Lisa's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 23 Jan 2025 01:04:54 -0800 60 Lisa's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)]]> 4223
As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci—clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci—and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle—while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move—the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever.]]> 752 Dan Brown 0739326740 Lisa 1 thriller 3.64 2003 The da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)
author: Dan Brown
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2003
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: thriller
review:

]]> A Thousand Ships 54627213
In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash . . .

The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all�

Powerfully told from an all-female perspective, A Thousand Ships gives voices to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.

In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective.]]> 366 Natalie Haynes Lisa 2 mythology, retellings 4.09 2019 A Thousand Ships
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2021/02/22
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: mythology, retellings
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Vol. 01]]> 79548 London Evening News, in 1954. The strip was syndicated in newspapers around the world with millions of readers in 40 countries.

Moomin Book One is the first volume of Drawn & Quarterly publishing plan to reprint the entire strip drawn by Jansson before she handed over the reigns to her brother Lars in 1960. This is the first time the strip will be published in any form in North America and will deservedly place Jansson among the international cartooning greats of the last century.

The Moomins are a tight-knit family � hippo-shaped creatures with easygoing and adventurous outlooks. Jansson's art is pared down and precise, yet able to compose beautiful portraits of ambling creatures in fields of flowers or rock-strewn beaches that recall Jansson's Nordic roots. The comic strip reached out to adults with its gentle and droll sense of humor. Whimsical but with biting undertones, Jansson's observations of everyday life, including guests who overstay their welcome, modern art, movie stars, and high society, easily caught the attention of an international audience and still resonate today.]]> 95 Tove Jansson 1894937805 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.37 1977 Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Vol. 01
author: Tove Jansson
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Fair Play 902743
Fair Play is the type of love story that is rarely told, a revelatory depiction of contentment, hard-won and exhilarating.Ěý

Mari is a writer and Jonna is an artist, and they live at opposite ends of a big apartment building, their studios connected by a long attic passageway. They have argued, worked, and laughed together for decades. Yet they’ve never really stopped taking each other by surprise. Fair Play shows us Mari and Jona’s intertwined lives as they watch Fassbinder films and Westerns, critique each other’s work, spend time on a solitary island (recognizable to readers of Jansson’s The Summer Book), travel through the American Southwest, and turn life into nothing less than art.]]> 127 Tove Jansson 0954899539 Lisa 4 wlw 3.94 1989 Fair Play
author: Tove Jansson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: wlw
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Marquis Who Mustn't (Wedgeford Trials, #2)]]> 198271721 372 Courtney Milan 1937248755 Lisa 0 4.22 2023 The Marquis Who Mustn't (Wedgeford Trials, #2)
author: Courtney Milan
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Duke's Sister and I 203993998 A spellbinding sapphic love story filled with wit and queer joy, Emma-Claire Sunday’s debut Regency romance will leave you swooning!

She’s supposed to wed a duke�

But it’s his sister she can’t keep her eyes off!

As the ton’s most in-demand debutante, it should be easy for Miss Loretta Linfield to find the perfect husband. So the reason why she is embarking on her third season unwed is a puzzle that nobody can solve. Not least Loretta! Until she meets Charlotte Sterlington� The sister of her new suitor, the Duke of Colchester, is everything that prim and proper Loretta isn’t—bold, daring and rakish! But Charlotte is also everything that Loretta finds herself desiring…]]> 272 Emma-Claire Sunday 1335539751 Lisa 0 3.85 2024 The Duke's Sister and I
author: Emma-Claire Sunday
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza (The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza #1)]]> 58782871 As seen on The TODAY Show! New York Times bestselling Mac Barnett and Caldecott Honor award-winning illustrator Shawn Harris turn their massively popular The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza live cartoon into an action-packed and hysterical graphic novel series--perfect for fans of Dav Pilkey, Raina Telgemeier, and Jeff Kinney. A Kids' Indie Next List Pick and an Indie Bestseller!

Something terrible is happening in the skies! Rats are eating the MOON!

There's only ONE hero for the job, a bold and fearsome beast bioengineered in a secret lab to be the moon's savior and Earth's last hope! And that hero is . . . a cat. A cat who will be blasted into space!

Accompanied by the imperious Moon Queen and LOZ 4000, a toenail clipping robot, the First Cat in Space journeys across a fantastic lunar landscape in a quest to save the world. Will these unlikely heroes save the moon in time? Can a toenail-clipping robot find its purpose in the vast universe? And will the First Cat in Space ever eat some pizza?]]> 320 Mac Barnett 0063084082 Lisa 5 4.15 2020 The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza (The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza #1)
author: Mac Barnett
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:

]]> There There 37798194 Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.]]> 293 Tommy Orange Lisa 0 3.98 2018 There There
author: Tommy Orange
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney #3)]]> 199605514
Someone is trying to kill Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Esteemed aunt of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, generous patroness of Mr. William Collins, a woman of rank who rules over the estate of Rosings Park with an unimpeachable sense of propriety—who would dare ? Lady Catherine summons her grand-nephew, Mr. Jonathan Darcy, and his investigative companion, Miss Juliet Tilney, to find out.

After a year apart, Jonathan and Juliet are thrilled to be reunited, even if the circumstances—finding whoever has thus far sabotaged Lady Catherine's carriage, shot at her, and nearly pushed her down the stairs—are less than ideal. Also less than their respective fathers, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Mr. Henry Tilney, have accompanied the young detectives to Rosings, and the two men do not interact with the same felicity enjoyed by their children.

With attempts against Lady Catherine escalating, and no one among the list of prime suspects seemingly capable of committing all of the attacks, the pressure on Jonathan and Juliet mounts—even as more gentle feelings between the two of them begin to bloom. The race is now on to provoke two one from the attempted murderer before it is too late—and one, perhaps, of love.]]> 335 Claudia Gray 0593686586 Lisa 0 4.00 2024 The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney #3)
author: Claudia Gray
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Late Mrs. Willoughby (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney, #2)]]> 62926935 The suspenseful sequel to The Murder of Mr. Wickham, which sees Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney reunited, and with another mystery to solve: the dreadful poisoning of theĚýscoundrel Willoughby's new wife.

“An absolute page-turner full of well-plotted mystery and hints of simmering romance. . . . More of the Jane Austen characters we love (as well as those we love to hate).� —Mia P. Manansala, author of Arsenic and Adobo

Catherine and Henry Tilney of Northanger Abbey are not entirely pleased to be sending their eligible young daughter Juliet out into the world again: the last house party she attended, at the home of the Knightleys, involved a murder—which Juliet helped solve. Particularly concerning is that she intends to visit her new friend Marianne Brandon, who's returned home toĚýDevonshire shrouded in fresh scandal—made more potent by the news that her former suitor, the rakish Mr. Willoughby, intends to take up residence at his local estate with his new bride.

Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley are thrilled that their eldest son, Jonathan—who, like his father, has not always been the most socially adept—has been invited to stay with his former schoolmate, John Willoughby. Jonathan himself is decidedly less taken with the notion of having to spend extended time under the roof of his old bully, but that all changes when he finds himself reunited with his fellow amateur sleuth, the radiant Miss Tilney. And when shortly thereafter, Willoughby's new wife—whom he married for her fortune—dies horribly at the party meant to welcome her to town.

With rumors flying and Marianne—known to be both unstable and previously jilted by the dead woman's newly made widower—under increased suspicion, Jonathan and Juliet must team up once more to uncover the murderer. But as they collect clues and close in on suspects, eerie incidents suggest that the killer may strike again, and that the pair are in far graver danger than they or their families could imagine.

A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.]]> 385 Claudia Gray 0593313836 Lisa 0 3.86 2023 The Late Mrs. Willoughby (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney, #2)
author: Claudia Gray
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days]]> 205804545 A blend of mindset science, original research, and cultural insights for cultivating a positive “wintertime mindset,� to vanquish winter blues and find joy and comfort in dark times year-round.

Do you dread the end of Daylight Saving Time and grouch about the long, chilly season of gray skies and ice? Do you find yourself in a slump every January and February? What if there were a way to rethink this time of year? Psychologist and winter expert Kari Leibowitz’s galvanizing How to Winter uses mindset science to help readers embrace winter as a season to be enjoyed, not endured—and in turn, learn powerful lessons that can impact our mental wellbeing throughout the year.

Kari Leibowitz moved above the Arctic Circle � where the sun doesn’t rise for two months each winter –expecting to research the season’s negative effects on mental health, only to find that inhabitants actually looked forward to it with delight and enthusiasm. Leibowitz has since travelled to places on earth with some of the coldest, darkest, longest and most intense winters, and discovered the power of “wintertime mindset”� viewing the season as full of opportunity and wonder. Impactful strategies for cultivating this wintertime mindset can teach us not just about braving the gray, cold months of the year, but also the darker and more difficult seasons of life.

� In Tromsø, Norway, people live in rhythm with nature, adapting to the months-long Polar Night by honoring seasonal fluctuations in energy, slowing down, and resting more.
� On the Isle of Lewis, off the coast of Scotland, communal gatherings around roaring fires embrace darkness and provide connection during long nights.
� In Yamagata, Japan, families sink into steaming onsen baths, banishing the chill of winter with healthful soaks that improve sleep and reduce risk of heart attack.

Inspired by cutting-edge psychological and behavioral science research as well as cultures worldwide that find warmth and joy in winter’s extremes, How to Winter provides readers with concrete tools for making winter wonderful wherever they live and harnessing the power of small mindset changes with big impact to help readers embrace every season of life.]]> 304 Kari Leibowitz 0593653750 Lisa 0 4.02 2024 How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days
author: Kari Leibowitz
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Murder of Mr. Wickham (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney, #1)]]> 59089898 A summer house party turns into a whodunit when Mr. Wickham, one of literature’s most notorious villains, meets a sudden and suspicious end in this mystery featuring Jane Austen’s leading literary characters.

The happily married Mr. Knightley and Emma are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances—characters beloved by Jane Austen fans. Definitely not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him an even broader array of enemies. As tempers flare and secrets are revealed, it’s clear that everyone would be happier if Mr. Wickham got his comeuppance. Yet they’re all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered—except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst.

