Brooke's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 24 Apr 2025 17:56:45 -0700 60 Brooke's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum]]> 145624993 The Immortal Life ofĚýHenriettaĚýLacks, a page-turning 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, thatĚý New York Times Ěýbestselling author Clint Smith describes as “a book that left me breathless.â€�

On a cold day in March ofĚý1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland.ĚýUnder the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum.
Ěý
In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
Ěý
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus.
Ěý
In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.
Ěý]]> 368 Antonia Hylton 1538723697 Brooke 0 to-read 4.25 2024 Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
author: Antonia Hylton
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Brooke 0 to-read 4.52 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future]]> 35356384
Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die--and how ours can be saved.]]> 320 Steven Levitsky 1524762938 Brooke 0 to-read 4.16 2018 How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
author: Steven Levitsky
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Beautiful Undoing 231229085


As a young figure skater, Kerri Mossman was surrounded by excellence, but also by the crushing weight of perfection. Conditioned to equate love with achievement, she carried this silent burden into adulthood, unaware of how deeply it had shaped her.



In her thirties, with a thriving career and what seemed like a picture-perfect romance, she believed she had finally found lasting love. But just hours after saying "I do," the illusion shattered in an explosion of rage and violence.



For years, she performed the role of the perfect wife, hiding the abuse behind closed doors, until the moment her young daughter's safety was at stake. That was when Kerri made the bravest choice of to break free.]]> Kerri AK Mossman Brooke 0 to-read 0.0 A Beautiful Undoing
author: Kerri AK Mossman
name: Brooke
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Damascus Station (Damascus Station #1)]]> 56769571
But the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad’s spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet.]]> 432 David McCloskey 0393881040 Brooke 4 4.08 2021 Damascus Station (Damascus Station #1)
author: David McCloskey
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
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review:
Entertaining read. I enjoyed the setting of Syria, especially in light of current events and the toppling of the Assad regime. If you enjoy spy novels It doesn’t have the intricacies of a Le Carré novel, but if you enjoy modern spy novels I would recommend it.
]]> Broken Country 214151202 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.�

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 320 Clare Leslie Hall 166807818X Brooke 0 currently-reading 4.41 2025 Broken Country
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Brooke 3 4.27 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 3
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date added: 2025/03/27
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review:
I would not recommend the audiobook. The voice of the male main character, Dom, was so distracting. I didn’t love this one. The backdrop of the seed bank in the southern hemisphere was interesting but to me if felt like the author couldn’t decide if this book was a mystery, love story, or about climate change, so she tried to make it all 3. And that just didn’t succeed for me. I haven’t read anything else by the author, not sure that this will entice me to read others. Our book club gave it an average 6 out of 10.
]]> Neverwhere (London Below, #1) 14497
"Neverwhere" is the London of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Strange destinies lie in wait in London below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train.

Now a single act of kindness has catapulted young businessman Richard Mayhew out of his safe and predictable life - and into the realms of "Neverwhere." Richard is about to find out more than he ever wanted to know about this other London. Which is a pity. Because Richard just wants to go home...]]> 370 Neil Gaiman 0060557818 Brooke 0 to-read 4.17 1996 Neverwhere (London Below, #1)
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar]]> 58438618
Glucose, or blood sugar, is a tiny molecule in our body that has a huge impact on our health. It enters our bloodstream through the starchy or sweet foods we eat. Ninety percent of us suffer from too much glucose in our system—and most of us don't know it.

The symptoms? Cravings, fatigue, infertility, hormonal issues, acne, wrinkles� And over time, the development of conditions like type 2 diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome, cancer, dementia, and heart disease.

