decluttering in the Midst of Real Life
Change Your Mind, Change Your Home
Breaking Through Your Decluttering Delusions
Working It Out Room by Room
Helping Others Declutter
Real Life Goes On (and On)
As long as we're living and breathing, new clutter will appear. The good news is that decluttering can get easier, become more natural, and require significantly fewer hours, less emotional bandwidth, and little to no sweat to keep going.]]> 240 Dana K. White 071808358X Shannon 5 Very useful 4.06 2018 Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff
author: Dana K. White
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:
Very useful
]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, #3)]]> 55858638 New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate.

The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it's all we dream about, the hideously slim chance we'll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls.

And now the impossible dream has come true. I'm out, we're all out--and I didn't even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. So much for my great-grandmother's prophecy of doom and destruction. I didn't kill enclavers, I saved them. Me, and Orion, and our allies. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: we saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves of the world.

Ha, only joking! Actually it's gone all wrong. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war on the horizon. And the first thing I've got to do now, having miraculously got out of the Scholomance, is turn straight around and find a way back in.]]> 407 Naomi Novik 0593158369 Shannon 4 4.08 2022 The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, #3)
author: Naomi Novik
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2)]]> 55559887 A budding dark sorceress determined not to use her formidable powers uncovers yet more secrets about the workings of her world in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education, the start of Naomi Novik’s groundbreaking crossover series.

At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year—and the looming specter of graduation, a deadly ritual that leaves few students alive in its wake. El is determined that her chosen group will survive, but it is a prospect that is looking harder by the day as the savagery of the school ramps up. Until El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules . . .]]> 388 Naomi Novik 0593128869 Shannon 4 Better written than the first 4.20 2021 The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2)
author: Naomi Novik
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves:
review:
Better written than the first
]]> <![CDATA[This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart, #2)]]> 55818283 How much would you risk to save the ones you love? Would you tempt even the most dangerous fate?

Briseis has one chance to save her mother, but she'll need to do the impossible: find the last fragment of the deadly Absyrtus Heart. If she is to locate the missing piece, she must turn to the blood relatives she's never known, learn about their secret powers, and take her place in their ancient lineage. Briseis is not the only one who wants the Heart, and her enemies will stop at nothing to fulfill their own ruthless plans. The fates tell of a truly dangerous journey, one that could end in more heartache, more death. Bolstered by the sisterhood of ancient magic, can Briseis harness her power to save the people she loves most?]]> 320 Kalynn Bayron 1547610697 Shannon 4 3.98 2022 This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart, #2)
author: Kalynn Bayron
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves:
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]]> The Bone Harp 206822679
A standalone tale of friendship, family, and fair Elfland.]]> 280 Victoria Goddard Shannon 0 to-read 4.32 2024 The Bone Harp
author: Victoria Goddard
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Poison Heart (This Poison Heart, #1)]]> 54860241
Briseis has a gift: she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms with a single touch.

When Briseis's aunt dies and wills her a dilapidated estate in rural New York, Bri and her parents decide to leave Brooklyn behind for the summer. Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they could never have imagined--it comes with a specific set of instructions, an old-school apothecary, and a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world that can only be entered by those who share Bri's unique family lineage.

When strangers begin to arrive on their doorstep, asking for tinctures and elixirs, Bri learns she has a surprising talent for creating them. One of the visitors is Marie, a mysterious young woman who Bri befriends, only to find that Marie is keeping dark secrets about the history of the estate and its surrounding community. There is more to Bri's sudden inheritance than she could have imagined, and she is determined to uncover it . . . until a nefarious group comes after her in search of a rare and dangerous immortality elixir. Up against a centuries-old curse and the deadliest plant on earth, Bri must harness her gift to protect herself and her family.

From the bestselling author of Cinderella Is Dead comes another inspiring and deeply compelling story about a young woman with the power to conquer the dark forces descending around her.]]> 384 Kalynn Bayron 1547603909 Shannon 4 4.10 2021 This Poison Heart (This Poison Heart, #1)
author: Kalynn Bayron
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The Butcher of the Forest 127281143
At the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near—once someone goes in, they never come back out.

No one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe. If Veris fails, the Tyrant will kill her; if she remains in the forest for longer than a day, she will be trapped forevermore.

So Veris will travel deep into the Elmever to face traps, riddles, and monsters at the behest of another monster. One misstep will cost everything.]]> 160 Premee Mohamed 1250881781 Shannon 5 3.87 2024 The Butcher of the Forest
author: Premee Mohamed
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/18
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain]]> 127280349 Celebrated author Sofia Samatar presents a mystical, revolutionary space adventure for the exhausted dreamer in this brilliant science fiction novella tackling the carceral state and violence embedded in the ivory tower while embodying the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin.

