Mary's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 23 Nov 2020 00:56:02 -0800 60 Mary's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor]]> 35510008 Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know � and more than a few things you didn't � about life on and off the hospital ward.

As seen on ITV's Zoe Ball Book Club

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

]]> 285 Adam Kay Mary 5 4.40 2017 This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
author: Adam Kay
name: Mary
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Happier Here and Now: The restorative power of life's simple pleasures]]> 45694721
An inspiring memoir and simple guide that anyone can use to find a new kind of happiness in the small pleasures of everyday life.

Mary Jane Grant takes us on her travels through London and the French countryside as she recovers from loss to find a richer experience of life, love and connection. As she immerses herself in the sights, smells, and small pleasures of each moment, the sadness starts to recede.

From the bustling cafes of Camden and the pastel-coloured streets of Primrose Hill, to the sun-soaked vineyards of the south of France, her journey leads to new experiences that she could not have imagined in her old life. Real connections are made, she lets go of things she no longer needs, and takes pleasure in the good, generous and beautiful parts of life that she encounters every day.

Beautifully and succinctly told, this is a story about what happens when you embrace life, whatever it may bring, with surprising - and joyful - results.

Anyone can use the enjoyable techniques described in this book to create a more vivid life, one small pleasure at a time. As we grapple with how to live in a post-pandemic world, this book is a perfect match to the questions of our time.

While the tea steeped, I split open the muffin and slathered butter across the warm, crumbly surface. I watched the butter melt. I took a bite. Memories of my grandmother's kitchen came back. I cradled the smooth white cup in my hand, ran my fingers over the uneven top of the time-worn wooden table. I looked around the place and watched people. Time passed. I realised that it was an hour since I first saw the sign telling me to smell the tea. And all this time I had experienced neither sad memories nor anxious worries. I was completely and simply here - with the tea, the place, the people, myself. I was present. And it felt wonderful.]]> 208 Mary Jane Grant Mary 0 currently-reading 4.00 Happier Here and Now: The restorative power of life's simple pleasures
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average rating: 4.00
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]]> A Cure for Heartache 45168249
From the bustling cafes of Camden and the pastel-coloured streets of Primrose Hill, to the sun soaked vineyards of the south of France, her journey leads her to rich new experiences that she could never have imagined in her old life. Real connections are made, she lets go of the things she no longer needs, and takes pleasure in the good, generous and beautiful parts of life that she encounters every day.

Beautifully and succinctly told, this is a story about what happens when you embrace life, whatever it may bring, with surprising - and joyful - results.]]> 208 Mary Jane Grant 1473699649 Mary 0 to-read 4.09 A Cure for Heartache
author: Mary Jane Grant
name: Mary
average rating: 4.09
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date added: 2019/04/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life]]> 170548 248 Richard Carlson 073380084X Mary 4 3.99 1997 Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life
author: Richard Carlson
name: Mary
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/11/08
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]]> 10% Happier 18505796
Eventually Harris stumbled upon an effective way to rein in that voice, something he always assumed to be either impossible or useless: meditation, a tool that research suggests can do everything from lower your blood pressure to essentially rewire your brain. "10% Happier" takes readers on a ride from the outer reaches of neuroscience to the inner sanctum of network news to the bizarre fringes of America's spiritual scene, and leaves them with a takeaway that could actually change their lives.]]> 256 Dan Harris 0062265423 Mary 4 3.87 2014 10% Happier
author: Dan Harris
name: Mary
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> The Happiness Project 6398634
In this lively and compelling account, Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Among other things, she found that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can help buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.]]> 301 Gretchen Rubin 0061583251 Mary 4 3.65 2009 The Happiness Project
author: Gretchen Rubin
name: Mary
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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]]> The Gifts of Imperfection 7015403 New York Times best seller, Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor and thought leader on vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame, shares ten guideposts on the power of Wholehearted living—a way of engaging with the world from a place of worthiness.]]> 137 Brené Brown 159285849X Mary 5 4.25 2010 The Gifts of Imperfection
author: Brené Brown
name: Mary
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> The Year of Magical Thinking 7815
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 Mary 5 3.94 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking
author: Joan Didion
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> Me Talk Pretty One Day 4137 272 David Sedaris 0349113912 Mary 5 4.01 2000 Me Talk Pretty One Day
author: David Sedaris
name: Mary
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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]]> Running with Scissors 242006 336 Augusten Burroughs 031242227X Mary 5 3.77 2002 Running with Scissors
author: Augusten Burroughs
name: Mary
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship]]> 40604617 Let’s Take the Long Walk Home, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gail Caldwell has written a powerful and moving memoir about her coming-of-age in mid-life, and her extraordinary friendship with the author of Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp—fellow writers, AA members, dog lovers, and observers of life.Ěý

ĚýĚýĚý In her younger years, Caldwell defined herself by rebellion and independence, a passion for books, and an aversion to intimacy and a distrust of others. Then while living in Cambridge in her early 40s, “an age when the view from the hill can be clear and poignant both,â€� Caldwell adopts a rambunctious puppy named Clementine. On one of their bucolic walks, she meets Caroline and her dog, Lucille, and both women’s lives change forever.