Drawing on cutting-edge science and her own pioneering research, biochemist Jessie Inchauspé offers ten simple, surprising hacks to help you balance your glucose levels and reverse your symptoms—without going on a diet or giving up the foods you love. For example:
* How eating foods in the right order will make you lose weight effortlessly
* What secret ingredient will allow you to eat dessert and still go into fat-burning mode
* What small change to your breakfast will unlock energy and cut your cravings

Both entertaining, informative, and packed with the latest scientific data, this book presents a new way to think about better health. Glucose Revolution is chock-full of tips that can drastically and immediately improve your life, whatever your dietary preferences.]]> 304 Jessie Inchauspé 1982179414 Brooke 0 to-read 4.42 2022 Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar
author: Jessie Inchauspé
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World]]> 203767605 A thrilling tick-tock recounting one of the most harrowing hostage situations and daring rescue attempts of our time—from true-life espionage master and New York Times bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat and The Spy and the Traitor Ben Macintyre.

As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff, one that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath.

Policeman Trevor Lock was supposed to have gone to the theater that night. Instead, he found himself overpowered and whisked into the embassy. The terrorists never noticed the gun hidden in his jacket. The drama that ensued would force him to find reserves of courage he didn’t know he had. The gunmen themselves were hardly one-dimensional—all Arabs, some highly educated, who hoped to force Britain to take their side in their independence battle against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Behind the scenes lurked the brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had bankrolled the whole affair as a salvo against Iran.

As police negotiators pressed the gunmen, rival protestors clashed violently outside the embassy, and as MI6 and the CIA scrambled for intelligence, Britain’s special forces strike team, the SAS, laid plans for a dangerous rescue mission. Inside, Lock and his fellow hostages used all the cunning they possessed to outwit and outflank their captors. Finally, on the sixth day, after the terrorists executed the embassy press attaché and dumped his body on the front doorstep, the SAS raid began, sparking a deadly high-stakes climax.

A story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure, The Siege takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades and provide a direct historical link to the tragedy on 9/11. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Macintyre brilliantly reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.]]> 400 Ben Macintyre 0593728092 Brooke 5 4.36 2024 The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
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review:
Listened to this book and the audio was pretty good. As an American who was a toddler in 1980, I had never heard of the hostage crisis at the Iranian embassy in London. McIntyre brings the crisis to life and makes you feel like you were there. I purposefully didn’t look up how it ended in Wikipedia, and I’m so glad.
]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Brooke 0 to-read 3.83 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> Deacon King Kong 51045613 The funny, sharp, and surprising story of the shooting of a Brooklyn drug dealer and the people who witnessed it—from James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known in the neighborhood as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Causeway Housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range.

The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird. In McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local NYPD cops assigned to investigate what happened, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters—caught in the tumultuous swirl of New York in the late 1960s—overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth finally emerges, McBride shows us that not all secrets can be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in compassion and hope.]]> 370 James McBride 073521672X Brooke 5 4.11 2020 Deacon King Kong
author: James McBride
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
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review:
Listened to the audiobook and the narrator was fantastic. The author has created vivid characters that the reader can connect with. He is a great storyteller and brings to life the NY city protects of the late 60’’s and early 70’s, as the drug epidemic begins to take hold. The characters are charmingly and witty and I appreciated the ending. Great listen!
]]> Mean Streak 40189977 Updated cover of this Kindle edition.


From #1 New York Times best-selling author Sandra Brown comes a heart-pounding story of survival, that takes the age-old question, "Does the end justify the means?" and turns it on its head.

Dr. Emory Charbonneau, a pediatrician and marathon runner, disappears on a mountain road in North Carolina. By the time her husband Jeff, miffed over a recent argument, reports her missing, the trail has grown cold. Literally. Fog and ice encapsulate the mountainous wilderness and paralyze the search for her.

While police suspect Jeff of "instant divorce," Emory, suffering from an unexplained head injury, regains consciousness and finds herself the captive of a man whose violent past is so dark that he won't even tell her his name. She's determined to escape him, and willing to take any risks necessary to survive.

Unexpectedly, however, the two have a dangerous encounter with people who adhere to a code of justice all their own. At the center of the dispute is a desperate young woman whom Emory can't turn her back on, even if it means breaking the law. Wrong becomes right at the hands of the man who strikes fear, but also sparks passion.

As her husband's deception is revealed, and the FBI closes in on her captor, Emory begins to wonder if the man with no name is, in fact, her rescuer from those who wish her dead - and from heartbreak.

