Nick's bookshelf: all

Nick's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 31 Dec 2024 01:51:28 -0800 60 Nick's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Perfidious Albion 37564159 what don’t you want to share? As tensions mount, lives begin to unravel.

Jess Ellis’s research into internet misogyny pushes her relationship with her over-exposed opinion columnist boyfriend Robert Townsend to breaking point. Robert’s championing of the inhabitants of the threatened estate begins to erode the edges of his fragile idealism. Local England Always politician Hugo Bennington finds his twisted loyalties catching up with him. At the nearby tech park, behind the utopian rhetoric, Trina James finds that something is dangerously amiss.

A controversial tweet; a series of ill-judged thinkpieces; a riot of opinions. Suddenly Edmundsbury is no longer the peaceful town it has always imagined itself to be. Things are changing. No-one is quite who they appear. The future has arrived, and it is not what anyone imagined.]]> 384 Sam Byers 0571336299 Nick 2 3.53 2018 Perfidious Albion

author: Sam Byers
name: Nick
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2018
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/12/31
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]]> Ghost Mountain 200331592
It looks at the uncertain fragile sense of self we hold inside ourselves, and our human compulsion to project it into the uncertain word around us, whether we’re ready or not. It is also about the presence of absence, and how it shadows us in our lives. Mountains are at once unmistakably present yet never truly fathomable.]]> 280 Ronan Hession 1915693136 Nick 2 3.86 2024 Ghost Mountain

author: Ronan Hession
name: Nick
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
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]]> The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats�� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge��: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as ��1847�� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,�� “Spotify,�� and “the collapse of the British Empire.�� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Nick 2 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time

author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Nick
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/06/25
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]]> England Is Mine 193540912
Living in the same East London borough as David, Hassan has his own problems. He is drifting apart from his childhood friends, Mo and Ibrahim, who drink, blaze skunk and mock him for hanging out at the Muslim youth centre, where he is older than everyone else. Determined to make something of himself, he volunteers for his local mosque and works hard to try to get the grades he needs to go to university.

As these second-generation immigrants struggle for a sense of identity and belonging - amid a wave of online radicalisation and extremism - their fates become inextricably, catastrophically entwined.]]> 328 Nicolas Padamsee 1800819528 Nick 5 4.11 2024 England Is Mine

author: Nicolas Padamsee
name: Nick
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/06/11
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This book felt hyper real. David's radicalisation is forensically pieced together and almost understandable. As much as I liked Hassan, I'm not sure it contributed much to the narrative and overall message, in fact it would have been more powerful without it - but I can understand why it was included. Overall, very impressed, will be seeking out his next work for sure.
]]> Orbital 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Nick 2 3.56 2023 Orbital

author: Samantha Harvey
name: Nick
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/01/02
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]]> The Sidekick 59005740 ONE OF THIS WEEK'S BEST NOVELS OF 2022
The perfect novel for fans of The Last Dance, Hoop Dreams and Winning Time

'Exquisite. . . Warm, humane, and tragic.' JONATHAN LETHEM

At his high school basketball try-outs, nerdy sports-obsessed Brian Blum meets new kid Marcus
Hayes. As a sportswriter, Brian spends the following twenty years tracking his friends' superstar NBA
career. But when Marcus mounts his last dance comeback, after a couple of years out of the game,
both men must face the tensions of their unlikely dynamic, and the disappointments of getting
older.

'There is something so compelling about the questions of whether these two friends, despite their
fraught history and hefty egos, will rekindle a genuine connection . . . you'll want to know how the
game turns out.' TLS

'Compelling and emotionally resonant.' Spectator

'Contemporary fiction's best kept secret . . . It's gratifying to observe someone with a large amount
of specific knowledge not only imparting that expertise, but unlocking some deeper meaning within
it, like a top sports star working their magic.' Sunday Business Post]]> 412 Benjamin Markovits 057137154X Nick 5 3.47 The Sidekick

author: Benjamin Markovits
name: Nick
average rating: 3.47
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/02/28
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]]> A Calling for Charlie Barnes 56620813 From National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris comes a “murderously funny�� novel about a modern American family and one man’s attempt to come to understand the many lives of his father. (Janet Maslin, New York Times)

Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot.

Then, against all odds, something goes right for a change: Charlie is granted a second act. With help from his storyteller son, he surveys the facts of his life and finds his true calling where he least expects it—in a sacrifice that redounds with selflessness and love—at last becoming the man his son always knew he could be.