Though they are more different than alike, these two fiercely private, independent women quickly relax into a friendship more profound than either of them expected, a friendship that will thrive on their shared secrets, including parallel struggles with alcoholism and loneliness. They grow increasingly inseparable until, in 2003, Caroline is diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Caldwell writes: “It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.�
Ěý
ĚýĚýĚý In her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion and grief in this wise and affecting account about losing her best friend. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is also a celebration of life and all the little moments worth cherishing—and affirms why Gail Caldwell is rightly praised as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.]]> 209 Gail Caldwell Mary 5 4.10 2010 Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
author: Gail Caldwell
name: Mary
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> Drinking: A Love Story 73965
Caroline Knapp describes how the distorted world of her well-to-do parents pushed her toward anorexia and alcoholism. Fittingly, it was literature that saved her: she found inspiration in Pete Hamill's 'A Drinking Life' and sobered up. Her tale is spiced up with the characters she has known along the way.

A journalist describes her twenty years as a functioning alcoholic, explaining how she used alcohol to escape personal relationships and the realities of life until a series of personal crises forced her to confront her problem.]]> 286 Caroline Knapp 0385315546 Mary 5 4.08 1996 Drinking: A Love Story
author: Caroline Knapp
name: Mary
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> The Liars' Club 14241 The Liars� Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger’s—a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. This unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as “funny, lively, and un-put-downable� (USA Today) today as it ever was.]]> 352 Mary Karr 0143035746 Mary 5 3.94 1995 The Liars' Club
author: Mary Karr
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)]]> 252577
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.]]> 452 Frank McCourt 0007205236 Mary 5 4.15 1996 Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)
author: Frank McCourt
name: Mary
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> The Middle Place 1779929
She continues with an unabashed tribute to the first man in her life.

George Corrigan emerges as an outsized figure of immense good cheer and spirited disposition. A self-assured adman and former all-American lacrosse player (now part-time coach), he shines brightly, and his daughter appears content to live in his reflected glory.

Kelly considers herself lucky for this great touchstone in her life, and her dad's can-do spirit becomes her greatest asset when she's diagnosed with breast cancer as a young mother. It is her dad's pluck and resolve that will see her through the oncoming battles -- including the realization that her "cure" will mean the end of her ability to bear children and her dream of having a large family of her own.

Though Kelly writes of her husband and daughters, her mother and her brothers, it is her father's love that sustains her. And so, readers fear for her when she reveals that George has been diagnosed with cancer, too. It is at this nadir, facing not only her own mortality but her father's as well, that Kelly finally begins to emerge as a survivor -- a wife, a mother, and more herself. Yet, she will always be her father's daughter.]]> 272 Kelly Corrigan 1401303366 Mary 5 3.88 2005 The Middle Place
author: Kelly Corrigan
name: Mary
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> Autobiography of a Face 534255 I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison.

At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect.]]> 236 Lucy Grealy 0060569662 Mary 4 3.97 1994 Autobiography of a Face
author: Lucy Grealy
name: Mary
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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]]> Blue Nights 10252302 Ěý
Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana’s wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana’s childhood—in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. “How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?� Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept.
Ěý
Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.]]> 208 Joan Didion 0307267679 Mary 5 3.92 2011 Blue Nights
author: Joan Didion
name: Mary
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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]]> Truth & Beauty 3686 Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth and Beauty, the story isn’t Lucy’s life or Ann’s life but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined--and what happens when one is left behind.]]> 257 Ann Patchett 0060572159 Mary 5 3.97 2004 Truth & Beauty
author: Ann Patchett
name: Mary
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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]]> Chocolat (Chocolat, #1) 47401
Illuminating Peter Mayle's South of France with a touch of Laura Esquivel's magic realism, Chocolat is a timeless novel of a straitlaced village's awakening to joy and sensuality. In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows. Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch? Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation, happiness, and a dramatic face-off between Easter solemnity and the pagan gaiety of a chocolate festival.

Chocolat's every page offers a description of chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere. It's a must for anyone who craves an escapist read, and is a bewitching gift for any holiday.]]> 306 Joanne Harris 014100018X Mary 5 3.97 1999 Chocolat (Chocolat, #1)
author: Joanne Harris
name: Mary
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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]]> Paris to the Moon 7062
Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.

In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades--but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive.