Nearly everyone at the house party is a suspect, so it falls to the party’s two youngest guests to solve the mystery: Juliet Tilney, the smart and resourceful daughter of Catherine and Henry, eager for adventure beyond Northanger Abbey; and Jonathan Darcy, the Darcys� eldest son, whose adherence to propriety makes his father seem almost relaxed. The unlikely pair must put aside their own poor first impressions and uncover the guilty party—before an innocent person is sentenced to hang.]]> 386 Claudia Gray 059331381X Lisa 3 3.65 2022 The Murder of Mr. Wickham (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney, #1)
author: Claudia Gray
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year]]> 199531989 Knives Out gets a rom-com twist in this rivals-to-lovers Christmas romance-mystery from New York Times bestselling author Ally Carter

The bridge is out. The phones are down. And the most famous mystery writer in the world just disappeared out of a locked room three days before Christmas.

Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt:
She’s the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery.
He’s Mr. Big-Time Thriller Guy.

She hates his guts.

He thinks her name is Marcie (no matter how many times she’s told him otherwise.)

But when they both accept a cryptic invitation to attend a Christmas house party at the English estate of a reclusive fan, neither is expecting their host to be the most powerful author in the world: Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death herself.

That night, the weather turns, and the next morning Eleanor is gone.

She vanished from a locked room, and Maggie has to wonder: Is Eleanor in danger? Or is it all some kind of test? Is Ethan the competition? Or is he the only person in that snowbound mansion she can trust?

As the snow gets deeper and the stakes get higher, every clue will bring Maggie and Ethan closer to the truth—and each other. Because, this Christmas, these two rivals are going to have to become allies (and maybe more) if they have any hope of saving Eleanor.

Assuming they don’t kill each other first.]]> 293 Ally Carter 0063276682 Lisa 0 to-read 3.92 2024 The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
author: Ally Carter
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Last Witch in Edinburgh 202470530 This lush, atmospheric novel blends witchcraft, queer love, a vibrant Edinburgh setting, and Scottish folklore for a propulsive and emotional story exploring what it means to resist the patriarchy and find your voice.

In an alternate Edinburgh of 1824, every woman lives in fear that she will be the next one hanged for witchcraft. All it takes is invoking the anger, or the desire, of the wrong person. Nellie Duncan, beautiful and unwed, keeps to herself until she encounters the Rae Women’s Apothecary. There, fiery Jean Rae and the other women provide cures and teach others that they too can aid the winter deity, the Cailleach, embracing her characteristic independence, agency, and craft, in turn becoming witches themselves.

Nellie finds a place and a purpose at the shop, and a blossoming romance with Jean, as she learns about nature-based craft and a witch’s ability to return to life after death. But the Cailleach has an ancient enemy intent on stripping the power of the deity and all her witches, leaving a wake of patriarchal violence and destruction.

When heart-breaking disaster strikes, Nellie flees and spends the next two centuries hiding from the world—until love gives her the courage and the motivation to come back. Nellie’s past is waiting for her there, and hanging witches is no longer the only means of oppression. But this time, Nellie refuses to run—either from her foes, or from her resolve to awaken others to the unimaginable power that can come with fighting the patriarchy in its many forms—and finding one’s own magical inner-strength.]]> 370 Marielle Thompson 1496742648 Lisa 0 dnf 3.51 2024 The Last Witch in Edinburgh
author: Marielle Thompson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Ruse of Shadows (Lady Sherlock, #8)]]> 199212560 Charlotte Holmes is accustomed to solving crimes, not being accused of them, but she finds herself in a dreadfully precarious position as the bestselling Lady Sherlock series continues.

Charlotte’s success on the RMS Provence has afforded her a certain measure of time and assurance. Taking advantage of that, she has been busy, plotting to prise the man her sister loves from Moriarty’s iron grip.

Disruption, however, comes from an unexpected quarter. Lord Bancroft Ashburton, disgraced and imprisoned as a result of Charlotte’s prior investigations, nevertheless manages to press Charlotte into service: Underwood, his most loyal henchman, is missing and Lord Bancroft wants Charlotte to find Underwood, dead or alive.

But then Lord Bancroft himself turns up dead and Charlotte, more than anyone else, meets the trifecta criteria of motive, means, and opportunity. Never mind rescuing anyone else, with the law breathing down her neck, can Charlotte save herself from prosecution for murder?]]> 335 Sherry Thomas 0593640438 Lisa 3 4.05 2024 A Ruse of Shadows (Lady Sherlock, #8)
author: Sherry Thomas
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis]]> 8969113 315 Kingsley Amis 1608193160 Lisa 3 2012, food-and-drink 3.77 1984 Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis
author: Kingsley Amis
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at: 2012/04/14
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: 2012, food-and-drink
review:

]]> The Marriage Masquerade 58504931 240 Toni Logan 1635559154 Lisa 1 3.77 The Marriage Masquerade
author: Toni Logan
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 1
read at: 2023/04/29
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hellion's Waltz (Feminine Pursuits, #3)]]> 53286982
Sophie Roseingrave hates nothing more than a swindler. After her family lost their piano shop to a con man in London, they’re trying to start fresh in a new town. Her father is convinced Carrisford is an upright and honest place, but Sophie is not so sure. She has grave suspicions about silk-weaver Madeline Crewe, whose stunning beauty doesn’t hide the fact that she’s up to something.

All Maddie Crewe needs is one big score, one grand heist to properly fund the weavers� union forever. She has found her mark in Mr. Giles, a greedy draper, and the entire association of weavers and tailors and clothing merchants has agreed to help her. The very last thing she needs is a small but determined piano-teacher and composer sticking her nose in other people’s business. If Sophie won’t be put off, the only thing to do is to seduce her to the cause.

Will Sophie’s scruples force her to confess the plot before Maddie gets her money? Or will Maddie lose her nerve along with her heart?]]> 240 Olivia Waite 0062931814 Lisa 3 3.71 2021 The Hellion's Waltz (Feminine Pursuits, #3)
author: Olivia Waite
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2021/08/14
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: lgbt, romance, romance-historical, wlw
review:

]]> Emma and the City 40975698 ~~~
It-girl and blogger Emma Worth appears to have it all: beauty, brains, connections and a fabulous Manhattan apartment. Emma makes it her business to tell others what to wear and who to date because she knows best. Obviously.
Ěý
Despite her designer outfits and glitzy New York lifestyle, something's missing .Ěý.Ěý. If she only knew what it was. That is, until a hot A-lister swoops into her life and sends Emma's pulse racing and fills her head with red-carpet fantasies.
Ěý
Emma's neighbor Adam Knightley is disapproving, telling her she needs to fix her priorities and stop chasing celebrity pipe dreams. The man would look hot on a red carpet himself if only he’d stop frowning for more than five seconds.
Ěý
When Emma’s matchmaking backfires and her meddling causes mischief, what's a girl to do? Try to lie her way out of it, of course. Anyway, who cares, right? Because Emma's finally getting the kind of attention she deserves. Except in her fantasies, things looked a lot different. And it didn’t feel this heartrendingly painful .Ěý.Ěý.

Love her or hate her, Emma is back––with a sexy makeover, 21st-century problems, and another chance to redeem herself in this grippingly entertaining, thoroughly original retelling of the Jane Austen classic.]]> 330 Amy Hilliges 3952501603 Lisa 0 dnf 3.39 2018 Emma and the City
author: Amy Hilliges
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> Our Hideous Progeny 61067597 It is not the monster you must fear, but the monster it makes of men. . .

For readers of Circe or Ariadne, a brilliant literary revisiting of Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein with a fresh, queer, provocative twist.

Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein. She knows her great uncle disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Arctic, but she doesn't know why or how...

The 1850s is a time of discovery, and London is ablaze with the latest scientific theories and debates, especially when a spectacular new exhibition of dinosaur sculptures opens at the Crystal Palace. Mary, with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, is keen to make her name in this world of science alongside her geologist husband Henry, but without wealth and connections, their options are limited.

But when Mary discovers some old family papers that allude to the shocking truth behind her great-uncle's past, she thinks she may have found the key to securing their future... Their quest takes them to the wilds of Scotland, to Henry's intriguing but reclusive sister Maisie, and to a deadly chase with a rival who is out to steal their secret.

Our Hideous Progeny is a sumptuous tale of ambition and obsession, of forbidden love and sabotage; an adventure story that blends classic, immersive storytelling with contemporary themes.]]> 400 C.E. McGill 0857529048 Lisa 4 3.92 2023 Our Hideous Progeny
author: C.E. McGill
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/25
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Thirst 59554459 Across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, mortality, and a haunting yearning that will not let them rest. A breakout, genre-blurring novel from one of the most exciting new voices of Latin America’s feminist Gothic.

It is the twilight of Europe’s bloody bacchanals, of murder and feasting without end. In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires and, for the second time in her life, watches as villages transform into a cosmopolitan city, one that will soon be ravaged by yellow fever. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and be discreet.

In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother's terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women—and they cross a threshold from which there’s no turning back.

With echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and written in the vein of feminist Gothic writers like Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Carmen Maria Machado, Thirst plays with the boundaries of genre while exploring the limits of female agency, the consuming power of desire, and the fragile vitality of even the most immortal of creatures.]]> 304 Marina Yuszczuk 0593472071 Lisa 3 3.44 2020 Thirst
author: Marina Yuszczuk
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Passing Strange 31372178 Inspired by the pulps, film noir, and screwball comedy, Passing Strange is a story as unusual and complex as San Francisco itself from World Fantasy Award winning author Ellen Klages, and a finalist for the 2017 Nebula Award for Best NovellaSan Francisco in 1940 is a haven for the unconventional. Tourists flock to the cities within the the Magic City of the World’s Fair on an island created of artifice and illusion; the forbidden city of Chinatown, a separate, alien world of exotic food and nightclubs that offer “authentic� experiences, straight from the pages of the pulps; and the twilight world of forbidden love, where outcasts from conventional society can meet.Six women find their lives as tangled with each other’s as they are with the city they call home. They discover love and danger on the borders where magic, science, and art intersect.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 215 Ellen Klages 0765389517 Lisa 3 2015, fantasy, lgbt, wlw 3.89 2017 Passing Strange
author: Ellen Klages
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2018/10/23
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: 2015, fantasy, lgbt, wlw
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships]]> 61327510
From the bestselling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace , a road map for understanding and moving past family struggles—and living your life, your way.