A Calling for Charlie Barnes is a profound and tender portrait of a man whose desperate need to be loved is his downfall, and a brutally funny account of how that love is ultimately earned.]]> 352 Joshua Ferris 0316333530 Nick 4 3.71 2021 A Calling for Charlie Barnes

author: Joshua Ferris
name: Nick
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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date added: 2022/02/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The All True Adventures (and Rare Education) of the Daredevil Daniel Bones]]> 52610090 272 Owen Booth Nick 5 3.74

The All True Adventures (and Rare Education) of the Daredevil Daniel Bones

author: Owen Booth
name: Nick
average rating: 3.74
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/01/21
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]]> Amsterdam 6862 Amsterdam is��"a dark tour de force, perfectly fashioned" ( The New York Times ) from the bestselling author of Atonement.

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen��

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons .]]> 208 Ian McEwan 0385494246 Nick 3 3.46 1998 Amsterdam

author: Ian McEwan
name: Nick
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/12/02
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]]> The Discomfort of Evening 49374086 I thought about being too small for so much, but that no one told you when you were big enough ... and I asked God if he please couldn't take my brother Matthies instead of my rabbit. 'Amen.'

Jas lives with her devout farming family in the rural Netherlands. One winter's day, her older brother joins an ice skating trip; resentful at being left alone, she makes a perverse plea to God; he never returns. As grief overwhelms the farm, Jas succumbs to a vortex of increasingly disturbing fantasies, watching her family disintegrate into a darkness that threatens to derail them all.

A bestselling sensation in the Netherlands by a prize-winning young poet, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's debut novel lays everything bare. It is a world of language unlike any other, which Michele Hutchison's striking translation captures in all its wild, violent beauty. Studded with unforgettable images - visceral, raw, surreal - The Discomfort of the Evening is a radical reading experience that will leave you changed forever.]]> 282 Lucas Rijneveld 0571349366 Nick 3 3.37 2018 The Discomfort of Evening

author: Lucas Rijneveld
name: Nick
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2018
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/12/02
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]]> <![CDATA[My Name Is Lucy Barton (Amgash, #1)]]> 25893709 193 Elizabeth Strout 1400067693 Nick 4 3.56 2016

author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Nick
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/12/02
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]]> Bewilderment 56404444 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain��

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?]]> 278 Richard Powers 0393881148 Nick 2 3.87 2021 Bewilderment

author: Richard Powers
name: Nick
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 2
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date added: 2021/12/02
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]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Nick 2 4.10 2018 The Overstory

author: Richard Powers
name: Nick
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 2
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date added: 2021/11/11
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]]> The Doll Factory 38591165 The Doll Factory, the debut novel by Elizabeth Macneal, is an intoxicating story of art, obsession and possession.

London. 1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd watching the spectacle two people meet. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment �� forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning.

When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love.

But Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting, and his obsession is darkening . . .]]> 336 Elizabeth Macneal 1529002397 Nick 2 3.76 2019 The Doll Factory

author: Elizabeth Macneal
name: Nick
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 2
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date added: 2021/10/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Beautiful World, Where Are You]]> 56597885 356 Sally Rooney 0374602603 Nick 2 3.53 2021

author: Sally Rooney
name: Nick
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/10/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Five People You Meet in Heaven]]> 3431
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"]]> 196 Mitch Albom 0786868716 Nick 1 4.00 2003 The Five People You Meet in Heaven

author: Mitch Albom
name: Nick
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
rating: 1
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date added: 2021/10/09
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A soothing balm for the soul that made me cross.
]]> HHhH 7992363
L’essentiel de l’histoire se situe entre 1938 et 1942. Le récit est structuré comme un entonnoir : des chapitres courts relatent différents épisodes en divers lieux et à diverses époques, qui tous convergent vers Prague où s’est déroulé l’attentat. Tous les personnages de ce livre ont réellement existé ou existent encore. L’auteur a rapporté les faits le plus fidèlement possible mais a dû résister à la tentation de romancer. Comment raconter l’Histoire ? Cette question conduit parfois l’auteur à se mettre en scène pour rendre compte de ses conditions d’écriture, de ses recherches, de ses hésitations. La vérité historique se révèle à la fois une obsession névrotique et une quête sans fin.]]> 442 Laurent Binet 2246760011 Nick 5 4.05 2010 HHhH

author: Laurent Binet
name: Nick
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/09/11
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]]> The Devil All the Time 10108463 The Devil All the Time follows a cast of characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.�� There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.]]> 261 Donald Ray Pollock 038553504X Nick 5 4.13 2011 The Devil All the Time

author: Donald Ray Pollock
name: Nick
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/09/11
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]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde Nick 5 4.13 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray

author: Oscar Wilde
name: Nick
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 5
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]]> A Confederacy of Dunces 310612
His mother thinks he needs to go to work. He does, in a succession of jobs. Each job rapidly escalates into a lunatic adventure, a full-blown disaster; yet each has, like Don Quixote's, its own eerie logic.

His girlfriend, Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx, thinks he needs sex.

Ignatius is an intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, goof-off, glutton, who should repel the reader with his gargantuan bloats, his thunderous contempt, and one-man war against everybody: Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the assorted excesses of modern times.