So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, enjoyed philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning "Paris Journals" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d'Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a "culinary crisis."

As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. "We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation - I did anyway - even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education."]]> 368 Adam Gopnik 0375758232 Mary 4 3.75 2000 Paris to the Moon
author: Adam Gopnik
name: Mary
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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]]> Like Water for Chocolate 6952
The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit - and recipes.

A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation, Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her, so that Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.]]> 222 Laura Esquivel Mary 5 3.96 1989 Like Water for Chocolate
author: Laura Esquivel
name: Mary
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 5
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]]> My Life in France 5084 Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams--in her own words.
Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story--struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe--unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia's success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America's most endearing personalities.]]> 336 Julia Child 1400043468 Mary 5 4.15 2006 My Life in France
author: Julia Child
name: Mary
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen]]> 13747
Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year.

At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crépes, she realizes there’s more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye. With Julia’s stern warble always in her ear, Julie haunts the local butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads. She sends her husband on late-night runs for yet more butter and rarely serves dinner before midnight. She discovers how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian, the trick to extracting marrow from bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver.

And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life’s ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.]]> 310 Julie Powell 031610969X Mary 5 3.74 2005 Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
author: Julie Powell
name: Mary
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy]]> 480479
Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In Under the Tuscan Sun, she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table.]]> 304 Frances Mayes 0767900383 Mary 4 3.77 1996 Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy
author: Frances Mayes
name: Mary
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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]]> Eat, Pray, Love 19501
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.]]> 368 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143038419 Mary 4 3.64 2006 Eat, Pray, Love
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Mary
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail]]> 12262741 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State � and she would do it alone.

Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.]]> 336 Cheryl Strayed 0307592731 Mary 4 4.06 2012 Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
author: Cheryl Strayed
name: Mary
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> The Glass Castle 7445 THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.]]> 288 Jeannette Walls 074324754X Mary 5 4.32 2005 The Glass Castle
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Mary
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Mary 5 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: Mary
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> On Beauty 3679 On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.]]> 445 Zadie Smith 0143037749 Mary 5 3.79 2005 On Beauty
author: Zadie Smith
name: Mary
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Mary 5 4.03 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Mary
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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]]> Where'd You Go, Bernadette 13526165
When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter's love for her mother.]]> 330 Maria Semple 0316204277 Mary 4 3.87 2012 Where'd You Go, Bernadette
author: Maria Semple
name: Mary
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Mary 4 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Mary
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
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 Mary 5 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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]]> A Good House 1148316 320 Bonnie Burnard 0805064958 Mary 5 3.62 1999 A Good House
author: Bonnie Burnard
name: Mary
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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]]> Larry's Party 356768 352 Carol Shields 0679309519 Mary 4 3.74 1997 Larry's Party
author: Carol Shields
name: Mary
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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]]> A Recipe for Bees 824181 A Recipe for Bees, Gail Anderson-Dargatz gives readers a remarkable woman to stand beside Hagar Shipley and Daisy Goodwin � but Augusta Olsen also has attitude, a wicked funny bone, and the dubious gift of second sight.

At home in Courtenay, B.C., Augusta anxiously awaits news of her dearly loved son-in-law Gabe, who is undergoing brain surgery miles away in Victoria. Her best friend Rose is waiting for Augusta to call as soon as she hears. Through Rose, we begin to learn the story of Augusta's sometimes harsh, sometimes magical life: the startling vision of her mother's early death; the loneliness of her marriage to Karl and her battle with Karl's detestable father, Olaf. We are told of her gentle, platonic affair with a church minister, of her not-so-platonic affair with a man from the town, and the birth of her only child. We also learn of the special affinity between Rose and Augusta, who share the delights and exasperations of old age.

Just as The Cure for Death by Lightning offers recipes and remedies, A Recipe for Bees is saturated with bee lore, and is full of rich domestic detail, wondrous imagery culled from rural kitchens and gardens, shining insights into ageing, family and friendship. And at its heart, is the life, death and resurrection of an extraordinary marriage]]> 320 Gail Anderson-Dargatz 0676972411 Mary 5 3.70 1998 A Recipe for Bees
author: Gail Anderson-Dargatz
name: Mary
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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]]> The Piano Man's Daughter 29896 he Piano Man's Daughter is the lyrical, multilayered tale of Charlie's mother, Lily, his grandmother Ede, and their family. Lily is a woman pursued by her own demons, "making off with the matches just when the fires caught hold," "a beautiful, mad genius, first introduced to us singing in her mother's belly." It is also the tale of people who dream in songs, two Irish immigrant families facing a new and uncertain future in turn-of-the-century Toronto. Finally, it is a richly detailed tribute to a golden epoch in our history and of a generation striking the last, haunting chord of innocence.