Every family has a story. For some of us, our family of origin is a solid foundation that feeds our confidence and helps us navigate life’s challenges. For others, it’s a source of pain, hurt, and conflict that can feel like a lifelong burden. In this empowering guide, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers clear advice for identifying dysfunctional family patterns and choosing the best path to breaking the cycle and moving forward.
Covering topics ranging from the trauma of emotional neglect, to the legacy of addicted or absent parents, to mental health struggles in siblings and other relatives, and more, this clear and compassionate guide will help you take control of your own life—and honor the person you truly are.]]> 288 Nedra Glover Tawwab 0593539273 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.27 2023 Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships
author: Nedra Glover Tawwab
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> If I Loved You Less 38965901
Sunny, striking, and satisfied with her life in paradise, Theodosia Sullivan sees no need for marriage. She does, however, relish serving as matchmaker for everyone who crosses her path. As the manager of her family’s surf shop in Hanalei Bay, that includes locals and tourists alike.

One person she won’t be playing Cupid for is the equally happy bachelorette down the street. Baker Kini ʻŌpūnui has been the owner of Queen’s Sweet Shop since her parents passed away and her younger brother married Theo’s older sister and moved to Oahu. Kini’s ready smile, haupia shortbread, and lilikoi malasadas are staples of Hanalei’s main street.

However, Theo’s matchmaking machinations and social scheming soon become less charming—even hazardous—to everyone involved. And when she fails to heed Kini’s warnings about her meddling, she may be more successful than she ever intended. Theo has to face the prospect of Kini ending up with someone else, just as she realizes she’s loved Kini all along.]]> 222 Tamsen Parker 1942427182 Lisa 0 dnf 3.15 2018 If I Loved You Less
author: Tamsen Parker
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Masquerades of Spring (Rivers of London #9.2)]]> 202969855
Meet Augustus Berrycloth-Young - fop, flaneur, and Englishman abroad - as he chronicles the Jazz Age from his perch atop the city that never sleeps.

That is, until his old friend Thomas Nightingale arrives, pursuing a rather mysterious affair concerning an old saxophone - which will take Gussie from his warm bed, to the cold shores of Long Island, and down to the jazz clubs where music, magic, and madness haunt the shadows...]]> 165 Ben Aaronovitch 147322442X Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.16 2024 The Masquerades of Spring (Rivers of London #9.2)
author: Ben Aaronovitch
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Shore Thing (Duke Undone, #4)]]> 199173002 A delightful queer Victorian love story, featuring a boldly brash trans hero, the beguiling botanist who captures his heart, and a buoyant bicycle race by the British seaside - from the author of The Duke Undone.

Former painter and unreformed rake Kit Griffith is forging a new life in Cornwall, choosing freedom over an identity that didn't fit. He knew that leaving his Sisterhood of women artists might mean forfeiting artistic community forever. He didn't realize he would lose his ability to paint altogether. Luckily, he has other talents. Why not devote himself to selling bicycles and trysting with the holidaymakers?

Enter Muriel Pendrake, the feisty New-York-bound botanist who has come to St. Ives to commission Kit for illustrations of British seaweeds. Kit shouldn't accept Muriel's offer, but he must enlist her help to prove to an all-male cycling club that women can ride as well as men. And she won't agree unless he gives her what she wants. Maybe that's exactly the challenge he needs.

As Kit and Muriel spend their days cycling together, their desire begins to burn with the heat of the summer sun. But are they pedaling toward something impossible? The past is bound to catch up to them, and at the season's end, their paths will diverge. With only their hearts as guides, Kit and Muriel must decide if they're willing to race into the unknown for the adventure of a lifetime.]]> 368 Joanna Lowell 0593549724 Lisa 0 dnf 4.07 2024 A Shore Thing (Duke Undone, #4)
author: Joanna Lowell
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Best American Food Writing 2022]]> 60141406 A collection of the year's top food writing, selected by guest editor Sohla El-Waylly and series editor Silvia Killingsworth.

Culinary creator, writer and community advocate, Sohla El-Waylly selects the best twenty articles published in 2021 that celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country.]]> 246 Sohla El-Waylly 0063254425 Lisa 4 food-and-drink, 2023 3.95 2022 The Best American Food Writing 2022
author: Sohla El-Waylly
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/29
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves: food-and-drink, 2023
review:

]]> The Signature of All Things 17465453 A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed.

In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma's research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction � into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist � but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life.

Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe—from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who � born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution � bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert's wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.]]> 512 Elizabeth Gilbert 0670024856 Lisa 2 3.84 2013 The Signature of All Things
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Netherford Hall (Love in Netherford, #1)]]> 213388309 Pride and Prejudice and Witches

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

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

As tenants, rivals, suitors and enemies start to circle Netherford, and dark secrets about both women’s pasts come to light, Edith and Poppy must confront what it means to fight for love and family, and to be their authentic selves.]]> 350 Natania Barron 1837863350 Lisa 0 to-read 3.65 2024 Netherford Hall (Love in Netherford, #1)
author: Natania Barron
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Playground 205478762 The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.]]> 381 Richard Powers 1324086033 Lisa 0 to-read 4.16 2024 Playground
author: Richard Powers
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine]]> 205478768
Music is one of humanity’s oldest medicines. From the Far East to the Ottoman Empire, Europe to Africa and the pre-colonial Americas, many cultures have developed their own rich traditions for using sound and rhythm to ease suffering, promote healing, and calm the mind.

In his latest work, neuroscientist and New York Times best-selling author Daniel J. Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music) explores the curative powers of music, showing us how and why it is one of the most potent therapies today. He brings together, for the first time, the results of numerous studies on music and the brain, demonstrating how music can contribute to the treatment of a host of ailments, from neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, to cognitive injury, depression, and pain.

Levitin is not your typical scientist—he is also an award-winning musician and composer, and through lively interviews with some of today’s most celebrated musicians, from Sting to Kent Nagano and Mari Kodama, he shares their observations as to why music might be an effective therapy, in addition to plumbing scientific case studies, music theory, and music history. The result is a work of dazzling ideas, cutting-edge research, and jubilant celebration. I Heard There Was a Secret Chord highlights the critical role music has played in human biology, illuminating the neuroscience of music and its profound benefits for those both young and old.]]> 416 Daniel J. Levitin 1324036184 Lisa 0 to-read 3.86 2024 I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
author: Daniel J. Levitin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest]]> 103516674
Rest Easy invites you to experience the life-changing power of resting your mind, body, and spirit. In these pages, rest expert Ximena Vengoechea explores the power of rest and guides you through dozens of proven methods for relaxation and renewal, including movement, sound, visualizations, journaling, time in nature, meditative activities, and so much more.

PROVEN ĚýThe techniques and practices presented in these pages are proven to improve rest, reduce stress, and boost joy. The author distills her research to make a range of rest techniques accessible to everyone, allowing readers to experiment with a wide variety of practices and find what best fits their lifestyle and needs.Ěý

FRESH APPROACH TO HEALTH AND ĚýThrough a charming combination of beautiful artwork, compelling storytelling, engaging sidebars, and easy-to-follow takeaways, this book offers a distinctive approach to wellness and well-being. Warm and inviting, Rest EasyĚý is a simple and authentic way to connect and be present for someone in need of gentle encouragement and uplifting support.

POSITIVE & This book presents contemporary methods for well-being in a simple, easy-to-engage format. Readers will discover information on practices for mindfulness, breathwork, yoga, and more.

MEANINGFUL SELF-CARE The beautifully designed hardcover package is an infinitely giftable book that can be given to friends, wellness enthusiasts, and people experiencing burnout. The content is general enough to speak to a range of experiences, and the colorful art and empathetic tone make it a wonderful option for those looking for thoughtful, personal gifts for someone who needs a pick-me-up.

Perfect ]]> 224 Ximena Vengoechea 1797219472 Lisa 0 3.63 Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest
author: Ximena Vengoechea
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.63
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hundred Years� War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917�2017]]> 41812831
In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.� Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process.

Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.]]> 336 Rashid Khalidi 1627798552 Lisa 0 to-read 4.50 2020 The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917–2017
author: Rashid Khalidi
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Little Life 25852828 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship� (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST � MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST � WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE �

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.]]> 816 Hanya Yanagihara 0804172706 Lisa 4 4.36 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/01
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: 2016, fiction, literary-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Homemade-ish: Recipes and Cooking Tips That Keep It Real]]> 204716782 224 Lauren McDuffie 1423665678 Lisa 0 to-read 3.38 Homemade-ish: Recipes and Cooking Tips That Keep It Real
author: Lauren McDuffie
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.38
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?]]> 18594409 #1 New York Times Bestseller

2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet"—with predictable results—the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed.

While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies—an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.

An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.]]> 228 Roz Chast 1608198065 Lisa 0 to-read 4.14 2014 Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
author: Roz Chast
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mortal Follies (The Mortal Follies, #1)]]> 62984592
It is the year 1814 and life for a young lady of good breeding has many difficulties. There are balls to attend, fashions to follow, marriages to consider and, of course, the tiny complication of existing in a world swarming with fairy spirits, interfering deities, and actual straight-up sorcerers.

Miss Maelys Mitchelmore finds her entry into high society hindered by an irritating curse. It begins innocuously enough with her dress slowly unmaking itself over the course of an evening at a high-profile ball, a scandal she narrowly manages to escape.

However, as the curse progresses to more fatal proportions, Miss Mitchelmore must seek out aid, even if it means mixing with undesirable company. And there are few less desirable than Lady Georgianna Landrake—a brooding, alluring young woman sardonically nicknamed “the Duke of Annadale”—who may or may not have murdered her own father and brothers to inherit their fortune. If one is to believe the gossip, she might be some kind of malign enchantress. Then again, a malign enchantress might be exactly what Miss Mitchelmore needs.

With the Duke’s help, Miss Mitchelmore delves into a world of angry gods and vindictive magic, keen to unmask the perpetrator of these otherworldly attacks. But Miss Mitchelmore’s reputation is not the only thing at risk in spending time with her new ally. For the rumoured witch has her own secrets that may prove dangerous to Miss Mitchelmore’s heart—not to mention her life.]]> 416 Alexis Hall 0593497562 Lisa 0 dnf 3.39 2023 Mortal Follies (The Mortal Follies, #1)
author: Alexis Hall
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> Overbite (Insatiable, #2) 9462815
Sure, her ex-boyfriend was Lucien Antonescu, son of Dracula, the prince of darkness. But that was before he (and their relationship) went up in flames. Now Meena's sworn off vampires for good ... at least until she can prove her theory that just because they've lost their souls doesn't mean demons have lost the ability to love.