A tragicomedy, set in New Orleans.]]> 394 John Kennedy Toole 0802130208 Nick 3 3.89 1980 A Confederacy of Dunces

author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Nick
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1980
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/09/11
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]]> Thin Air: A Ghost Story 28335600
Kangchenjunga. Third highest peak on earth. Greatest killer of them all.

Five Englishmen set off from Darjeeling, determined to tackle the sacred summit. But courage can only take them so far - and the mountain is not their only foe.

As mountain sickness and the horrors of extreme altitude set in, the past refuses to stay buried. And sometimes, the truth won't set you free. .]]> 223 Michelle Paver 1409163342 Nick 3 3.80 2016 Thin Air: A Ghost Story

author: Michelle Paver
name: Nick
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2016
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/09/11
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]]> Fleishman Is in Trouble 41880602
But Toby's new life �� liver specialist by day, kids every other weekend, rabid somewhat anonymous sex at night �� is interrupted when his ex-wife suddenly disappears. Either on a vision quest or a nervous breakdown, Toby doesn't know �� she won't answer his texts or calls.

Is Toby's ex just angry, like always? Is she punishing him, yet again, for not being the bread winner she was? As he desperately searches for her while juggling his job and parenting their two unraveling children, Toby is forced to reckon with the real reasons his marriage fell apart, and to ask if the story he has been telling himself all this time is true.]]> 373 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0525510877 Nick 3 3.61 2019 Fleishman Is in Trouble

author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Nick
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/09/11
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]]> Summerwater 52185452 From the acclaimed author of Ghost Wall, Summerwater is a devastating story told over twenty-four hours in the Scottish highlands, and a searing exploration of our capacity for both kinship and cruelty in these divided times.

On the longest day of the summer, twelve people sit cooped up with their families in a faded Scottish cabin park. The endless rain leaves them with little to do but watch the other residents.

A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a retired couple reminisce about neighbours long since moved on; a teenage boy braves the dark waters of the loch in his red kayak. Each person is wrapped in their own cares but increasingly alert to the makeshift community around them. One particular family, a mother and daughter without the right clothes or the right manners, starts to draw the attention of the others. Tensions rise and all watch on, unaware of the tragedy that lies ahead as night finally falls.]]> 208 Sarah Moss 1529035430 Nick 2 3.52 2020 Summerwater

author: Sarah Moss
name: Nick
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2020
rating: 2
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date added: 2021/07/13
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]]> The Hair-Carpet Weavers 49095672
Then, one day, the empire falls. Soon, strange men begin to arrive from the stars, in search of the carpets' true destination. What they discover will astonish them all...

Combining brilliant world-building with an irresistible sense of mystery, Andreas Eschbach's acclaimed space opera is also a compelling meditation on faith, fundamentalism and the meaning of life itself.]]> 320 Andreas Eschbach 0241454719 Nick 5 4.37 1995 The Hair-Carpet Weavers

author: Andreas Eschbach
name: Nick
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/07/13
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]]> Panenka 55410610
But at night, Panenka suffers crippling headaches that he calls his Iron Mask. Faced with losing everything, he meets Esther, a woman who has come to live in the town to escape her own disappointments. Together, they find resonance in each other’s experiences and learn new ways to let love into their broken lives.]]> 164 Ronan Hession 1910422673 Nick 4 3.98 2021 Panenka

author: Ronan Hession
name: Nick
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/07/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Last Polar Bears, the (Harry Horse's Last...)]]> 2170978
Grandfather and Roo endure storms, high seas, a temperamental sea captain, and seasickness until the ship reaches Walrus Bay. In the primitive coastal town of Walrus, Grandfather gets in a game of golf but unscrupulous wolves plague him and Roo. Finally, Grandfather and Roo and a penguin companion head off on foot to find the Great Bear Ridge, home to the Last Polar Bears.

Author-illustrator Harry Horse tells this hilarious, original story through a series of affectionate letters written by Grandfather to his grandchild back home. Horse s winsome black ink illustrations capture the charmingly eccentric personalities of Grandfather and his delightful canine companion and the amusing calamities that befall them. The result is a fanciful tale that will delight young and old alike.

Stay tuned for more adventures with Grandfather and Roo!]]> 104 Harry Horse 156145379X Nick 5 4.10 1993 Last Polar Bears, the (Harry Horse's Last...)

Last Polar Bears, the (Harry Horse's Last...)

author: Harry Horse
name: Nick
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/07/08
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]]> Paradise Block 54823533
In Paradise Block, mould grows as thick as fur along the walls, alarms ring out at unexpected hours and none of the neighbours are quite what they seem. A little girl boils endless eggs in her family's burnt-out flat, an isolated old woman entices a new friend with gifts of cutlery and cufflinks, and a young bride grows frustrated with her unappreciative husband, the caretaker of creaking, dilapidated Paradise Block.