"Can the University be a place of both training and transformation?"

The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out amongst the stars.

His whole world changes―literally―when he is yanked "upstairs" to meet the woman he will come to call “professor.� The boy is no longer one of the Chained, she tells him, and he has been gifted an opportunity to be educated at the ship’s university alongside the elite.

The woman has spent her career striving for acceptance and validation from her colleagues in the hopes of reaching a brighter future, only to fall short at every turn.

Together, the boy and the woman will learn from each other to grasp the design of the chains designed to fetter them both, and are the key to breaking free. They will embark on a transformation―and redesign the entire world.]]> 128 Sofia Samatar 1250881803 Shannon 0 to-read 3.76 2024 The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
author: Sofia Samatar
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix]]> 209190422 240 Katherine Alejandra Cross 1736716867 Shannon 4
Worthwhile, but not perfect.]]> 4.07 2024 Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix
author: Katherine Alejandra Cross
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
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The internet is very personalized these days, so while this polemic is all well and good for leftist discoursers, as an explanation why posting isn't praxis, there were some missteps. No book can be for everyone, of course, so the missteps may be on purpose - such as putting a large emphasis on doom scrolling but not noting the more common experience of seeing everyone's highlight reels or dipping into there's a moral micro blogging service discourse. ( at least her discussion of the affordances of platforms made up for it)

Worthwhile, but not perfect.
]]> Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) 52459864
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.�

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia�. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.]]> 394 Xiran Jay Zhao 0735269939 Shannon 5 4.03 2021 Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1)
author: Xiran Jay Zhao
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/09
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Queen of None (Queens of Fate #1)]]> 55924004
Married at twelve, and a mother soon after, Anna - the famed King Arthur's sister - did not live a young life full of promise, myth, and legend. She bore three strong sons and delivered the kingdom of Orkney to her brother by way of her marriage. She did as she was asked, invisible and useful for her name, her status, her dowry, and her womb.

Twenty years after she left her home, Anna returns to Carelon at Arthur's bidding, carrying the crown of her now-dead husband, Lot of Orkney. Past her prime and confined to the castle itself, she finds herself yet again a pawn in greater machinations and seemingly helpless to do anything about it. Anna must once again face the demons of her childhood: her sister Morgen, Elaine, and Morgause; Merlin and his scheming Avillion priests; and Bedevere, the man she once loved. To say nothing of new court visitors, like Lanceloch, or the trouble concerning her own sons.

Carelon, and all of Braetan, is changing, though, and Anna must change along with it. New threats, inside and out, lurk in the shadows, and a strange power begins to awaken in her. As she learns to reconcile her dark gift, and struggles to keep the power to herself, she must bargain her own strength, and family, against her ambition and thirst for revenge.]]> 325 Natania Barron 1952283051 Shannon 5 3.59 2020 Queen of None (Queens of Fate #1)
author: Natania Barron
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying (Dark Lord Davi, #1)]]> 198493860
Davi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time.

This time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord always wins, then maybe that’s who she needs to be. It’s Davi’s turn to play on the winning side.

Burningblade & Silvereye
Ashes of the Sun
Blood of the Chosen
Emperor of Ruin]]> 392 Django Wexler 0316392200 Shannon 3 3.67 2024 How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying (Dark Lord Davi, #1)
author: Django Wexler
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves:
review:
Passable enough. The constant snark and references were almost too much and I'm not much of an isekai fan, but there were some fairly ok twists and good character work
]]> <![CDATA[Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power]]> 150247407
Systemic Shame is the socially engineered self-loathing that says we are solely to blame for our circumstances. It tells us that poverty is remedied by hard-working people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, that marginalized people are personally responsible for solving the problem of their own oppression, and that massive global crises like climate change can be solved with individual action. Feeling overwhelmed? That’s your problem, too. The more we try and ultimately fail to live up to impossible societal standards of moral goodness, the more shame we feel—and the more we retreat into isolation and despair.

Social psychologist Dr. Devon Price knows firsthand the destructive effects of Systemic Shame; he experienced shame and self-hatred as he grappled with his transgender identity, feeling as if his suffering was caused by his own actions rather than systems like cissexism. And it doesn’t just end with internal feelings of anguish. It causes us to judge other people the same way we fear being judged, which blocks us from seeking out the acceptance and support we need and discourages us from trying to improve our communities and our relationships.

In Unlearning Shame , Dr. Price explores how we can deal with those hard emotions more effectively, tackling the societal shame we’ve absorbed and directed at ourselves. He introduces the antidote to Systemic expansive recognition, an awareness of one’s position in the larger social world and the knowledge that our battles are only won when they are shared. He provides a suite of exercises and resources designed to combat Systemic Shame on a personal, interpersonal, and global level through rebuilding trust in yourself, in others, and in our shared future.