Meena knows convincing her co-workers � including her partner, über-demon-hunter Alaric Wulf � that vampires can be redeemed won't be easy ... especially when a deadly new threat seems to be endangering not just the lives of the Palatine, but Meena's friends and family as well.

But Meena isn't the Palatine's only hope. Father Henrique � aka Padre Caliente � New York City's youngest, most charming priest, has also been assigned to the case.

So why doesn't Meena � or Alaric � trust him?

As she begins unraveling the truth, Meena finds her loyalties tested, her true feelings laid bare ... and temptations she never even imagined existed, but finds impossible to resist.

This time, Meena may finally have bitten off more than she can chew.]]> 275 Meg Cabot 0061735108 Lisa 3 2013, paranormal 3.35 2011 Overbite (Insatiable, #2)
author: Meg Cabot
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: 2013, paranormal
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Warlord Wants Forever (Immortals After Dark, #0.5)]]> 6388558
She eludes him for five years, but he has finally chased her to ground and stolen the jewel which commands her, giving him absolute power over her. While he possesses it, he can make her do anything, and he plans to in order for her to experience firsthand the agonizing, unending lust she'd purposely subjected him to for half a decade. Yet when Wroth realizes he wants more from her and frees her, will she come.

Note: First published in the 2006 anthology, Playing Easy to Get.]]> 163 Kresley Cole Lisa 0 maybe-someday 4.04 2006 The Warlord Wants Forever (Immortals After Dark, #0.5)
author: Kresley Cole
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: maybe-someday
review:

]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Lisa 0 classics 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/02
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: classics
review:

]]> The Watsons 20703291 61 Jane Austen 1627552316 Lisa 3 2020, audiobook, classics 3.47 1805 The Watsons
author: Jane Austen
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1805
rating: 3
read at: 2020/08/06
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: 2020, audiobook, classics
review:

]]> The Lost Daughter 1058564
But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family.]]> 140 Elena Ferrante 1933372427 Lisa 3 3.70 2006 The Lost Daughter
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/08
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America]]> 27311802
Johnson’s War on Poverty policies sought to foster equality and economic opportunity. But these initiatives were also rooted in widely shared assumptions about African Americans� role in urban disorder, which prompted Johnson to call for a simultaneous War on Crime. The 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act empowered the national government to take a direct role in militarizing local police. Federal anticrime funding soon incentivized social service providers to ally with police departments, courts, and prisons. Under Richard Nixon and his successors, welfare programs fell by the wayside while investment in policing and punishment expanded. Anticipating future crime, policymakers urged states to build new prisons and introduced law enforcement measures into urban schools and public housing, turning neighborhoods into targets of police surveillance.

By the 1980s, crime control and incarceration dominated national responses to poverty and inequality. The initiatives of that decade were less a sharp departure than the full realization of the punitive transformation of urban policy implemented by Republicans and Democrats alike since the 1960s.]]> 464 Elizabeth Hinton 0674737237 Lisa 0 to-read 4.16 2016 From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America
author: Elizabeth Hinton
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rivers of London: Body Work, #1]]> 23387877

Peter Grant is one of only two members of a very special branch of London's Metropolitan Police. He is, in fact, pretty much a wizard and it's his job to investigate those shadowy crimes that involve urban vampires, weird folk in the underground and, in this case, why cars are suddenly taking on lives of their own and killing innocent folk!

Written by Doctor Who writer Ben Aaronovitch (Remembrance of the Daleks) and set in the world of his own bestselling novels, with Doctor Who showrunner Andrew Cartmel!

Rivers of London novels have sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide to date!

In continuity with the novels � not an adaptation, this is an all-new story set between books 4 and 5!

]]> Ben Aaronovitch Lisa 3 3.90 2016 Rivers of London: Body Work, #1
author: Ben Aaronovitch
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence (Lucky Lovers of London, #3)]]> 197867171
London, 1885

A lesbian in a lavender marriage, Jo Smith cuts a dashing figure in pin-striped trousers, working in her bookshop and keeping polite company. But her hard-earned stability is about to be upended thanks to her husband’s pregnant paramour, who needs medical attention that no reputable doctor will provide.

Enter Dr. Emily Clarke, a tantalizing bluestocking working at a quaint village hospital outside the city. Emily has reservations about getting mixed up in Jo’s scandalous arrangement, but her flustered, heart-racing response to Jo has her agreeing to help despite herself.

There’s a world of difference between Jo’s community of underground clubs and sapphic societies and Emily’s respectable suburbs. Perhaps it’s a gap that even fervent desire can’t bridge.

But for those bold enough to take the risk, who knows what delicious adventures might be in store �

Lucky Lovers of London

Book 1: The Gentleman's Book of Vices
Book 2: A Rulebook for Restless Rogues
Book 3: A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence]]> 302 Jess Everlee 0369722558 Lisa 3 3.91 2024 A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence (Lucky Lovers of London, #3)
author: Jess Everlee
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/07/30
shelves:
review:

]]> We Could Be Rats 214152402 A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.]]> 256 Emily R. Austin 1668058146 Lisa 0 to-read 4.08 2025 We Could Be Rats
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lies and Weddings 197144545 A forbidden affair erupts dramatically amid a decadent Hawaiian wedding in this hilarious, sophisticated, and thrillingly plotted story of love, money, murder, sex—and the lies we tell about them all.
Ěý
Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel, has a problem: his family fortune, the legendary Gresham Trust, has been depleted by decades of profligate spending. While magazine covers and Instagram stories display impeccably designed manors and shiny new yachts, the secret reality holds nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus’s scheming mother, is for Rufus to seduce a woman with money, thereby securing the family's precarious financial future.

Should he marry Solène de Courcy, a French hotel heiress with honey-blond tresses and a royal bloodline? Should he pursue Martha Dung, the tattooed venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or should he follow his heart, betray his family, squander his legacy, and finally confess his love to the literal girl next door, the humble daughter of a doctor, Eden Tong?

When the Gresham family descends on the Big Island of Hawaii to host a veritable who's who of sultans, barons, and oligarchs for the wedding of the decade, Rufus must merely flex his famous abs to bewitch the heiress of his choice. But instead a hot mic exposes a secret tryst, a volcanic eruption burns through the nuptials, and the Gresham family's plans—and their reputation—go up in flames.

Can the once-great earldom rise from the ashes? Or will a secret tragedy, hidden for two decades, reveal a shocking twist? Spanning the black sand beaches of Hawaii, the red city of Marrakech, the Los Angeles bachelor pad of a billionaire playboy, and the inner sanctum of England’s oldest family estate, Lies and Weddings reveals an enthralling family saga that is as scandalous and satirical as it is full of heart.]]> 437 Kevin Kwan 0385546297 Lisa 3 3.69 2024 Lies and Weddings
author: Kevin Kwan
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kushiel's Justice (Imriel's Trilogy, #2)]]> 40217
When Dorelei and her unborn son are betrayed and he is badly wounded, Imriel finds himself torn between his vow to avenge his wife and child and his desire to seek solace in Sidonie’s arms. This is a battle Alba’s elders would see him loose, even if they must employ sinister forces to accomplish their ends. And treason and magic make murderous bedfellows.]]> 703 Jacqueline Carey 0446500038 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.27 2007 Kushiel's Justice (Imriel's Trilogy, #2)
author: Jacqueline Carey
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kushiel's Dart (Phèdre's Trilogy, #1)]]> 153008
Phèdre nó Delaunay is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her left eye. Sold into indentured servitude as a child, her bond is purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with very a special mission... and the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel's Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.

Phèdre is trained equally in the courtly arts and the talents of the bedchamber, but, above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Almost as talented a spy as she is courtesan, Phèdre stumbles upon a plot that threatens the very foundations of her homeland. Treachery sets her on her path; love and honor goad her further. And in the doing, it will take her to the edge of despair... and beyond. Hateful friend, loving enemy, beloved assassin; they can all wear the same glittering mask in this world, and Phèdre will get but one chance to save all that she holds dear.

Set in a world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess, this is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. Not since Dune has there been an epic on the scale of Kushiel's Dart-a massive tale about the violent death of an old age, and the birth of a new.]]> 1040 Jacqueline Carey 0330493744 Lisa 4 2015, fantasy, romance 4.01 2001 Kushiel's Dart (Phèdre's Trilogy, #1)
author: Jacqueline Carey
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2015/10/31
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves: 2015, fantasy, romance
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club]]> 196845474 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies� motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.]]> 432 Helen Simonson 1984801317 Lisa 0 to-read 3.84 2024 The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
author: Helen Simonson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/17
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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 Lisa 0 to-read 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/15
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]]> The Palace of Eros 199797883
When Eros, nonbinary deity of desire, sees Psyche, she cannot fulfill her promise to her mother Aphrodite to destroy the mortal young woman. Instead, Eros devises a plan to sweep Psyche away to an idyllic palace, hidden from the prying eyes of Aphrodite, Zeus, and the outside world. There, against the dire dictates of Olympus, Eros and Psyche fall in love. Each night, Eros visits Psyche under the cover of impenetrable darkness, where they both experience untold passion and love. But each morning, Eros flies away before light comes to break the spell of the palace that keeps them safe.

Before long, Psyche’s nights spent in pleasure turn to days filled with doubts, as she grapples with the cost of secrecy and the complexities of freedom and desire. Restless and spurred by her sisters to reveal Eros’s true nature, she breaks her trust and forces a reckoning that tests them both—and transforms the very heavens.