With a haunting sense of place and a keen eye for the absurd, these thirteen surreal stories lure us into a topsy-turvy world where fleatraps are more important than babies and sales calls for luxury coffins provide a welcome distraction. Lonely residents live in close proximity while longing for connection.]]> 240 Alice Ash 1788165543 Nick 5 3.72 2021 Paradise Block

author: Alice Ash
name: Nick
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2021
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/07/07
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]]> <![CDATA[How Much of These Hills Is Gold]]> 45895362
Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.

Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and re-imagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it's about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.]]> 288 C Pam Zhang 0525537201 Nick 2 3.77 2020 How Much of These Hills Is Gold

author: C Pam Zhang
name: Nick
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2020
rating: 2
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date added: 2021/06/30
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]]> Pine 45298337
The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men. Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she's gone.

In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren's mother a decade ago.

Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father's turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it's no longer clear who she can trust.

In spare, haunting prose, Francine Toon creates an unshakeable atmosphere of desolation and dread. In a place that feels like the end of the world, she unites the gloom of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.]]> 288 Francine Toon 0857526707 Nick 1 3.36 2020 Pine

author: Francine Toon
name: Nick
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2020
rating: 1
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date added: 2021/06/15
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]]> The Alchemist 18144590 The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, following our dreams.]]> 182 Paulo Coelho 0062315005 Nick 2 4.01 1988 The Alchemist

author: Paulo Coelho
name: Nick
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1988
rating: 2
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date added: 2021/06/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Days Without End (Days Without End, #1)]]> 30212107
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.]]> 259 Sebastian Barry 0525427368 Nick 5 3.93 2016 Days Without End (Days Without End, #1)

author: Sebastian Barry
name: Nick
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/05/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Cunning Women : When Women are Cast Out, They Must Find Their Own Power]]> 54633170 Lee is a magnetic new voice in historical fiction and CUNNING WOMEN is sure to be loved by fans of The Essex Serpent and The Mercies.

Spring of 1620 in a Lancashire fishing community and the memory of the slaughter at Pendle is tight around the neck of Sarah Haworth. A birthmark reveals that Sarah, like her mother, is a witch. Torn between yearning for an ordinary life and desire to discover what dark power she might possess, Sarah’s one hope is that her young sister Annie will be spared this fate.

The Haworth family eke out a meagre existence in the old plague village adjoining a God-fearing community presided over by a seedy magistrate. A society built upon looking the other way, the villagers�� godliness is merely a veneer. But the Haworth women, with their salves and poultices, are judged the real threat to morality.

When Sarah meets lonely farmer’s son Daniel, she begins to dream of a better future. Daniel is in thrall to the wild girl with storms in her eyes, but their bond is tested when a zealous new magistrate vows to root out sins and sinners. In a frenzy of fear and fury, the community begins to turn on one another, and it’s not long before they direct their gaze towards the old plague village �� and does Daniel trust that the power Sarah wields over him is truly love, or could it be mere sorcery?]]> 384 Elizabeth Lee 178609116X Nick 5 3.64 2021 Cunning Women : When Women are Cast Out, They Must Find Their Own Power

Cunning Women : When Women are Cast Out, They Must Find Their Own Power

author: Elizabeth Lee
name: Nick
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/05/18
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]]> The Abstainer 52541463 An Irishman in nineteenth-century England is forced to take sides when his nephew joins the bloody underground movement for independence in this propulsive novel from the acclaimed author of The North Water.

The rebels will be hanged at dawn, and their brotherhood is already plotting revenge.

Stephen Doyle, an Irish-American veteran of the Civil War, arrives in Manchester from New York with a thirst for blood. He has joined the Fenians, a secret society intent on ending British rule in Ireland by any means necessary. Head Constable James O'Connor has fled grief and drink in Dublin for a sober start in Manchester, and connections with his fellow Irishmen are proving to be particularly advantageous in spying on Fenian activity. When a long-lost nephew returns from America and arrives on O'Connor's doorstep looking for work, O'Connor cannot foresee the way his fragile new life will be imperiled--and how his and Doyle's fates will be intertwined.

In an epic tale of revenge and obsession, master storyteller Ian McGuire once again transports readers to a time when blood begot blood. Moving from the gritty streets of Manchester to the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, The Abstainer is a searing novel in which two men, motivated by family, honor and revenge, must fight for life and legacy.]]> 320 Ian McGuire 0593133870 Nick 3 3.53 2020

author: Ian McGuire
name: Nick
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2020
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/05/05
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]]> Butcher's Crossing 457228 Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.

It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, ﬁred up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,�� drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to ﬁnd a world as irremediably changed as they have been.]]> 274 John Williams 1590171985 Nick 4 4.18 1960 Butcher's Crossing

author: John Williams
name: Nick
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1960
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Housekeeper and the Professor]]> 3181564
She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper’s shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.]]> 180 Yōko Ogawa 0312427808 Nick 4 4.04 2003

author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Nick
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> Shuggie Bain 52741293 Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.

Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good--her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits--all the family has to live on--on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs.

Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is "no right," a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her--even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Edouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.]]> 430 Douglas Stuart 0802148042 Nick 3 4.29 2020 Shuggie Bain

author: Douglas Stuart
name: Nick
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
rating: 3
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]]> Lord of the Flies 7624 182 William Golding 0140283331 Nick 4 3.70 1954

author: William Golding
name: Nick
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1954
rating: 4
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]]> The Unconsoled 40117
Ishiguro's extraordinary and original study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification �� and the highest praise.]]> 535 Kazuo Ishiguro 057122539X Nick 5 favorites 3.59 1995 The Unconsoled

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nick
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Nick 5 favorites 4.17 1992

author: Donna Tartt
name: Nick
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[An Artist of the Floating World]]> 28922
Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the “floating world”—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.]]> 206 Kazuo Ishiguro 0571225365 Nick 4 favorites 3.79 1986 An Artist of the Floating World

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nick
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1986
rating: 4
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]]> Normal People 37539457
A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.]]> 266 Sally Rooney 0571334644 Nick 3 3.93 2018 Normal People

author: Sally Rooney
name: Nick
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 3
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]]> Reservoir 13 34146665 Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over thirteen years as the aftershocks of a tragedy refuse to subside.]]> 291 Jon McGregor 1936787709 Nick 5 favorites 3.52 2017 Reservoir 13

author: Jon McGregor
name: Nick
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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Completely original in structure and story (at least it was to me!). The fact that I mostly forgot this sets out as a story of a missing person is just ingenious. Life moves on. Loved every word of this, a perfect and moody portrait of village life in England.
]]> All That Man Is 26046318 All That Man Is aggregate into a picture of a single shared existence, a picture that interrogates the state of modern manhood while bringing to life, unforgettably, the physical and emotional terrain of an increasingly globalized Europe. And so these nine lives form an ingenious and new kind of novel, in which David Szalay expertly plots a dark predicament for the twenty-first-century man.

Dark and disturbing, but also often wickedly and uproariously comic, All That Man Is is notable for the acute psychological penetration Szalay brings to bear on his characters, from the working-class ex-grunt to the pompous college student, the middle-aged loser to the Russian oligarch. Steadily and mercilessly, as this brilliantly conceived book progresses, the protagonist at the center of each chapter is older than the last one, it gets colder out, and All That Man Is gathers exquisite power. Szalay is a writer of supreme gifts -- a master of a new kind of realism that vibrates with detail, intelligence, relevance, and devastating pathos.]]> 448 David Szalay 0224099779 Nick 5 favorites 3.63 2016 All That Man Is

author: David Szalay
name: Nick
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.��Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Nick 5 favorites 4.28 2015 A Little Life

author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Nick
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Nick 5 favorites 4.14 1989 The Remains of the Day

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nick
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 5
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Difficult to express how much I love this book. Mr. Stevens will stay with me until the day I die (in his dutiful kind of way)
]]> Augustus 89231 Augustus is a sweeping narrative that brings vividly to life a compelling cast of historical figures through their letters, dispatches, and memoirs.

A mere eighteen years of age when his uncle, Julius Caesar, is murdered, Octavius Caesar prematurely inherits rule of the Roman Republic. Surrounded by men who are jockeying for power–Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony–young Octavius must work against the powerful Roman political machinations to claim his destiny as first Roman emperor. Sprung from meticulous research and the pen of a true poet, Augustus tells the story of one man’s dream to liberate a corrupt Rome from the fancy of the capriciously crooked and the wildly wealthy.]]> 336 John Williams 1400076730 Nick 5 favorites 4.23 1972

author: John Williams
name: Nick
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1972
rating: 5
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]]> Piranesi 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Nick 5 favorites 4.22 2020

author: Susanna Clarke
name: Nick
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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]]> London and the South-East 3199192 368 David Szalay 0224081586 Nick 4 favorites 3.76 2008

author: David Szalay
name: Nick
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> White Noise 28251250
White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultramodern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback

Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition]]> 320 Don DeLillo 0143129554 Nick 3 3.88 1985 White Noise

author: Don DeLillo
name: Nick
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1985
rating: 3
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]]> No Country for Old Men 12497 Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN 9780375706677

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones.

One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law–in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell–can contain.

As Moss tries to evade his pursuers–in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives–McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.
No Country for Old Men is a triumph.]]> 309 Cormac McCarthy Nick 4 4.15 2005

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Nick
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/03/16
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]]> Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Nick 4 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nick
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/03/16
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]]> Exit Management 53933842 278 Naomi Booth 1911585703 Nick 3 3.79 2020

author: Naomi Booth
name: Nick
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2020
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/02/08
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]]> Boy Parts 49083140
Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention��

Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.]]> 304 Eliza Clark 1910312649 Nick 4 3.74 2020 Boy Parts

author: Eliza Clark
name: Nick
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/02/08
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]]> Engleby 956719
"My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university."