Combining the nail-biting suspense and potent storytelling that has made Sandra Brown one of the world's best loved authors, MEAN STREAK is a wildly compelling novel about love, deceit, and the choices we must make in order to survive.]]> 417 Sandra Brown Brooke 3 4.45 2014 Mean Streak
author: Sandra Brown
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves:
review:
If I could give a half star, I would. This is not literature, but pure entertainment. I can see this book being made into a movie. Unrealistic drama, steamy sex, and a hero. The person who chose this for book club was mortified but I found myself giggling with entertainment.
]]> <![CDATA[The Songbird & the Heart of Stone (Crowns of Nyaxia, #3)]]> 209740448
Mische lost everything when she was forcibly Turned into a vampire � her home, her humanity, and most devastating of all, the love of the sun god to whom she had devoted her life. Now, sentenced to death for murdering the vampire prince who Turned her, redemption feels impossible.

But when Mische is saved by Asar, the bastard prince of the House of Shadow with a past as brutal as his scars, she’s forced into a mission worse than execution: a journey to the underworld to resurrect the god of death himself.]]> 498 Carissa Broadbent Brooke 0 currently-reading 4.17 2024 The Songbird & the Heart of Stone (Crowns of Nyaxia, #3)
author: Carissa Broadbent
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King (Crowns of Nyaxia, #2)]]> 62335396 Love is a sacrifice at the altar of power.

In the wake of the Kejari, everything Oraya once thought to be true has been destroyed. A prisoner in her own kingdom, grieving the only family she ever had, and reeling from a gutting betrayal, she no longer even knows the truth of her own blood. She’s left only with one certainty: she cannot trust anyone, least of all Raihn.

The House of Night, too, is surrounded by enemies. Raihn’s own nobles are none too eager to accept a Turned king, especially one who was once a slave. And the House of Blood digs their claws into the kingdom, threatening to tear it apart from the inside.

When Raihn offers Oraya a secret alliance, taking the deal is her only chance at reclaiming her kingdom–and gaining her vengeance against the lover who betrayed her. But to do so, she’ll need to harness a devastating ancient power, intertwined with her father’s greatest secrets.

But with enemies closing in on all sides, nothing is as it seems. As she unravels her past and faces her future, Oraya finds herself forced to choose between the bloody reality of seizing power � and the devastating love that could be her downfall.]]> 626 Carissa Broadbent Brooke 0 4.10 2023 The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King (Crowns of Nyaxia, #2)
author: Carissa Broadbent
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
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]]> The River We Remember 101160844 In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by the murder of its most powerful citizen, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling standalone novel.

On Memorial Day, as the people of Jewel, Minnesota gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. Investigation of the murder falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past.

Caught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose.

Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of midcentury American life, The River We Remember is an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home.]]> 432 William Kent Krueger 198217921X Brooke 5 4.19 2023 The River We Remember
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/11/29
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review:
I loved this book and the author’s writing. I could totally envision this world of rural Minnesota in the late 1950’s. Krueger’s writing style felt like a Steinbeck novel mixed with To Kill a Mockingbird. Ordinary Grace is next on my list.
]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Brooke 3 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
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]]> This Tender Land 25813942
After committing a terrible crime, Odie and Albert are forced to flee for their lives along with their best friend, Mose, a mute young man of Sioux heritage. Out of pity, they also take with them a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy. Together, they steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi in search for a place to call home.

Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphan vagabonds journey into the unknown, crossing paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an en­thralling, bighearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.]]> 450 William Kent Krueger 1476749299 Brooke 0 to-read 4.35 2019 This Tender Land
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Serpent and the Wings of Night (Crowns of Nyaxia, #1)]]> 60714999 Human or vampire, the rules of survival are the same: never trust, never yield, and always � always � guard your heart.

The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself.

But winning won’t be easy amongst the most vicious warriors from all three vampire houses. To survive, Oraya is forced to make an alliance with a mysterious rival.

Everything about Raihn is dangerous. He is a ruthless vampire, an efficient killer, an enemy to her father’s crown� and her greatest competition. Yet, what terrifies Oraya most of all is that she finds herself oddly drawn to him.