Told in bold and sparkling prose, The Palace of Eros transports us to a magical world imbued by divine forces as well as everyday realities, where palaces glitter with magic even as ordinary people fight for freedom in a society that fears the unknown.]]> 320 Carolina De Robertis 1668035235 Lisa 0 to-read 3.67 2024 The Palace of Eros
author: Carolina De Robertis
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/14
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]]> Clara Reads Proust 185826492 Clara is a hairdresser at Cindy Coiffure, a sleepy French salon with an identity crisis. Her relationship is fizzling out. Her tanoholic boss Madame Habib worships Jacques Chirac and talks longingly of her days in Paris. The highlight of the week was when the dishy technician came to repair the display cabinet. And now Madame LĂ©vy-Leroyer wants to go blonde. Clara can’t help but wonder if there’s more to life . . .Ěý Everything changes when a customer leaves behind the first volume of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. As Clara reads, she discovers a whole new world, leading her to strike up an unexpected friendship. And slowly but surely, she will work out who she wants to be.]]> 192 StĂ©phane Carlier 1913547736 Lisa 0 to-read 3.56 2022 Clara Reads Proust
author: Stéphane Carlier
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> Didion and Babitz 207293782 Joan Didion is revealed at last in this outrageously provocative and profoundly moving new work on the mutual attractions—and mutual antipathies—of Didion and Didion’s fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz. “Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?� —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972 Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in a closet in the back of an apartment full of wrack, ruin, and filth was a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. These boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. journals, photos, scrapbooks, manuscripts, letters. inside a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and was centered on a two-story house rented by Joan Didion and her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood. 7406 Franklin Avenue, a combination salon-hotbed-living end where writers and artists mixed with movie stars, rock n� rollers, drug trash. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American Joan Didion, cool and reserved behind her oversized sunglasses and storied marriage, a union as tortured as it was enduring. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the breaking and then the remaking—and thus the true making—of another great American Eve Babitz, goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, nude of Marcel Duchamp, consort of Jim Morrison (among many, many others), who burned so hot she finally almost burned herself alive. The two formed a complicated a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity; a friendship that was as rare as true love, as rare as true hate. Didion, in spite of her confessional style, her widespread fame, is so little known or understood. She’s remained opaque, elusive. Until now. With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz—Babitz’s brilliance of observation, Babitz’s incisive intelligence, and, most of all, Babitz’s diary-like letters—as the key to unlocking the mighty and mysterious Didion.]]> 352 Lili Anolik 1668065487 Lisa 0 to-read 3.21 2024 Didion and Babitz
author: Lili Anolik
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)]]> 210367505 TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance � award winners and international bestsellers all, the first the basis for a now-classic film � Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.

Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future � and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.

Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.

Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team � well trained but eccentric � has been assembled to find Area X’s “off switch� somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.

Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters, and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present, and future in terrifying, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0374616590 Lisa 0 to-read 3.61 2024 Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> Toward Eternity 199392376 What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer: The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells that not only cure those afflicted but leave them virtually immortal. At the same time, literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning "Beloved," in honor of his husband. When Dr. Beeko, who holds the patent to the nano-therapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.]]> 256 Anton Hur 0063344483 Lisa 0 to-read 3.82 2024 Toward Eternity
author: Anton Hur
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> Daughters of Chaos 195660425
In 1862, after a tragedy at home, 22-year-old Sylvie Swift parts ways with her twin brother to trace the origins of an enigmatic playscript that’s landed on their doorstep. This text leads her to Nashville, the Union Army’s western headquarters, bustling with soldiers, saboteurs, powerful men––and powerful women.

Sylvie works on a translation of the playscript by day, but at night, under the direction of the Army’s Secret Service Chief, she acts as a Union spy. Both endeavors acquaint her with a sisterhood whose members--including Hannah, a fiery revolutionary to whom Sylvie is increasingly drawn--possess uncanny, and potentially monstrous, powers. Sylvie soon becomes entangled in the Cult of Chaos, a mystical feminist society steadfast in its ancient mission to confront and eradicate the violence of men.

Inspired by both Aristophanes� LYSISTRATA and the true story of Nashville’s attempt to exile its prostitutes during the Civil War, DAUGHTERS OF CHAOS weaves together "found" texts, fabulism, and queer themes to question familiar notions of history and family, warfare and power.]]> 288 Jen Fawkes 1419772473 Lisa 0 to-read 3.46 2024 Daughters of Chaos
author: Jen Fawkes
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/09
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]]> Beautyland 127282939 From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 Lisa 0 to-read 4.08 2024 Beautyland
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Clergyman's Wife: A Pride & Prejudice Novel]]> 44286204 For everyone who loved Pride and Prejudice—and legions of historical fiction lovers—an inspired debut novel set in Austen’s world.

Charlotte Collins, nee Lucas, is the respectable wife of Hunsford’s vicar, and sees to her duties by rote: keeping house, caring for their adorable daughter, visiting parishioners, and patiently tolerating the lectures of her awkward husband and his condescending patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Intelligent, pragmatic, and anxious to escape the shame of spinsterhood, Charlotte chose this life, an inevitable one so socially acceptable that its quietness threatens to overwhelm her. Then she makes the acquaintance of Mr. Travis, a local farmer and tenant of Lady Catherine�

In Mr. Travisâ€� company, Charlotte feels appreciated, heard, and seen. For the first time in her life,ĚýCharlotte begins to understand emotional intimacy and its effect on the heart—and how breakable that heart can be. With her sensible nature confronted, and her own future about to take a turn, Charlotte must now question the role of love and passion in a woman’s life, and whether they truly matter for a clergyman’s wife.]]> 280 Molly Greeley 0062942913 Lisa 3 3.67 2019 The Clergyman's Wife: A Pride & Prejudice Novel
author: Molly Greeley
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/06
date added: 2024/07/06
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]]> All This & More 199515825 The Cartographers and The Book of M comes an inventive new novel about a woman who wins the chance to rewrite every mistake she’s ever made� and how far she’ll go to find her elusive “happily ever after.�

But there’s a twist: the reader gets to decide what she does next to change her fate.

One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything—romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure—and is desperate for a do-over.

She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right this time.

But even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More’s promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off.�

Can Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?

Perfect for fans of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, bestselling author Peng Shepherd’s All This and More is an utterly original, startlingly poignant novel that puts the reader in the driver’s seat.]]> 469 Peng Shepherd 0063278979 Lisa 0 to-read 3.33 2024 All This & More
author: Peng Shepherd
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> Banal Nightmare 199927666 A ferocious novel by one of the boldest voices in American fiction and the author of The New Me, the “definitive work of millennial literature� (The New Yorker)

Margaret Anne (“Moddie�) Yance had just returned to her native land in the Midwestern town of X, to mingle with the friends of her youth, to get back in touch with her roots, and to recover from a stressful decade of living in the city in a small apartment with a man she now believed to be a megalomaniac or perhaps a covert narcissist.

So begins Halle Butler's sadistically precise and hilarious Banal Nightmare, which follows Moddie as she abruptly ends her long-term relationship and moves back to her Midwestern hometown, throwing herself at the mercy of her old friends as they, all suddenly tipping toward middle age, go to parties, size each other up, obsess over past slights, and dream of wild triumphs and elaborate revenge fantasies. When her friend Pam invites a mysterious East Coast artist to take up a winter residency at the local university, Moddie has no choice but to confront the demons of her past and grapple with the reality of what her life has become. As the day of reckoning approaches, friends will become enemies, enemies will become mortal enemies, and old loyalties will be tested to their extreme.

Banal Nightmare is filled with complicated characters who will dazzle you in their rendering just as often as they will infuriate you with their decisions. Halle Butler singularly captures the volatile, angry, aggrieved, surreal and entirely disorienting atmosphere of the modern era.]]> 336 Halle Butler 0593730356 Lisa 0 to-read 3.44 2024 Banal Nightmare
author: Halle Butler
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/28
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]]> <![CDATA[A Tale of Two Titties: A Writer's Guide to Conquering the Most Sexist Tropes in Literary History]]> 199625201 288 Meg Vondriska 1728295092 Lisa 0 to-read 3.74 2024 A Tale of Two Titties: A Writer's Guide to Conquering the Most Sexist Tropes in Literary History
author: Meg Vondriska
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> Just as You Are 59774955 The only thing worse for Liz than hating her unpleasant, standoffish new boss? Being incurably attracted to her.

Liz Baker and her three roommates work at The Nether Fields, a queer magazine in New York that’s on the verge of shutting down—until it’s bought at the last minute by two wealthy lesbians. Even though Liz is eager to leave listicles behind for more meaningful writing, she knows that she’s lucky to still have a paycheck. But it’s hard to feel grateful with minority investor Daria Fitzgerald slashing budgets, cancelling bagel Fridays, and password protecting the color printer to prevent “frivolous use.� When Liz overhears Daria scoffing at her articles, she knows that it’s only a matter of her time before her impulsive mouth tells Daria off and gets herself fired.

But as Liz and Daria get thrown together more and more, Liz starts to see a softer side to Daria—she’s funny, surprisingly helpful, and actually seems to like that Liz’s gender presentation varies between butch and femme. Even as the evidence that Liz can’t trust Daria piles up, it starts getting harder and harder to keep hating Daria—and harder and harder to resist her.

This page-turning, sexy, and delightfully funny rom-com celebrates queer culture, chosen family, coming of age, and falling in love against your better judgment.]]> 320 Camille Kellogg 0593594711 Lisa 0 dnf 3.94 2023 Just as You Are
author: Camille Kellogg
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Earl Who Isn't (Wedgeford Trials, #3)]]> 215511662
Then Lily Bei returns, armed with a printing press, her irrepressible spirit, and a sheaf of inconvenient documents that prove the very thing Andrew wants that he is actually the legitimate, first born son of the Earl of Arsell.

What’s Andrew to do, when the woman he’s always desired promises him everything he’s never wanted? Andrew’s track record of saying no to Lily is nonexistent. The only way he can avert impending disaster is by stealing the evidence� while trying desperately not to fall in love (again) with the woman he shouldn’t let into his life.]]> 329 Courtney Milan 1937248763 Lisa 0 to-read 4.16 2024 The Earl Who Isn't (Wedgeford Trials, #3)
author: Courtney Milan
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Remedial Magic (A Course in Magic, #1)]]> 154985479 The Magicians meets One Last Stop in this brand-new fantasy romance Remedial Magic, about an unassuming librarian who 1) has fallen in love with a powerful witch; 2) has discovered that she is a witch; and 3) must attend magical community college to learn how to save her new world from complete destruction by New York Times bestselling author Melissa Marr!