With that brief introduction we meet one of the most mesmerizing, singular voices in a long tradition of disturbing narrators. Despite his obvious intelligence and compelling voice, it is clear that something about solitary, odd Mike is not quite right. When he becomes fixated on a classmate named Jennifer Arkland and she goes missing, we are left with the looming Is Mike Engleby involved? As he grows up, finding a job and even a girlfriend in London, Mike only becomes more and more detached from those around him in an almost anti-coming-of-age. His inability to relate to others and his undependable memory (able to recall countless lines of text yet sometimes incapable of summoning up his own experiences from mere days before) lead the reader down an unclear and often darkly humorous path where one is never completely comfortable or confident about what is true.

Mike Engleby is a chilling and unforgettable character, and Engleby is a novel that will surprise and beguile Sebastian Faulks' readership.]]> 319 Sebastian Faulks 0385524056 Nick 4 3.76 2007 Engleby

author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Nick
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> Fight Club 36236124 Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.]]> 224 Chuck Palahniuk 0393355942 Nick 2 4.18 1996 Fight Club

author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Nick
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1996
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[We Have Always Lived in the Castle]]> 89724 Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.]]> 152 Shirley Jackson 0143039970 Nick 2 3.93 1962 We Have Always Lived in the Castle

author: Shirley Jackson
name: Nick
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1962
rating: 2
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date added: 2021/01/12
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]]> Leonard and Hungry Paul 43525053
‘The figure in Munch’s painting isn’t actually screaming!�� Hungry Paul said. ‘Really, are you sure?�� Replied Leonard. ‘Absolutely. That’s the whole thing. The figure is actually closing his ears to block outa scream. Isn’t that amazing? A painting can be so misunderstood and still become so famous.��

LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL is the story of two quiet friends trying to find their place in the world. It is about those uncelebrated people who have the ability to change the world, not by effort or force, but through their appreciation of all that is special and overlooked in life.]]> 245 Ronan Hession 1910422444 Nick 4 4.18 2019 Leonard and Hungry Paul

author: Ronan Hession
name: Nick
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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]]> Out Stealing Horses 398323
Trond’s friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning would turn out to be different. What began as a joy ride on “borrowed�� horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day—an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys.

Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.]]> 258 Per Petterson Nick 4 3.79 2003 Out Stealing Horses

author: Per Petterson
name: Nick
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> Survivor 36236123 Fight Club comes this wickedly incisive second novel, a mesmerizing, unnerving, and hilarious vision of cult and post-cult life.

Tender Branson—last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult—is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. Before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah, author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the even better selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms). He'll reveal the truth of his tortured romance with the elusive and prescient Fertility Hollis, share his insight that "the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage," and deny responsibility for the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, a 20,000-acre repository for the nation's outdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant.

Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night and Jerzy Kosinski's Being There has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Unpredictable, compelling, and unforgettable, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak; and it cements his place as one of the most original writers in fiction today.]]> 304 Chuck Palahniuk 0393355934 Nick 4 3.93 1999

author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Nick
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Nick 2 3.81 2018 Normal People

author: Sally Rooney
name: Nick
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 2
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]]> I'm Thinking of Ending Things 40605223 Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why��

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

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

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

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.]]> 241 Iain Reid Nick 4 3.53 2016 I'm Thinking of Ending Things

author: Iain Reid
name: Nick
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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]]> The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Nick 4 4.38 2005 The Book Thief

author: Markus Zusak
name: Nick
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5)]]> 4978 960 Stephen King 141651693X Nick 3 4.19 2003

Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5)

author: Stephen King
name: Nick
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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]]> The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,�� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Nick 4 3.99 2006 The Road

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Nick
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/12/23
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]]> The Night Circus 9361589
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

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

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.]]> 506 Erin Morgenstern Nick 4 4.00 2011 The Night Circus

author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Nick
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/12/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World]]> 10374 Lord Jim.

Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.]]> 400 Haruki Murakami Nick 4 4.14 1985 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Nick
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1985
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/11/15
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]]> The Innocent 6797954 192 David Szalay 0224081578 Nick 2 3.32 2009

author: David Szalay
name: Nick
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2009
rating: 2
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date added: 2020/11/12
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]]> Turbulence 42299820 From the acclaimed, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of All That Man Is, a stunning, virtuosic novel about twelve people, mostly strangers, and the surprising ripple effect each one has on the life of the next as they cross paths while in transit around the world.

A woman strikes up a conversation with the man sitting next to her on a plane after some turbulence. He returns home to tragic news that has also impacted another stranger, a shaken pilot on his way to another continent who seeks comfort from a journalist he meets that night. Her life shifts subtly as well, before she heads to the airport on an assignment that will shift more lives in turn.