But there’s no room for compassion in the Kejari. War for the House of Night brews, shattering everything that Oraya thought she knew about her home. And Raihn may understand her more than anyone � but their blossoming attraction could be her downfall, in a kingdom where nothing is more deadly than love.

The Serpent and the Wings of Night is the first book in a new series of heart-wrenching romance, dark magic, and bloodthirsty intrigue, perfect for fans of From Blood and Ash and A Court of Thorns and Roses.]]> 504 Carissa Broadbent Brooke 0 4.30 2022 The Serpent and the Wings of Night (Crowns of Nyaxia, #1)
author: Carissa Broadbent
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
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]]> Suttree 394469 471 Cormac McCarthy 0679736328 Brooke 0 to-read 4.20 1979 Suttree
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Brooke 0 to-read 3.99 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration]]> 8171378
Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration� within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.]]> 622 Isabel Wilkerson 0679444327 Brooke 4 4.45 2010 The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin]]> 9938498
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming—yet wholly sinister—Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.]]> 448 Erik Larson 0307408841 Brooke 3 3.87 2011 In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
author: Erik Larson
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?�

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 Brooke 0 currently-reading 3.98 2024 Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Goddess of Warsaw 197448167
Los Angeles, 2005. Sienna Hayes, Hollywood’s latest It Girl, has ambitions to work behind the camera. When she meets Lena Browning, the enormously mysterious and famous Golden Age movie star, Sienna sees her big break. She wants to direct a picture about Lena’s life—but the legendary actor’s murky past turns out to be even darker than Sienna dreamed. Before she was a Living Legend, Lena Browning was Bina Blonski, a Polish Jew whose life and family were destroyed by the Nazis.

Warsaw, 1943. A member of the city’s Jewish elite, Bina Blonski and her husband, Jakub, are imprisoned in the ghastly, cramped ghetto along with the rest of Warsaw’s surviving Jews. Determined to fight back against the brutal Nazis, the beautiful, blonde Aryan-looking Bina becomes a spy, gaining information and stealing weapons outside the ghetto to protect her fellow Jews. But her dangerous circumstances grow complicated when she falls in love with Aleksander, an ally in resistance—and Jakub’s brother. While Lena accomplishes amazing feats of bravery, she sacrifices much in the process.

Over a decade after escaping the horrors of the ghetto, Bina, now known as Lena, rises to fame in Hollywood. Yet she cannot help but be reminded of her old life and hungers for revenge against the Nazis who escaped justice after the war. Her power and fame as a movie star offer Lena the chance to right the past’s wrongs . . . and perhaps even find the happy ending she never had.

A gripping page-turner of one of history’s most heroic uprisings and an actress whose personal war never ends, The Goddess Of Warsaw is filled with secrets, lies, twists and turns, and a burning pursuit of justice no matter the cost.]]> 416 Lisa Barr 0063296616 Brooke 3 4.57 2024 The Goddess of Warsaw
author: Lisa Barr
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/10/04
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I enjoyed parts of this book but I didn't love the writing or the main character. I knew nothing of the Warsaw Uprising and stories around WWII are my jam. But the writing was overwrought and melodramatic. There were too many coincidences and the love triangle drama seemed unnecessary. The story did bring Operation Paperclip to my attention and I'm interested in learning more about that.
]]> <![CDATA[Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)]]> 123009515 In the luscious, dark sequel to One Dark Window, Elspeth must face the consequences of what she's wrought - perfect for readers of Hannah Whitten's For the Wolf and Alexis Henderson's The Year of the Witching.

Elspeth and Ravyn have gathered most of the twelve Providence Cards, but the last, and most important one remains to be found: The Twin Alders.

If they are going to find it before the Solstice and cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it, they will need to journey beyond the dangerous mist-cloaked forest that surrounds their kingdom.

And the only one who can lead them there is the monster that shares Elspeth's head. The Nightmare. And he's not eager to share any longer.]]> 458 Rachel Gillig 0316312886 Brooke 0 4.50 2023 Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2)
author: Rachel Gillig
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/08/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing]]> 64631561 New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot-caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.