The Piano Man's Daughter is a symphony of wonderful storytelling, unforgettable characters, and a lilting, lingering melody that plays on long after the last page has been turned.]]> 490 Timothy Findley 0060936436 Mary 5 3.94 1995 The Piano Man's Daughter
author: Timothy Findley
name: Mary
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> The Stone Angel 74696 It is the late 1960s, and Hagar Shipley’s days are drawing to an end. In the course of an afternoon, Hagar’s life unfolds: her childhood in a small prairie town, her Scottish immigrant father, the tumultuous relationship with her now-estranged husband, her sons, and their partners. Based on the novel by Margaret Laurence.

]]> 120 James W. Nichol 0887546315 Mary 5 4.00 1964 The Stone Angel
author: James W. Nichol
name: Mary
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1964
rating: 5
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]]> Clara Callan 241664
While Nora embarks on a glamorous career as a radio-soap opera star, Clara, a strong and independent-minded woman, struggles to observe the traditional boundaries of a small and tight-knit community without relinquishing her dreams of love, freedom, and adventure. However, things aren't as simple as they appear -- Nora's letters eventually reveal life in the big city is less exotic than it seems, and the tranquil solitude of Clara's life is shattered by a series of unforeseeable events. These twists of fate require all of Clara's courage and strength, and finally put the seemingly unbreakable bond between the sisters to the test.]]> 432 Richard B. Wright 0060506075 Mary 5 3.88 2001 Clara Callan
author: Richard B. Wright
name: Mary
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> Late Nights on Air 1677996 A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs.

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined.

Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land.

Elizabeth Hay has been compared to Annie Proulx, Alice Hoffman, and Isabel Allende, yet she is uniquely herself. With unforgettable characters, vividly evoked settings, in this new novel, Hay brings to bear her skewering intelligence into the frailties of the human heart and her ability to tell a spellbinding story. Written in gorgeous prose, laced with dark humour, Late Nights on Air is Hay’s most seductive and accomplished novel yet.

]]> 364 Elizabeth Hay 0771038119 Mary 5 3.58 2007 Late Nights on Air
author: Elizabeth Hay
name: Mary
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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]]> Barney's Version 196564 288 Mordecai Richler 0701162724 Mary 5 4.15 1997 Barney's Version
author: Mordecai Richler
name: Mary
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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]]> Fall on Your Knees 5174 Fall on Your Knees follows four remarkable sisters whose lives are filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Their experiences will take them from their stormswept homeland, across the battlefields of World War I, to the freedom and independence of Jazz-era New York City.

Compellingly written, running the literary gamut from menacingly dark to hilariously funny, this is an epic saga of one family’s trials and triumphs in a world of sin, guilt, and redemption.]]> 672 Ann-Marie MacDonald 0743466527 Mary 5 3.97 1996 Fall on Your Knees
author: Ann-Marie MacDonald
name: Mary
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> A Widow for One Year 4659
This sentence opens John Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year, a story of a family marked by tragedy. Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character—a “difficult� woman. By no means is she conventionally “nice,� but she will never be forgotten.

Ruth’s story is told in three parts, each focusing on a critical time in her life. When we first meet her—on Long Island, in the summer of 1958—Ruth is only four.

The second window into Ruth’s life opens on the fall of 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.

A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She’s about to fall in love for the first time.

Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.
Source: john-irving.com]]> 576 John Irving Mary 5 3.78 1998 A Widow for One Year
author: John Irving
name: Mary
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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]]> She’s Come Undone 5203
Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.]]> 465 Wally Lamb 0671021001 Mary 5 3.91 1992 She’s Come Undone
author: Wally Lamb
name: Mary
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog]]> 12691
Marley quickly grew into an uncontrollable ninety-seven-pound steamroller of a Labrador retriever. Expelled from obedience school, even the tranquillisers prescribed by the vet couldn't stop him.

Yet through the chaos and the hilarity, he won hearts and remained a steadfast model of devotion to his family, even when they were at their wits' end. Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms.]]> 291 John Grogan 0739461192 Mary 4 4.14 2005 Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog
author: John Grogan
name: Mary
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> The Lovely Bones 12232938
So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.]]> 372 Alice Sebold 0316166685 Mary 5 3.87 2002 The Lovely Bones
author: Alice Sebold
name: Mary
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Mary 2 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Mary
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 2
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]]> The Art of Racing in the Rain 3153910
Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through.

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life ... as only a dog could tell it.]]> 336 Garth Stein 1554681723 Mary 4 4.22 2008 The Art of Racing in the Rain
author: Garth Stein
name: Mary
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Mary 5 3.89 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
author: Mark Haddon
name: Mary
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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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 Mary 5 4.21 2017 Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
author: Gail Honeyman
name: Mary
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/11/08
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]]>