In this wondrous, profoundly moving novel, Szalay's diverse protagonists circumnavigate the planet in twelve flights, from London to Madrid, from Dakar to Sao Paulo, to Toronto, to Delhi, to Doha, en route to see lovers or estranged siblings, aging parents, baby grandchildren, or nobody at all. Along the way, they experience the full range of human emotions from loneliness to love and, knowingly or otherwise, change each other in one brief, electrifying interaction after the next.

Written with magic and economy and beautifully exploring the delicate, crisscrossed nature of relationships today, Turbulence is a dazzling portrait of the interconnectedness of the modern world.]]> 160 David Szalay 1982122730 Nick 3 3.59 2018

author: David Szalay
name: Nick
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 3
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]]> The Beach 607639
The Khao San Road, Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveller slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach."

The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travellers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumoured, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden.

Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents.

Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world first hand.]]> 436 Alex Garland 1573226521 Nick 4 3.97 1996 The Beach

author: Alex Garland
name: Nick
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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]]> Never Let Me Go 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Nick 4 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nick
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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Great concept, great writing, but I just didn't click with the characters for some reason. Just one of those things.
]]> <![CDATA[Olive, Again (Olive Kitteridge, #2)]]> 43984883 San Francisco Chronicle).��The��New Yorker��has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,�� and she has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire��us—in Strout’s words—“to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”]]> 289 Elizabeth Strout 0812996542 Nick 4 4.06 2019 Olive, Again (Olive Kitteridge, #2)

author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Nick
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Nick 4 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch

author: Donna Tartt
name: Nick
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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]]> Norwegian Wood 11297
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student's romantic coming of age, Norwegian Wood brilliantly recaptures a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]> 296 Haruki Murakami 0375704027 Nick 4 4.01 1987

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Nick
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford (Great Discoveries)]]> 1365625
Rutherford, awarded a Nobel Prize and made Baron Rutherford by the queen of England, was also a great ambassador of science, coming to the aid of colleagues caught in the Nazi and Soviet regimes. Under Rutherford’s rigorous and boisterous direction, a whole new generation of remarkable physicists emerged. In Richard Re’s hands, Rutherford leaps off the page, a ruddy, genial man and a towering figure in scientific history.]]> 207 Richard Reeves 039305750X Nick 3 3.99 1971 A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford (Great Discoveries)

A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford (Great Discoveries)

author: Richard Reeves
name: Nick
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1971
rating: 3
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]]> The Dutch House 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]> 337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Nick 3 4.08 2019 The Dutch House

author: Ann Patchett
name: Nick
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 3
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]]> Ghost Wall 38922230
For two weeks, the length of her father's vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie's father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession. He has raised her on stories of early man, taken her to witness rare artifacts, recounted time and again their rituals and beliefs—particularly their sacrifices to the bog. Mixing with the students, Silvie begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, speaking her mind.

The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice?

A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the "primitive minds" of our ancestors.]]> 152 Sarah Moss 1783784458 Nick 3 3.72 2018

author: Sarah Moss
name: Nick
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2018
rating: 3
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]]> The Water Cure 39335566 The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men.

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has laid the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.

But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?

A haunting, riveting debut about the capacity for violence and the potency of female desire, The Water Cure both devastates and astonishes as it reflects our own world back at us.]]> 288 Sophie Mackintosh 0385543875 Nick 1 3.21 2018

author: Sophie Mackintosh
name: Nick
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2018
rating: 1
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]]> Little 38649806
In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and... at the wax museum, heads are what they do.

In the tradition of Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, Edward Carey's Little is a darkly endearing cavalcade of a novel—a story of art, class, determination, and how we hold on to what we love.]]> 448 Edward Carey 0525534326 Nick 2 3.99 2018 Little

author: Edward Carey
name: Nick
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2018
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine]]> 31434883 No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she'll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

the only way to survive is to open your heart.]]> 336 Gail Honeyman 0735220689 Nick 3 4.21 2017 Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

author: Gail Honeyman
name: Nick
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 3
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]]> One Day 6280118
So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that?

And every year that follows?
--back cover]]> 435 David Nicholls 0340896965 Nick 3 3.86 2009 One Day

author: David Nicholls
name: Nick
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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]]> The Nickel Boys 42270835 Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida.