By offering a roadmap to healing and a toolkit of actionable items, Unlearning Shame helps us reject hopelessness and achieve sustainable change and personal growth.]]> 368 Devon Price 0593581210 Shannon 5 4.22 Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power
author: Devon Price
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> The Cloisters 61054804 On the wheel of fortune, who will emerge on top... and who will die?

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she hopes to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval and Renaissance art.

There she is drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, including Patrick Roland, the museum's mercurial curator who specializes in the history of tarot; Rachel Mondray, Patrick's beautiful curatorial associate and sometime muse; and Leo Bitburg, the gardener who nurtures the museum's precious collection of medicinal and poison plants.

Relieved to have left her troubled past in rural Washington behind her, Ann longs for the approbation of her colleagues and peers and is happy to indulge their more outlandish theories, only to find that their fascination with fortune-telling runs deeper than academic obsession. Patrick is determined to prove that ancient divination holds the key to the foretelling of the future. And when Ann stumbles across a breakthrough in the form of a mysterious and previously-believed lost deck of 15th-century Italian tarot cards, she finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship and ambition.

Then there is an unexpected and devastating death, and suddenly everyone becomes a suspect. As the game being played within the Cloisters spirals out of control, Ann must decide if the tarot cards can not only teach her about the past, but also about her future.]]> 312 Katy Hays 1668004402 Shannon 0 to-read 3.35 2022 The Cloisters
author: Katy Hays
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Deep Dark 195263612 From Molly Knox Ostertag, writer-illustrator, comes a darkly beautiful story of identity, family, love, loss, and magic.

Everyone has secrets. Mags’s has teeth.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there’s her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out -- like it did once before.

So Mags keeps her head down, isolated in her small desert community. That is, until her childhood friend Nessa comes back to town, bringing vivid memories of the past, an intoxicating glimpse of the future, and a secret of her own. Mags won’t get attached, of course. She’s always been strong enough to survive without anyone’s help.

But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight, and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.]]> 480 Molly Knox Ostertag 1338839993 Shannon 0 to-read 4.33 2024 The Deep Dark
author: Molly Knox Ostertag
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Magician’s Daughter 58349172 A young woman raised on an isolated island by a magician discovers things aren’t as they seem and must venture into early 1900s England to return magic to the worldin this lush and lyrical historical fantasy.

It is 1912, and for the last seventy years magic has all but disappeared from the world. Yet magic is all Biddy has ever known.

Orphaned as a baby, Biddy grew up on Hy-Brasil, a legendary island off the coast of Ireland hidden by magic and glimpsed by rare travelers who return with stories of wild black rabbits and a lone magician in a castle. To Biddy, the island is her home, a place of ancient trees and sea-salt air and mysteries, and the magician, Rowan, is her guardian. She loves both, but as her seventeenth birthday approaches, she is stifled by her solitude and frustrated by Rowan's refusal to let her leave.

One night, Rowan fails to come home from his mysterious travels. To rescue him, Biddy ventures into his nightmares and learns not only where he goes every night, but that Rowan has powerful enemies. Determination to protect her home and her guardian, Biddy's journey will take her away from the safety of her childhood, to the poorhouses of Whitechapel, a secret castle beneath London streets, the ruins of an ancient civilization, and finally to a desperate chance to restore lost magic. But the closer she comes to answers, the more she comes to question everything she has ever believed about Rowan, her own origins, and the cost of bringing magic back into the world.

For more from H. G. Parry, check out:

The Shadow Histories
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians
A Radical Act of Free Magic

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep]]> 384 H.G. Parry Shannon 5 4.00 2023 The Magician’s Daughter
author: H.G. Parry
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/23
date added: 2024/05/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Assistant to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #1)]]> 123257687
ASSISTANT WANTED: Notorious, high-ranking villain seeks loyal, levelheaded assistant for unspecified office duties, supporting staff for random mayhem and terror, and other Dark Things In General. Discretion a must. Excellent benefits.

With ailing family to support, Evie Sage's employment status isn't just important, it's vital. So when a mishap with Rennedawn’s most infamous Villain results in a job offer―naturally, she says yes. No job is perfect, of course, but even less so when you develop a teeny crush on your terrifying, temperamental, and undeniably hot boss. Don’t find evil so attractive, Evie.

But just when she’s getting used to severed heads suspended from the ceiling and the odd squish of an errant eyeball beneath her heel, Evie suspects this dungeon has a huge rat…and not just the literal kind. Because something rotten is growing in the kingdom of Rennedawn, and someone wants to take the Villain―and his entire nefarious empire―out.