Ellie loves working in her local library in the small town of Ligonier. She loves baking scones and investigating the mysterious and captivating in her spare time. And there is nothing more mysterious and captivating than the intriguingly beautiful, too properly dressed woman sipping tea in her library who has appeared as if out of nowhere. The pull between them is undeniable, and Ellie is not sure that she wants to resist.

Prospero, a powerful witch from the magical land of Crenshaw, is often accused of being� ruthless in her goals and ambitions. But she is driven to save her dying homeland, and a prophecy tells her that Ellie is the key. Unbeknownst to Ellie, her powers have not yet awakened. But all of that is about to change.]]> 336 Melissa Marr 1250884136 Lisa 0 to-read 2.89 2024 Remedial Magic (A Course in Magic, #1)
author: Melissa Marr
name: Lisa
average rating: 2.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> The Familiar 133286777 From the New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent, and creator of the Grishaverse series comes a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.]]> 387 Leigh Bardugo 125088425X Lisa 0 to-read 3.74 2024 The Familiar
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/25
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]]> <![CDATA[You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets]]> 198493945
How many Mondays do you have left?Ěý

Does that question send you into a panic spiral, or are you convinced that, unlike everyone in the history of life on earth, you will somehow avoid the tragic end and live to tell the tale? Statistically, we get about 4,000 Mondays in our lifetime, so if you're halfway through your life, you might have roughly 2,000 Mondays to go. The good news is that you are in charge of how you spend those toiling at a job you hate, or creating a career you love; scrolling mindlessly for hours a day, or pursuing the hobbies and travel that light you up; dreading the end, or living a full life that allows you to greet the Grim Reaper with a smile.

Built around the principles of positive psychology, You Only Die Once is the jolt that will bring you back to life, no near-death experience required. Full of practical takeaways and research-backed content, this book will motivate readers to take action on the life theyĚý want Ěýto be living, acting like a defibrillator for the soul. Accompanied by author Jodi Wellman's charming illustrations, this bookĚýwon't lecture you about eating more kale or insist that the only path forward is to quit your job and move to Provence (although it's notĚý not Ěýsuggesting you do that either. The latter, that is. We'd never ask anyone to eat more kale.). Instead, it's a real-life guide to small changes that reawaken your passion and curiosity for life. Packed with inspiring stories, exercises, quizzes, quotes, and a step-by-step plan to awaken the liveliest version of you,Ěý You Only Die Once Ěýis the healthy dose of mortality you need to start living with urgency and meaning.Ěý]]> 352 Jodi Wellman 0316574279 Lisa 0 to-read 3.87 You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets
author: Jodi Wellman
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Please Stop Trying to Leave Me]]> 199460236 A debut novel about love, family, queerness, and losing your mind in the modern world marks the arrival of a truly original, haunting voice in fiction who will make you laugh, cry, and scream, all in the same breath.

In the midst of god sending her signs through Instagram and Spotify telling her to break up with her girlfriend, twenty-seven-year-old Norma meets a new therapist for one she really needs to write again. With only one story left to finish her collection, Norma is desperate for an should she leave her girlfriend in order to finish her manuscript?

When her new therapist diagnoses her with depersonalization/derealization disorder, Norma insists she doesn't have it’s just Oblivion, the thing that started happening to her when she was two and a half. Haunted by SSRI side effects, her girlfriend’s kindness, her father’s incessant calls, and a world that becomes less hazily fictional by the day, Norma has never felt crazier. And whenever she attempts to write The Last Story, Norma is faced with the reality and unrealities of her past, the society she lives in, and everything that she’s ever believed about life, writing, and love. Against the backdrop of climate change, racial injustice, Google ads, and the metaverse, Norma begins sharing other stories, hoping that they'll help her connect the dissociative dots once and for all. Maybe it's crazy not to be crazy in a place like this. And in the midst of it all is Norma's girlfriend, who may well be an answer in Norma's search for meaning.

Told alternately through Norma's barely fictional fiction and through her crackling stream of consciousness, Please Stop Trying To Leave Me is an honest, comedic, horrifying, and heart-wrenching story about existing in today’s world, challenging all we’ve been taught about the distance between fiction and reality, sanity and insanity, mental illness and healing.]]> 416 Alana Saab 0593686780 Lisa 0 to-read 3.99 2024 Please Stop Trying to Leave Me
author: Alana Saab
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> Mademoiselle Revolution 59575976
Sylvie de Rosiers,Ěýas the daughter of a rich planter and an enslavedĚýwoman, enjoys theĚýcomfortsĚýof a lady in 1791 Saint-Domingue society. But while she wasĚýborn toĚýprivilege, she was never fully accepted by island elites.ĚýAfter a violent rebellion begins the Haitian Revolution, Sylvie and her brother leave their family and old lives behind to flee unwittingly into another uprising—in austere and radical Paris. Sylvie quickly becomes enamored with the aims of the Revolution, as well as with the revolutionaries themselves—most notably Maximilien Robespierre and his mistress, CornĂ©lie Duplay.
Ěý
As a rising leader and abolitionist, Robespierre sees an opportunity to exploit Sylvie’s race and abandonment of her aristocratic roots as an example of his ideals, while the strong-willed CornĂ©lie offers SylvieĚýsafe harbor and guidance in free thought. Sylvie battles with her past complicity in a slave society and her future within this new world order as she finds herself increasingly torn between Robespierre's ideology and CornĂ©lie's love.
Ěý
When the Reign of Terror descends, Sylvie must decide whether to become an accomplice while a new empire rises on the bones of innocents…or risk losing her head.]]> 432 Zoe Sivak 0593336038 Lisa 0 to-read 3.48 2022 Mademoiselle Revolution
author: Zoe Sivak
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> Patience & Esther 53966531
Selfless, dutiful, and just a touch naive, she takes to both her place as a parlor maid and to her new roommate, the bookish and progressive lady’s maid, Esther. In another time, the two women would have kept one another’s company forever in their little attic bedroom, living out their days in the employ of a Lord. But it’s now the dawn of a new age. The expanding empire has brought with it not only plundered wealth, but worldliness and new ideas. Suffragists agitate in the street, idle-rich bohemians challenge sexual mores, and Patience and Esther slowly come to realize the world is wider and full of more adventure and opportunity than they ever imagined . . . so long as they find the will to seize it.

Sensual, sweet, and beautifully illustrated, PATIENCE & ESTHER is a steamy period romance and an inspirational erotic journey across the epic sweep of history, from the end of a gilded age to the start of an uncharted future.]]> 328 Sarah Winifred Searle 1945820705 Lisa 4 3.80 2021 Patience & Esther
author: Sarah Winifred Searle
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/06/23
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]]> Pride and Prejudice 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 Lisa 0 2007, 2009, 2011, classics 4.28 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: 2007, 2009, 2011, classics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples]]> 13144415 fifty—years. In short, they loved and supported each other every bit as much as any husband and wife.

In Outlaw Marriages, cultural historian Rodger Streitmatter reveals how some of these unions didn’t merely improve the quality of life for the two people involved but also enriched the American culture.

Contents:
Walt Whitman & Peter Doyle
Martha Carey Thomas & Mamie Swinn
Ned Warren & John Marshall
Mary Rozet Smith & Jane Addams
Bessie Marbury & Esie de Wolfe
J.C. Leyendecker & Charles Beach
Alice B. Toklas & Gertrude Stein
Janet Flanner & Solita Solano
Greta Garbo & Mercedes de Acosta
Aaron Copland & Victor Kraft
Frank Merlo & Tennessee Williams
James Baldwin & Lucien Happersberg
Robert Rauschenberg & Jasper Johns
Ismail Merchant & James Ivory
Frances Clayton & Audre Lorde]]> 224 Rodger Streitmatter 0807003344 Lisa 0 dnf 3.63 2012 Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples
author: Rodger Streitmatter
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Violet Moon (Pitch Mountain Pack #1)]]> 200236067
Seraphine's days are filled with fresh coffee, fruit tarts, and doing her best to be the Beta her pack needs. But when Sera discovers she has feelings for Parisa, her best friend and pack Alpha, she decides to bury those feelings for the sake of the pack. (After all, what's a little secret pining between friends?) Strong feelings can't stay buried forever, though, and when they cause her to act rashly, Sera risks losing everything, but could gain so much more.]]> 251 Mel E. Lemon Lisa 0 dnf 3.87 2023 Violet Moon (Pitch Mountain Pack #1)
author: Mel E. Lemon
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> After Sappho 61744884 A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

Finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the New Yorker, Washington Post, TIME, and The Guardian



“A work of stirring genius, a catalogue of intimacies and inventions, desires and dreams."

—Jacob Brogan, Washington Post



An exhilarating debut from a radiant new voice, After Sappho reimagines the intertwined lives of feminists at the turn of the twentieth century.


�The first thing we did was change our names. We were going to be Sappho,� so begins this intrepid debut novel, centuries after the Greek poet penned her lyric verse. Ignited by the same muse, a myriad of women break from their small, predetermined lives for seemingly disparate in 1892, Rina Faccio trades her needlepoint for a pen; in 1902, Romaine Brooks sails for Capri with nothing but her clotted paintbrushes; and in 1923, Virginia Woolf “I want to make life fuller and fuller.� Writing in cascading vignettes, Selby Wynn Schwartz spins an invigorating tale of women whose narratives converge and splinter as they forge queer identities and claim the right to their own lives. A luminous meditation on creativity, education, and identity, After Sappho announces a writer as ingenious as the trailblazers of our past.


“This book is Impish, irate, deep, courageous. . . . Brava!”—Lucy Ellmann, author of Ducks, Newburyport]]> 222 Selby Wynn Schwartz 1324092327 Lisa 4 3.42 2022 After Sappho
author: Selby Wynn Schwartz
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2024/06/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World]]> 62850110
"Wondrous . . . captivating.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of An Immense World

Christian Cooper is a self-described “Blerdâ€� (Black nerd), an avid comics fan and expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. WhileĚýin theĚýpark one morning in May 2020,ĚýCooperĚýwas engaged in theĚýbirdwatchingĚýritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years oldĚýwhen what might have beenĚýa routine encounter with a dog walkerĚýexplodedĚýage-old racialĚýtensions.ĚýCooper’sĚýviralĚývideo of the incident wouldĚýsend shock waves through the nation.

In Better Living Through Birding , Cooper tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous incident in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in America today. From sharpened senses that work just as well at a protest as in a park to what a bird like the Common Grackle can teach us about self-acceptance, Better Living Through Birding exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover them yourself.

Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and primer on the art of birding, this is Cooper’s story of learning to claim and defend space for himself and others like him, from his days at Marvel Comics introducing the first gay storylines to vivid and life-changing birding expeditions through Africa, Australia, the Americas, and the Himalayas. Better Living Through Birding recounts Cooper’s journey through the wonderful world of birds and what they can teach us about life, if only we would look and listen.]]> 304 Christian Cooper 0593242386 Lisa 4 4.21 2023 Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
author: Christian Cooper
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/13
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]]> <![CDATA[A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture]]> 198493709
For as long as queer women have existed, they’ve created gathering grounds where they can be themselves. From the intimate darkness of the lesbian bar to the sweaty camaraderie of the softball field, these spaces aren’t a luxury—they’re a necessity for queer women defining their identities. In A Place of Our Own , journalist June Thomas invites readers into six iconic lesbian spaces over the course of the last sixty years, including the rural commune, the sex toy boutique, the vacation spot, and the feminist bookstore. Thomas blends her own experiences with archival research and rare interviews with pioneering figures like Elaine Romagnoli, Susie Bright, and Jacqueline Woodson. She richly illustrates the lives of the business owners, entrepreneurs, activists, and dreamers who shaped the long struggle for queer liberation. Thomas illuminates what is gained and lost in the shift from the exclusive, tight-knit women’s spaces of the �70s toward today’s more inclusive yet more diffuse LGBTQ+ communities. At once a love letter, a time capsule, and a bridge between generations of queer women, A Place of Our Own brings the history—and timeless present—of the lesbian community to vivid life.]]> 304 June Thomas 1541601742 Lisa 0 to-read 4.23 2024 A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture
author: June Thomas
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[To Travel the Stars: A Young Adult Retelling of Pride and Prejudice in Space]]> 179251612
When her station hosts a prestigious seminar, she jumps at the chance to attend, only to instantly butt heads with the most privileged planetside student. Will Darcy is insulting to her and judgmental about her friends and family, making her determined to show him she's just as good as he is.

But then Lizzie and Will discover they are a 99% match. And Lizzie has to make a series of choices about who she is and what she's willing to sacrifice to achieve her dreams.

Ranging from the dingy corridors of a space station to the old-growth forest of a luxurious estate, this retelling of Austen's classic novel PRIDE AND PREJUDICE asks the question of how to reach for the stars when society is conspiring to hold you in your place.]]> 316 Amy Sundberg Lisa 0 to-read 3.92 To Travel the Stars: A Young Adult Retelling of Pride and Prejudice in Space
author: Amy Sundberg
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/10
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]]> Sense and Sensibility 14935 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141439662

'The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!'

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

This edition includes explanatory notes, textual variants between the first and second editions, and Tony Tanner's introduction to the original Penguin Classic edition.]]> 409 Jane Austen 0141439661 Lisa 0 4.10 1811 Sense and Sensibility
author: Jane Austen
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1811
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/22
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves: 2015, audiobook, classics, english-literature
review:

]]> Land of Milk and Honey 101673225 The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.]]> 240 C Pam Zhang 0593538242 Lisa 0 3.50 2023 Land of Milk and Honey
author: C Pam Zhang
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/06/08
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]]> Biography of X 60784729 From one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.

When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.

A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows a grieving wife seeking to understand the woman who enthralled her. CM traces X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. And when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined.

Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey, one of our most acclaimed literary innovators, pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.]]> 416 Catherine Lacey Lisa 0 3.83 2023 Biography of X
author: Catherine Lacey
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/06/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality]]> 176443264 Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.

Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant� first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.

“Magical thinking� can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.

In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “Halo effect� cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the “Sunk Cost Fallacy� can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.]]> 259 Amanda Montell 1668007975 Lisa 1 3.45 2024 The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
author: Amanda Montell
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/06/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration]]> 74622365 Shortlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence “The Great Displacement is closely observed, compassionate, and far-sighted.� —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Under a White Sky The untold story of climate migration in the United States—the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities being torn apart by disaster, and the implications for all of us as we confront a changing future.Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many of us still think about it in the future tense—we imagine that as global warming gets worse over the coming decades, millions of people will scatter around the world fleeing famine and rising seas. What we often don’t realize is that the consequences of climate change are already visible, right here in the United States. In communities across the country, climate disasters are pushing thousands of people away from their homes.A human-centered narrative with national scope, The Great Displacement is “a vivid tour of the new human geography just coming into view� (David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth). From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of inland North Carolina, people are moving. In the last few decades, the federal government has moved tens of thousands of families away from flood zones, and tens of thousands more have moved of their own accord in the aftermath of natural disasters. Insurance and mortgage markets are already shifting to reflect mounting climate risk, pricing people out of risky areas. Over the next fifty years, millions of Americans will be caught up in this churn of displacement, forced inland and northward in what will be the largest migration in our country’s history. The Great Displacement compassionately tells the stories of those who are already experiencing life on the move, while detailing just how radically climate change will transform our lives—erasing historic towns and villages, pushing people toward new areas, and reshaping the geography of the United States.]]> 369 Jake Bittle Lisa 0 4.35 2023 The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration
author: Jake Bittle
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/05/20
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]]> <![CDATA[You Feel It Just Below the Ribs]]> 57094312 A fictional autobiography in an alternate twentieth century that chronicles one woman’s unusual life, including the price she pays to survive and the cost her choices hold for the society she is trying to save.

Born at the end of the old world, Miriam grows up during The Great Reckoning, a sprawling, decades-long war that nearly decimates humanity and strips her of friends and family. Devastated by grief and loneliness, she emotionally exiles herself, avoiding relationships or allegiances, and throws herself into her work—disengagement that serves her when the war finally ends, and The New Society arises.

To ensure a lasting peace, The New Society forbids anything that may cause tribal loyalties, including traditional families. Suddenly, everyone must live as Miriam has chosen to—disconnected and unattached. A researcher at heart, Miriam becomes involved in implementing this detachment process. She does not know it is the beginning of a darkly sinister program that will transform this new world and the lives of everyone in it. Eventually, the harmful effects of her research become too much for Miriam, and she devises a secret plan to destroy the system from within, endangering her own life.

But is her “confession� honest—or is it a fabrication riddled with lies meant to conceal the truth?]]> 384 Jeffrey Cranor 0063066629 Lisa 0 to-read 3.99 2021 You Feel It Just Below the Ribs
author: Jeffrey Cranor
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Journals of Sacajewea]]> 59891745 From the award-winning author of Perma Red comes a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea

In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appe’s rib, a White Man came into camp. Bare trees scratched sky. Cold was endless. He moved through trees like strikes of sunlight. My Bia said he came with bad intentions, like a Water Baby’s cry.

Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history.

Raised among the Lemhi Shoshone, in this telling the young Sacajewea is bright and bold, growing strong from the hard work of “learning all ways to survive�: gathering berries, water, roots, and wood; butchering buffalo, antelope, and deer; catching salmon and snaring rabbits; weaving baskets and listening to the stories of her elders. When her village is raided and her beloved Appe and Bia are killed, Sacajewea is kidnapped and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper.

Heavy with grief, Sacajewea learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world teeming with fur trappers and traders. When Lewis and Clark’s expedition party arrives, Sacajewea knows she must cross a vast and brutal terrain with her newborn son, the white man who owns her, and a company of men who wish to conquer and commodify the world she loves.

Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an astonishing work of art and a powerful tale of perseverance—the Indigenous woman’s story that hasn’t been told.]]> 264 Debra Magpie Earling 1571311459 Lisa 0 to-read 3.59 2010 The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
author: Debra Magpie Earling
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> Significant Others 161099742
Two women test how much weight their friendship can hold in this poignant and tender novel.

Roommates since college, Jess and Ren have built a strong—if at times codependent—friendship. Now navigating their late thirties, the women co-own a weathered beachfront home, comother a rescued shelter pup and have inadvertently centered their lives around each other.

Jess is clever and driven with a lucrative career running her own real estate brokerage. Magnetic but aimless, Ren has been making margaritas at the same local dive and teaching dance classes at the same run-down gym for well over a decade. After a one-night stand with a tourist leads to pregnancy, Ren realizes motherhood may be the change she’s been waiting for, and the friends make a plan to raise the child together.

Ren is excitedly pushing toward her due date when the baby’s father resurfaces, forcing Jess to face the foreboding notion that for the first time in eighteen years, they may not want the same thing.

In this stunning debut spanning nine pivotal months in the lives of two very different women, Zoë Eisenberg examines female friendship with emotional precision and offers an intimate look at who we belong to—and why.]]> 352 Zoe Eisenberg 0778369668 Lisa 0 dnf 3.34 2024 Significant Others
author: Zoe Eisenberg
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: dnf
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]]> Sad Janet 48890204 For as long as I can remember feeling things, I’ve felt sadness. Now, for example, I feel sad that we have no money. Also a little mad that a bunch of idiots seem to have it all. But sad, mostly, because I think that’s just the way things are. It’s an all-encompassing feeling, like my lungs are filled with it instead of air.
You’d think it would feel better to be at one with the world.

Janet works at a rundown dog shelter in the woods. She wears black, loves the Smiths, and can’t wait to get rid of her passive-aggressive boyfriend. Her brain is full of anxiety, like “one of those closets you never want to open because everything will fall out and crush you.� She has a meddlesome family, eccentric coworkers, one old friend who’s left her for Ibiza, and one new friend who’s really just a neighbor she sees in the hallway. Most of all, Janet has her sadness—a comfortable cloak she uses to insulate herself from the oppressions of the wider world.

That is, until one fateful summer when word spreads about a new pill that offers even cynics like her a short-term taste of happiness . . . just long enough to make it through the holidays without wanting to stab someone with a candy cane. When her family stages an intervention, her boyfriend leaves, and the prospect of making it through Christmas alone seems like too much, Janet decides to give them what they want. What follows is life-changing for all concerned—in ways no one quite expects.