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.]]> 213 Colson Whitehead Nick 4 4.25 2019

author: Colson Whitehead
name: Nick
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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]]> Atonement 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Nick 3 3.94 2001

author: Ian McEwan
name: Nick
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 3
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]]> Tenth of December 13641208 Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

In the taut opening, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antique store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders' signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness."]]> 251 George Saunders 0812993802 Nick 3 3.98 2013 Tenth of December

author: George Saunders
name: Nick
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 3
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]]> A Farewell to Arms 10799 A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield - the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote his ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right.]]> 293 Ernest Hemingway 0099910101 Nick 4 3.83 1929

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Nick
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1929
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)]]> 16181775
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful�� husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

The Rosie Project is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.]]> 292 Graeme Simsion 1476729085 Nick 2 4.00 2013 The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1)

author: Graeme Simsion
name: Nick
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 2
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]]> The Old Man and the Sea 2165 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.]]> 96 Ernest Hemingway 0684830493 Nick 4 3.81 1952 The Old Man and the Sea

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Nick
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1952
rating: 4
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]]> The Martian 18007564
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error�� are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills �� and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit �� he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

]]> 384 Andy Weir 0804139024 Nick 4 4.41 2011 The Martian

author: Andy Weir
name: Nick
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1) 27824826 A small town hides big secrets in this atmospheric, page-turning debut mystery by award-winning author Jane Harper.

In the grip of the worst drought in a century, the farming community of Kiewarra is facing life and death choices daily when three members of a local family are found brutally slain.

Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk reluctantly returns to his hometown for the funeral of his childhood friend, loath to face the townsfolk who turned their backs on him twenty years earlier.

But as questions mount, Falk is forced to probe deeper into the deaths of the Hadler family. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret. A secret Falk thought was long buried. A secret Luke's death now threatens to bring to the surface in this small Australian town, as old wounds bleed into new ones.

]]> 336 Jane Harper Nick 2 4.04 2016 The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1)

author: Jane Harper
name: Nick
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)]]> 43615
He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues The Man in Black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter.]]> 231 Stephen King 1501143514 Nick 2 3.95 1982 The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)

author: Stephen King
name: Nick
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1982
rating: 2
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]]> ’Salem’s Lot 11590 Librarian's Note: Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0450031063

Thousands of miles away from the small township of 'Salem's Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to 'Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.]]> 483 Stephen King 0450031063 Nick 3 4.06 1975 ’Salem’s Lot

author: Stephen King
name: Nick
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1975
rating: 3
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]]> Misery 10614 #1, #2, #3, #4

Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.]]> 370 Stephen King 0450417395 Nick 4 4.22 1987 Misery

author: Stephen King
name: Nick
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]]> 10569 (back cover)]]> 320 Stephen King 0743455967 Nick 4 4.33 2000

author: Stephen King
name: Nick
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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]]> Cell 10567 Where were you on October 1st at 3:03 pm?

Graphic artist Clay Riddell was in the heart of Boston on that brilliant autumn afternoon when hell was unleashed before his eyes. Without warning, carnage and chaos reigned. Ordinary people fell victim to the basest, most animalistic destruction.

And the apocalypse began with the ring of a cell phone...]]> 449 Stephen King 1416524517 Nick 3 3.67 2006 Cell

author: Stephen King
name: Nick
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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]]> The Buried Giant 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X Nick 5 3.56 2015 The Buried Giant

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nick
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> The Gallows Pole 31325980
An England divided. From his remote moorland home, David Hartley assembles a gang of weavers and land-workers to embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history.

They are the Cragg Vale Coiners and their business is ‘clipping�� the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death.

A charismatic leader, Hartley cares for the poor and uses violence and intimidation against his opponents. He is also prone to self-delusion and strange visions of mythical creatures.

When excise officer William Deighton vows to bring down the Coiners and one of their own becomes turncoat, Hartley’s empire begins to crumble. With the industrial age set to change the face of England forever, the fate of his empire is under threat.

Forensically assembled from historical accounts and legal documents, The Gallows Pole is a true story of resistance that combines poetry, landscape, crime and historical fiction, whose themes continue to resonate. Here is a rarely-told alternative history of the North.]]> 371 Benjamin Myers Nick 3 4.10 2017 The Gallows Pole

author: Benjamin Myers
name: Nick
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 3
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]]> Burial Rites 17333319
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?]]> 336 Hannah Kent 0316243914 Nick 4 4.00 2013 Burial Rites

author: Hannah Kent
name: Nick
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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Take me to the deep dark recesses of Iceland now!
]]> <![CDATA[The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)]]> 13227454
Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.

Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him - allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.

And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.]]> 320 Rachel Joyce 0812993292 Nick 3 3.91 2012 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)

author: Rachel Joyce
name: Nick
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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Whimsical and touching. Enjoyed it muchly.
]]> The Kraken Wakes 91092 240 John Wyndham 0140010750 Nick 4 3.76 1953

author: John Wyndham
name: Nick
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1953
rating: 4
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]]> Exhalation 41160292
In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.]]> 368 Ted Chiang Nick 5 4.27 2019

author: Ted Chiang
name: Nick
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/08/24
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]]> Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Nick 4 4.46 2018 Educated

author: Tara Westover
name: Nick
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/08/24
shelves:
review:

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