Now Evie must not only resist drooling over her boss but also figure out exactly who is sabotaging his work…and ensure he makes them pay.

After all, a good job is hard to find.]]> 342 Hannah Nicole Maehrer 1649375808 Shannon 0 to-read 3.88 2023 Assistant to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #1)
author: Hannah Nicole Maehrer
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
]]> 318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X Shannon 4 4.04 2022 The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
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]]> Rakesfall 195791063 Rakesfall is a groundbreaking, standalone science fiction epic about two souls bound together from here until the ends of time, from the author of The Saint of Bright Doors

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.

Annelid and Leveret met after the war, but before the peace. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind. But their journey will not be easy. In every lifetime, oppressors narrow the walls of possibility, shaping reality to fit their own needs. And behind the walls of history, the witches of the red web swear that every throne will fall.

Tracing two souls through endless lifetimes, Rakesfall is a virtuosic exploration of what stories can be. As Annelid and Leveret reincarnate ever deeper into the future, they will chase the edge of human possibility, in a dark science fiction epic unlike anything you've read before.]]> 304 Vajra Chandrasekera 1250847680 Shannon 0 to-read 3.32 2024 Rakesfall
author: Vajra Chandrasekera
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us]]> 59575939 A grand tour through the hidden realms of animal senses that will transform the way you perceive the world --from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes.

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension--the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

In An Immense World, author and acclaimed science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.]]> 464 Ed Yong Shannon 5 4.46 2022 An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
author: Ed Yong
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/04/27
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review:

]]> The Rest of Us Just Live Here 22910900
The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?

What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.

Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions...]]> 348 Patrick Ness 1406331163 Shannon 0 to-read 3.69 2015 The Rest of Us Just Live Here
author: Patrick Ness
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism]]> 55338982
What makes “cults� so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .

Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.� But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.

Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,� revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish� everywhere.]]> 309 Amanda Montell 0062993151 Shannon 4 3.82 2021 Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
author: Amanda Montell
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/12
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Goblin Emperor (The Chronicles of Osreth, #1)]]> 17910048 A lush tale of deadly court intrigue and a modern classic of fantasy by Locus award winner and Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award finalist Katherine Addison

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three half brothers in line for the throne are killed in an "accident," he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.

Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.

Surrounded by sycophants eager to curry favor with the naïve new emperor, and overwhelmed by the burdens of his new life, he can trust nobody. Amid the swirl of plots to depose him, offers of arranged marriages, and the specter of the unknown conspirators who lurk in the shadows, he must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend . . . and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne–or his life.]]> 446 Katherine Addison 076532699X Shannon 0 to-read 4.04 2014 The Goblin Emperor (The Chronicles of Osreth, #1)
author: Katherine Addison
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon (Mead Mishaps, #1)]]> 58648147
After saving the demon Fallon in a wine-drunk stupor, all he wanted to do was kill an evil witch enslaving his people.

I mean, I get it, don't get me wrong. But he's dragging me along for the ride, and I'm kind of peeved about it. On the bright side, he keeps burning off his shirt.]]> 260 Kimberly Lemming Shannon 0 to-read 3.88 2021 That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon (Mead Mishaps, #1)
author: Kimberly Lemming
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf (Mead Mishaps, #2)]]> 60865821
Dealing with a pirate ship full of demons that just moved into town was hard enough. Now on top of it, I have to convince a werewolf that I'm not his fated mate, he's just drugged. Easier said than done.

Though I have to say, having a gorgeous man show up and do all of your chores while telling you you're beautiful isn't the worst thing to happen to a girl.]]> 204 Kimberly Lemming Shannon 0 to-read 4.05 2022 That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf (Mead Mishaps, #2)
author: Kimberly Lemming
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In Praise of Paths: Walking through Time and Nature]]> 52446265 An ode to paths and the journeys we take through nature, as told by a gifted writer who stopped driving and rediscovered the joys of traveling by foot.

Torbjørn Ekelund started to walk--everywhere--after an epilepsy diagnosis affected his ability to drive. The more he ventured out, the more he came to love the act of walking, and an interest in paths emerged. In this poignant, meandering book, Ekelund interweaves the literature and history of paths with his own stories from the trail. As he walks with shoes on and barefoot, through forest creeks and across urban streets, he contemplates the early tracks made by ancient snails and traces the wanderings of Romantic poets, amongst other musings. If we still "understand ourselves in relation to the landscape," Ekelund asks, then what do we lose in an era of car travel and navigation apps? And what will we gain from taking to paths once again?]]> 240 Torbjørn Ekelund Shannon 3 A well written, sturdy book 3.80 2018 In Praise of Paths: Walking through Time and Nature
author: Torbjørn Ekelund
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/04/09
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review:
A well written, sturdy book
]]> <![CDATA["Pure O" OCD: Letting Go of Obsessive Thoughts with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy]]> 60062215 208 Chad Lejeune 1648480403 Shannon 4 4.35 "Pure O" OCD: Letting Go of Obsessive Thoughts with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
author: Chad Lejeune
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/07
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]]> The Saint of Bright Doors 61884985
Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy.