Hilarious, bitterly wise, and surprisingly warm, Sad Janet is the depression comedy you never knew you needed.]]> 288 Lucie Britsch 059308652X Lisa 2 3.33 2020 Sad Janet
author: Lucie Britsch
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/14
date added: 2024/05/14
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]]> The Guncle (The Guncle, #1) 54508798
So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules� ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting—even if temporary—isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.]]> 326 Steven Rowley 0525542280 Lisa 0 to-read 4.09 2021 The Guncle (The Guncle, #1)
author: Steven Rowley
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> Gay Girl Prayers 183910792 72 Emily R. Austin 1771316225 Lisa 0 to-read 3.87 Gay Girl Prayers
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout]]> 197773418 Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload.

Our current definition of “productivity� is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers—from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe—Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,� a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for workers to replace them with a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.]]> 244 Cal Newport 0593544854 Lisa 0 to-read 3.65 2024 Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
author: Cal Newport
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Vaster Wilds 75252590
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.]]> 272 Lauren Groff Lisa 3 3.91 2016 The Vaster Wilds
author: Lauren Groff
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last White Rose (Tudor Rose #1)]]> 58735042 New York Times bestselling author Alison Weir explores the life of Henry VIII's mother, Elizabeth, the first queen of the Tudor dynasty, in this stunning historical novel.

Elizabeth of York is the oldest daughter of King Edward IV. Flame-haired, beautiful, and sweet-natured, she is adored by her family; yet her life is suddenly disrupted when her beloved father dies in the prime of life. Her uncle, the notorious Richard III, takes advantage of King Edward's death to grab the throne and imprison Elizabeth's two younger brothers, the rightful royal heirs. Forever afterwards known as the princes in the tower, the boys are never seen again. On the heels of this tragedy, Elizabeth is subjected to Richard's overtures to make her his wife, further legitimizing his claim to the throne. King Richard has murdered her brothers, yet she is obliged to accept his proposal.

As if in a fairy tale, Elizabeth is saved by Henry Tudor, who challenges Richard and kills him in the legendary Battle of Bosworth Field. In recognition of his victory, Henry becomes king and asks Elizabeth to be his wife, the first queen of the Tudor line. The marriage is happy and fruitful, not only uniting the warring houses of Lancaster and York--the red and white roses--but resulting in four surviving children, one of whom, Henry VIII, will rule the country for the next thirty-six years.

As in her popular Six Tudor Queens series, Alison Weir captures the personality of one of Britain's most important monarchs, conveying Elizabeth of York's dramatic life in a novel that is all the richer because of its firm basis in history.]]> 544 Alison Weir 0593355032 Lisa 3 3.97 2022 The Last White Rose (Tudor Rose #1)
author: Alison Weir
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/14
date added: 2024/03/14
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]]> The Tower 174147413
Scotland, 1567. A pregnant Mary, Queen of Scots is dragged out of her palace by rebel lords and imprisoned in the isolated Lochleven Castle, an ancient fortress surrounded by a vast lake. Her infant son and heir, James, has been captured by her enemies.Ěý

Accompanying Mary are two inconspicuous serving observant, ambitious Jane and romantic, quick-tempered Cuckoo, who endeavor to keep their mercurial mistress company while sharing the space of a claustrophobic room over the course of their eleven-month forced stay. Their hosts want them dead. They'll settle for Mary's abdication.

After Mary reluctantly surrenders her throne, her closest friend, the reserved, devoted Lady Seton, is permitted to join the captive women. Against the odds, as they hatch a perilous getaway plan, the four women form a bond that transcends class and religion, and for Jane and Seton, becomes something even deeper. At the center of it all is Mary--calculating, charming, brave, and unbowed. Flora Carr's thrilling, feverish debut is a celebration of resilience, a meditation on the meaning of power, and a testament to the unshakeable strength of female friendship, starring one of history's most charismatic leaders.]]> 272 Flora Carr 0385550189 Lisa 0 to-read 3.61 2024 The Tower
author: Flora Carr
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> Oh Honey 35716417 They hang up.
“Hello. My name is Joan. I am calling on behalf of—�
They hang up.
“Hello. My name’s Doreen.�

Jane is a telemarketer. She uses a different name each time, and soon it becomes clear that she is calling the same man again and again. Each call is a new battle between them, with him becoming angrier and more threatening. But Jane isn’t calling him at random; Jane has a purpose; Jane has a past which seems to change each time she tells it. The story is revealed through exchanges like ritual incantations.

As the story twists and turns in unexpected ways, it moves from amusing to terrifying—a transition that Austin also handles expertly. A well-crafted and engaging novel, even when the protagonist’s actions are hard to take. –Kirkus Reviews]]> 140 Emily R. Austin Lisa 0 to-read 3.90 2017 Oh Honey
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate]]> 61492455
Today, unlikeable female characters are everywhere in film, TV, and wider pop culture. For the first time ever, they are being accepted by audiences and even showered with industry awards. We are finally accepting that women are―gasp―fully fledged human beings. How did we get to this point?

Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them, and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman.

Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and co-founder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls, takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop culture―and society―is finally ready to embrace complicated women.]]> 340 Anna Bogutskaya 1728274745 Lisa 0 to-read 3.70 2023 Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate
author: Anna Bogutskaya
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary]]> 49950157 Glitter Up the Dark traces the history of this gender fluidity in pop music from the early twentieth century to the present day.

Starting with early blues and the Beatles and continuing with performers such as David Bowie, Prince, Missy Elliot, and Frank Ocean, Geffen explores how artists have used music, fashion, language, and technology to break out of the confines mandated by gender essentialism and establish the voice as the primary expression of gender transgression. From glam rock and punk to disco, techno, and hip-hop, music helped set the stage for today's conversations about trans rights and recognition of nonbinary and third-gender identities. Glitter Up the Dark takes a long look back at the path that led here.]]> 264 Sasha Geffen 147731878X Lisa 0 to-read 4.07 2020 Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary
author: Sasha Geffen
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[I Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays About the Women Singers Who've Made Me Who I Am]]> 148713693
With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear for prose, Zachary Pace recounts the women singers � from Cat Power to Madonna, Kim Gordon to Rihanna � who shaped them as a young person coming-of-age in rural New York, first discovering their own queer voice.

Structured like a mixtape, Pace juxtaposes their coming out with the music that informed them along the way. They recount how listening to themselves sing along as a child to a Disney theme song they recorded on a boom box in 1995, was when they first realized there was an effeminate inflection to their voice. As childhood friendships splinter, Pace discusses the relationship between Whitney Houston and Robyn Crawford. Cat Power’s song “My Daddy Was a Musician� spurs a discussion of Pace’s own musician father, and their gradual estrangement.

Resonant and compelling,Ěý I Sing to Use the Waiting Ěýis a deeply personal rumination on how queer stories are abundant yet often suppressed, and how music may act as a comforting balm carrying us through difficult periods and decisions.]]> 190 Zachary Pace 195338742X Lisa 0 dnf 3.32 I Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays About the Women Singers Who've Made Me Who I Am
author: Zachary Pace
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.32
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them]]> 39934 New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart - to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most important, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.]]> 302 Francine Prose 0060777052 Lisa 0 dnf 3.76 2006 Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
author: Francine Prose
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> Interesting Facts about Space 177059739
As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there’s only one person she can’t outrun—herself.

Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.]]> 320 Emily R. Austin Lisa 4 3.96 2024 Interesting Facts about Space
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/28
date added: 2024/02/28
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Don't Want You Like a Best Friend (Mischief & Matchmaking, #1)]]> 127823335 A swoon-worthy debut queer Victorian romance in which two debutantes distract themselves from having to seek husbands by setting up their widowed parents, and instead find their perfect match in each other—the lesbian Bridgerton/Parent Trap you never knew you needed!

Gwen has a brilliant beyond brilliant idea.

It’s 1857, and anxious debutante Beth has just one season to snag a wealthy husband, or she and her mother will be out on the street. But playing the blushing ingenue makes Beth’s skin crawl and she’d rather be anywhere but here.

Gwen, on the other hand, is on her fourth season and counting, with absolutely no intention of finding a husband, possibly ever. She figures she has plenty of security as the only daughter of a rakish earl, from whom she’s gotten all her flair, fun, and less-than-proper party games.

“Let’s get them together,� she says.

It doesn’t take long for Gwen to hatch her latest scheme: rather than surrender Beth to courtship, they should set up Gwen’s father and Beth’s newly widowed mother. Let them get married instead.

“It’ll be easy� she says.

There’s just…one, teeny, tiny problem. Their parents kind of seem to hate each other.

But no worries. Beth and Gwen are more than up to the challenge of a little twenty-year-old heartbreak. How hard can parent-trapping widowed ex-lovers be?

Of course, just as their plan begins to unfold, a handsome, wealthy viscount starts calling on Beth, offering up the perfect, secure marriage.

Beth’s not mature enough for this�

Now Gwen must face the prospect of sharing Beth with someone else, forever. And Beth must reckon with the fact that she’s caught feelings, hard, and they’re definitely not for her potential fiancé.

That’s the trouble with matchmaking: sometimes you accidentally fall in love with your best friend in the process.]]> 368 Emma R. Alban 006331200X Lisa 2 3.77 2024 Don't Want You Like a Best Friend (Mischief & Matchmaking, #1)
author: Emma R. Alban
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/02/23
shelves:
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]]> Learned by Heart 62874041 Eliza and Lister have never been this wide-awake in their lives, and the Slope, with its curtains drawn wide, is bright with starlight. They talk in whispers, not to disturb the maids who lie sleeping on the other side of the box room. The question Eliza’s been needing to ask swells like a great berry in her mouth, and all at once she’s not scared to let it out, not scared at all, not scared of anything . . .

In 1805, fourteen-year-old Eliza Raine is a school girl at the Manor School for Young Ladies in York. The daughter of an Indian mother and a British father, Eliza was banished to this unfamiliar country as a little girl. When she first stepped off the King George in Kent, Eliza was accompanied by her older sister, Jane, but now she boards alone at the Manor, with no one left to claim her. She spends her days avoiding the attention of her fellow pupils until, one day, a fearless and charismatic new student arrives at the school. The two girls are immediately thrown together and soon Eliza’s life is turned inside out by this strange and curious young woman.

Learned by Heart, Emma Donoghue’s mesmerising new novel, tells the heartbreaking story of the tangled lives of two women whose intense, and unlikely, relationship will change them for ever.]]> 336 Emma Donoghue 0316564435 Lisa 4 3.47 2023 Learned by Heart
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/11
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves:
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