He walked among invisible devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow, and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city, and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen.

Everything in Luriat is more than it seems. Group therapy is recruitment for a revolutionary cadre. Junk email hints at the arrival of a god. Every door is laden with potential, and once closed may never open again. The city is scattered with Bright Doors, looming portals through which a cold wind blows. In this unknowable metropolis, Fetter will discover what kind of man he is, and his discovery will rewrite the world.]]> 356 Vajra Chandrasekera 1250847389 Shannon 5 3.64 2023 The Saint of Bright Doors
author: Vajra Chandrasekera
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/28
date added: 2024/03/28
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]]> Late Bloomer 127280315 A sapphic opposites-attract romance with Mazey Edding's signature sparkling voice!

Winning the lottery has ruined Opal Devlin's’s life. After quitting her dead-end job where she’d earned minimum wage and even less respect, she’s bombarded by people knocking at her door for a handout the second they found out her bank account was overflowing with cash. And Opal can’t seem to stop saying yes.

With her tender heart thoroughly abused, Opal decides to protect herself by any means necessary, which to her translates to putting almost all her new money to buying a failing flower farm in Asheville, North Carolina to let the flowers live out their plant destiny while she uses the cabin on the property to start her painting business.

But her plans for isolation and self-preservation go hopelessly awry when an angry (albeit gorgeous) Pepper Smith is waiting for her at her new farm. Pepper states she’s the rightful owner of Thistle and Bloom Farms, and ’t moving out. The unlikely pair strike up an agreement of co-habitation, and butt-heads at every turn. Can these opposites both live out their dreams and plant roots? Or will their combustible arguing (and growing attraction) burn the whole place down?]]> 400 Mazey Eddings 1250847087 Shannon 0 to-read 3.69 2024 Late Bloomer
author: Mazey Eddings
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dawnhounds (The Endsong, #1)]]> 59366249 A police officer is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from an insidious evil threatening to destroy it.

The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night.

Yat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices� after being caught at a gay club. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.

Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.]]> 342 Sascha Stronach 1982187050 Shannon 0 to-read 3.62 2019 The Dawnhounds (The Endsong, #1)
author: Sascha Stronach
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cascade Failure (Ambit's Run, #1)]]> 127280776
There are only three real powers in the universe: the corporate power of the Trust versus the Union's labor's leverage. And between them, the Guild tries to keep everyone's hands above the table. It ain't easy.

Branded a Guild deserter, Jal "accidentally" lands a ride on a Guild ship. Helmed by an AI, with a ship's engineer/medic who doesn't see much of a difference between the two jobs, and a "don't make me shoot you" XO, the Guild crew of the Ambit is a little . . . different.

They're also in over their heads. Responding to a distress call from an abandoned planet, they find a mass grave, and a live programmer who knows how it happened. The Trust has plans. This isn't the first dead planet, and it's not going to be the last.

Unless the crew of the Ambit can stop it.]]> 407 L.M. Sagas 1250871255 Shannon 0 to-read 3.83 2024 Cascade Failure (Ambit's Run, #1)
author: L.M. Sagas
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse"]]> 60741795 Award-winning author and critic Emily Raboteau uses the lens of motherhood to craft a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice―and what it takes to find shelter.

Lessons for Survival is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children to thrive without coming undone in an era of turbulent intersecting crises.

With camera in hand, Raboteau goes in search of birds, fluttering in the air or painted on buildings, and ways her children may safely play in city parks while avoiding pollution, pandemics, and the police. She ventures abroad to learn from Indigenous peoples, and in her own family and community discovers the most intimate meanings of resilience. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womenhood, motherhood, and to the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. This innovative work of reportage and autobiography stitches together multiple stories of protection, offering a profound sense of hope.]]> 304 Emily Raboteau 1250809762 Shannon 0 to-read 4.06 2024 Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse"
author: Emily Raboteau
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ten Thousand Doors of January]]> 43521657
Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.]]> 374 Alix E. Harrow 0316421995 Shannon 5 3.99 2019 The Ten Thousand Doors of January
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/25
date added: 2024/02/25
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]]> River Mumma 157995292 Insecure with a magical realist spin: River Mumma is an exhilarating contemporary fantasy novel about a young Black woman who navigates her quarter-life-crisis while embarking on a mythical quest through the streets of Toronto.

Alicia has been out of grad school for months. She has no career prospects and lives with her mom, who won’t stop texting her macabre news stories and reminders to pick up items from the grocery store.

Then, one evening, the Jamaican water deity, River Mumma, appears to Alicia, telling her that she has twenty-four hours to scour the city for her missing comb.

Alicia doesn’t understand why River Mumma would choose her. She can’t remember all the legends her relatives told her, unlike her retail co-worker Heaven, who can reel off Jamaican folklore by heart. She doesn’t know if her childhood visions have returned, or why she feels a strange connection to her other co-worker Mars. But when the trio are chased down by malevolent spirits called duppies, they realize their tenuous bonds to each other may be their only lifelines. With the clock ticking, Alicia’s quest through the city broadens into a journey through time—to find herself and what the river carries.

Energetic and invigorating, River Mumma is a vibrant exploration of diasporic community and ancestral ties, and a homage to Jamaican storytelling by one of the most invigorating voices in today’s literature.]]> 304 Zalika Reid-Benta 1645661350 Shannon 0 to-read 3.65 2023 River Mumma
author: Zalika Reid-Benta
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Showing Up: How to Be There for Yourself and Your People]]> 50788329 A modern roadmap to true connection—first by showing up for yourself and then for others

If you’re having trouble connecting with those around you, know that you’re not the only one. Adult friendships are tricky!!! Part manifesto, part guide, The Art of Showing Up is soul medicine for our modern, tech-mediated age. Rachel Wilkerson Miller charts a course to kinder, more thoughtful, and more fulfilling relationships—and, crucially, she reminds us that “you can’t show up for others if you aren’t showing up for yourself first.� Learn to fearlessly . . .

define your needs, reclaim your time, and commit to self-care
ask for backup when times are tough—and take action when others are in crisis
meet and care for new friends, and gently end toxic friendships
help your people feel more seen (and more OK) overall!]]> 304 Rachel Wilkerson Miller 1615196617 Shannon 0 to-read 3.78 2020 The Art of Showing Up: How to Be There for Yourself and Your People
author: Rachel Wilkerson Miller
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Poisons We Drink 157020041 In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.

Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.

Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus’s life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.'s most influential politicians.

As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it's hard to tell who to trust…Herself included.]]> 467 Bethany Baptiste 1728251958 Shannon 0 to-read 3.70 2024 The Poisons We Drink
author: Bethany Baptiste
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tired as F*ck: Burnout at the Hands of Diet, Self-Help, and Hustle Culture]]> 58064082
Read by the author. Format: 1 MP3 CD.]]> 320 Caroline Dooner 0063052970 Shannon 0 3.37 2022 Tired as F*ck: Burnout at the Hands of Diet, Self-Help, and Hustle Culture
author: Caroline Dooner
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)]]> 22733729
Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family ’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.]]> 518 Becky Chambers 1500453307 Shannon 0 to-read 4.15 2014 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)]]> 40864030
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?

They're going to need to ask it a lot.]]> 152 Becky Chambers Shannon 4 4.40 2022 A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/12
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves:
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Still good although there is some tedious explanation of the not at all money system
]]> <![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]> 151 Becky Chambers Shannon 5 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/02/08
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Is this a perfect book? No. But it was the right book at the right time. Thank you, author
]]> <![CDATA[Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants]]> 17465709 Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.]]> 408 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1571313354 Shannon 4 4.52 2013 Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/30
date added: 2024/01/30
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]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Shannon 5 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix (Remixed Classics)]]> 55780561 Four young Black sisters come of age during the American Civil War in So Many Beginnings, a warm and powerful YA remix of the classic novel Little Women by national bestselling author Bethany C. Morrow.

North Carolina, 1863. As the American Civil War rages on, the Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island is blossoming, a haven for the recently emancipated. Black people have begun building a community of their own, a refuge from the shadow of the old life. It is where the March family has finally been able to safely put down roots with four young daughters:

Meg, a teacher who longs to find love and start a family of her own.

Jo, a writer whose words are too powerful to be contained.

Beth, a talented seamstress searching for a higher purpose.

Amy, a dancer eager to explore life outside her family's home.

As the four March sisters come into their own as independent young women, they will face first love, health struggles, heartbreak, and new horizons. But they will face it all together.]]> 304 Bethany C. Morrow 1250761212 Shannon 5 Should be taught in schools 3.89 2021 So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix (Remixed Classics)
author: Bethany C. Morrow
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/06
date added: 2024/01/06
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Should be taught in schools
]]> <![CDATA[Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life]]> 59900658 From the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, and the editor of the acclaimed anthology Disability Visibility, a genre-bending memoir in essays offers a glimpse into an activist's journey to finding and cultivating community and the continued fight for disability rights.

In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its beauty and ferocity and symbolizes power, bravery, and protection. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong.

Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique voice and talent to share a raw and multifaceted impressionistic collage of her life as an Asian American disability rights activist, community builder, and media maker. From her love of good food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to speaking out against the often complex and overlooked ways inequities and injustices play out in an ableist society, Alice tells her story and creates a space to hear from other disability activists through enriching conversations. From a world-class activist and storyteller, Alice's Year of the Tiger offers humor and wisdom, and encourages us to do better.]]> 376 Alice Wong 0593315391 Shannon 5 4.24 2022 Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life
author: Alice Wong
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Paladin's Faith (The Saint of Steel, #4)]]> 201967303
Shane is a paladin with three problems. His god is dead, his client is much too attractive for his peace of mind, and a powerful organization is trying to have them both killed.

Add in a brilliant artificer with a device that may change the world, a glittering and dangerous court, and a demon-led cult, and Shane and Marguerite will be lucky to escape with their souls intact, never mind their hearts. . .]]> 446 T. Kingfisher Shannon 5 4.16 2023 Paladin's Faith (The Saint of Steel, #4)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/25
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves:
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5 stars because you can't give like 4 and a half. The quality of these has increased again and it might hold out for the last three or so of them
]]> The Midnight Bargain 49151031
In a stroke of luck, Beatrice finds a grimoire that contains the key to becoming a Magus, but before she can purchase it, a rival sorceress swindles the book right out of her hands. Beatrice summons a spirit to help her get it back, but her new ally exacts a price: Beatrice’s first kiss . . . with her adversary’s brother, the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan.

The more Beatrice is entangled with the Lavan siblings, the harder her decision becomes: If she casts the spell to become a Magus, she will devastate her family and lose the only man to ever see her for who she is; but if she marries—even for love—she will sacrifice her magic, her identity, and her dreams. But how can she choose just one, knowing she will forever regret the path not taken?]]> 375 C.L. Polk 1645660079 Shannon 4 3.73 2020 The Midnight Bargain
author: C.L. Polk
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/21
date added: 2023/12/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT]]> 3250347
The techniques presented in The Happiness Trap will help readers to:

•Reduce stress and worry
•Handle painful feelings and thoughts more effectively
•Break self-defeating habits
•Overcome insecurity and self-doubt
•Create a rich, full, and meaningful life]]> 240 Russ Harris 1590305841 Shannon 5 4.09 2007 The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT
author: Russ Harris
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/03
date added: 2023/12/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity]]> 33413909
The news of Burke Harris’s research is just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by ACEs—adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect,parental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. Childhoodadversitychanges ourbiologicalsystems, and lasts a lifetime. For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the scientific insight and innovative, acclaimed health interventions inThe Deepest Wellrepresent hope for preventinglifelong illness for those we love and for generations to come�.]]> 251 Nadine Burke Harris 0544828704 Shannon 0 to-read 4.42 2018 The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity
author: Nadine Burke Harris
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture]]> 54625405
Phillips describes, for example, the relationship between trolling and sensationalist corporate media -- pointing out that for trolls, exploitation is a leisure activity; for media, it's a business strategy. She shows how trolls, "the grimacing poster children for a socially networked world," align with social media. And she documents how trolls, in addition to parroting media tropes, also offer a grotesque pantomime of dominant cultural tropes, including gendered notions of dominance and success and an ideology of entitlement. We don't just have a trolling problem, Phillips argues; we have a culture problem. "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things "isn't only about trolls; it's about a culture in which trolls thrive.]]> 250 Whitney Phillips 026232900X Shannon 0 to-read 4.33 2015 This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture
author: Whitney Phillips
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work]]> 62192519
A challenge to the tyranny of work and a call to reclaim our lives from its clutches.

From the moment we ask children what they want to “be� when they grow up, we exalt the dream job as if it were life’s ultimate objective. Many entangle their identities with their jobs, with predictable damage to happiness, wellbeing, and even professional success.

In The Good Enough Job , journalist Simone Stolzoff traces how work has come to dominate Americans� lives—and why we find it so difficult to let go. Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers and other workers across the American economy, Stolzoff exposes what we lose when we expect work to be more than a job. Rather than treat work as a calling or a dream, he asks what it would take to reframe work as a part of life rather than the entirety of our lives. What does it mean for a job to be good enough?

Through provocative critique and deep reporting, Stolzoff punctures the myths that keep us chained to our jobs. By exposing the lies we--and our employers--tell about the value of our labor, The Good Enough Job makes the urgent case for reclaiming our lives in a world centered around work.]]> 272 Simone Stolzoff 059353896X Shannon 4 4.12 2023 The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work
author: Simone Stolzoff
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Thornhedge 61884932 There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This ’t her story.

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

But nothing with fairies is ever simple.

Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…]]> 116 T. Kingfisher 1250244099 Shannon 5 3.95 2023 Thornhedge
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/15
date added: 2023/11/15
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Darius The Great, #1)]]> 37506437 Darius doesn't think he'll ever be enough, in America or in Iran.

Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He's about to take his first-ever trip to Iran, and it's pretty overwhelming—especially when he's also dealing with clinical depression, a disapproving dad, and a chronically anemic social life. In Iran, he gets to know his ailing but still formidable grandfather, his loving grandmother, and the rest of his mom's family for the first time. And he meets Sohrab, the boy next door who changes everything.

Sohrab makes sure people speak English so Darius can understand what's going on. He gets Darius an Iranian National Football Team jersey that makes him feel like a True Persian for the first time. And he understands that sometimes, best friends don't have to talk. Darius has never had a true friend before, but now he's spending his days with Sohrab playing soccer, eating rosewater ice cream, and sitting together for hours in their special place, a rooftop overlooking the Yazdi skyline.

Sohrab calls him Darioush—the original Persian version of his name—and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he's Darioush to Sohrab. When it's time to go home to America, he'll have to find a way to be Darioush on his own.]]> 316 Adib Khorram 0525552960 Shannon 4 4.23 2018 Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Darius The Great, #1)
author: Adib Khorram
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/06
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review:
Maybe a 4.5. in tears at the end
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar]]> 123503956 somewhere—the city of Calcutta—his classmates in school remind him he doesn’t look like them, and must come from somewhere else. When Ru asks his parents, they tell him they are descended from nomads. But even nomads must come from somewhere. The question, forever on the mind of the boy from nowhere, is where.

Ru dreams things that wouldn’t seem out of place in the fantasy novels his father read to him when young. Fragments of a culture that doesn’t exist in this world, but might in another, where sky and sea are one, and humans sail this eternal ocean on the backs of divine beasts.

Ru dreams of dragons, of serpents impossible. Perhaps Ru remembers dragons.

Alone in a city that’s home but doesn’t feel like it, Ru befriends Alice, his neighbor from the nearby Chinatown. As they grow with their friendship, Ru finds that Calcutta may yet be a home for him. But with his best friend starting to realize that Ru’s house and family hide a myriad of secrets, the question haunts him still—where is his family from? Are they truly from nowhere, migrants to this reality? And if so, what strange wings brought them across the vast reaches of impossibility to here—and what is their purpose?]]> 119 Indra Das 1645240878 Shannon 0 to-read 4.16 2023 The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar
author: Indra Das
name: Shannon
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries]]> 7438853
In 1918, a world war was raging, and a lethal strain of influenza was circling the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it would spread across the world, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions.

Then, in 1927, it would disappear as suddenly as it had arrived-or so the doctors at first thought.

Asleep , set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and insane asylums as they try to solve this worldwide epidemic.

The symptoms could include not only unending sleep but dangerous insomnia, facial tics, catatonia, Parkinson's, and even violent insanity. Molly Caldwell Crosby, acclaimed author of The American Plague , explores the frightening history of this forgotten disease- and details the frantic effort to conquer it before it strikes again.]]> 291 Molly Caldwell Crosby 0425225704 Shannon 0 to-read 3.79 2010 Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries
author: Molly Caldwell Crosby
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Best of All Possible Worlds]]> 15743440
Now a man and a woman from these two clashing societies must work together to save this vanishing race—and end up uncovering ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. As their mission hangs in the balance, this unlikely team—one cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsive—just may find in each other their own destinies . . . and a force that transcends all.]]> 308 Karen Lord 0345534050 Shannon 0 to-read 3.60 2013 The Best of All Possible Worlds
author: Karen Lord
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In Real Life 20575446
But things become a lot more complicated when Anda befriends a gold farmer--a poor Chinese kid whose avatar in the game illegally collects valuable objects and then sells them to players from developed countries with money to burn. This behavior is strictly against the rules in Coarsegold, but Anda soon comes to realize that questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real person's real livelihood is at stake.

From acclaimed teen author (Little Brother, For the Win) and Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow and Koko Be Good creator Jen Wang, In Real Life is a perceptive and high-stakes look at adolescence, gaming, poverty, and culture clash.]]> 175 Cory Doctorow 1596436581 Shannon 4 3.81 2014 In Real Life
author: Cory Doctorow
name: Shannon
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/30
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review:
Read this a long time ago. It was pretty good I remember
]]>