No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors� credit cards.

Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She learns that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly finds the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller,� showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, prove to herself that she is more good than bad, and much more.

The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.]]> 319 Lara Love Hardin 1982197668 Brooke 5 4.46 2023 The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
author: Lara Love Hardin
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
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Love is a beautiful writer. I was surprised by her honesty, never shying away from the responsibility of her actions. You can't help but root for her throughout the book. Love lays bare her frustrations with the justice system; there were certainly unnecessary barriers placed in her way. But ironically, parts of that system are responsible for her return to sobriety. It is a book that will stay with me.
]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]]> 767171 No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.

The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading

]]> 1147 William L. Shirer 0671728687 Brooke 0 to-read 4.20 1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
author: William L. Shirer
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> Comedy Sex God 36300679 Part autobiography, part philosophical inquiry, and part spiritual quest, Comedy Sex God is a hilarious, profound, and enlightening romp around the fertile mind of stand-up stand-out, podcast king, and HBO superstar Pete Holmes.

Pete Holmes is a sold-out-every-night stand-up comedian with two HBO specials and the host of the hugely successful podcast You Made It Weird, and he was the creator-star of the hit HBO show Crashing. But it wasn’t always roses for Pete. Growing up, Pete was raised an evangelical Christian, but his religion taught him that being “bad”—smoking, drinking, having doubts or premarital sex—would get him sent to an eternity in hell. So, terrified of the God he loved, Pete devoted his life to being “good,� even marrying his first girlfriend at the age of twenty-two only to discover a few years later he was being cheated on. Thanks for nothing, God.

Pete’s failed attempt at a picture-perfect life forced him to reexamine his beliefs, but neither atheism, nor Christianity, nor copious bottles of Yellow Tail led him to enlightenment. Pete longed for a model of faith that served him and his newfound uncertainties about the universe, so he embarked on a soul-seeking journey that continues to this day. Through encounters with mind-altering substances, honing his craft in front of thousands of his comedy fans, and spending time with savants like Ram Dass, Pete forged a new life—both spiritually and personally.

Beautifully written and often completely hilarious—imagine Dass’s Be Here Now if penned by one of the funniest people alive�Comedy Sex God reveals a man at the top of his game and a seeker in search of the deeper meanings of life, love, and comedy.]]> 320 Pete Holmes 0062803999 Brooke 0 to-read 3.92 2019 Comedy Sex God
author: Pete Holmes
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)]]> 150260787 Torn apart by war. Reunited by love?

Two weeks have passed since Iris returned home bruised and heartbroken from the front, but the war is far from over.

Roman is missing, lost behind enemy lines, with no memory of his past, or Iris. Hoping his memories return, he begins to write again � but this time for the enemy.

When a strange letter arrives through his wardrobe door, he strikes up a correspondence with a penpal who seems at once mysterious� and strangely familiar.

As their connection deepens, the two of them will risk their very hearts and futures to change the tides of the war.]]> 419 Rebecca Ross Brooke 0 4.07 2023 Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell]]> 35995489
Sam believed it was God who sent Ernie Cantwell, the only African American kid in his class, to be the friend he so desperately needed. And that it was God’s idea for Mickie Kennedy to storm into Our Lady of Mercy like a tornado, uprooting every rule Sam had been taught about boys and girls.

Forty years later, Sam, a small-town eye doctor, is no longer certain anything was by design—especially not the tragedy that caused him to turn his back on his friends, his hometown, and the life he’d always known. Running from the pain, eyes closed, served little purpose. Now, as he looks back on his life, Sam embarks on a journey that will take him halfway around the world. This time, his eyes are wide open—bringing into clear view what changed him, defined him, and made him so afraid, until he can finally see what truly matters.]]> 448 Robert Dugoni 1503949001 Brooke 3 4.37 2018 The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell
author: Robert Dugoni
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2018
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/06/29
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I enjoyed the writing style of the author. The first half of the book was interesting, but then it got boring and lost its narrative thread. It seemed too convenient that the childhood bully came back into his life the way he did (trying to not spoil the plot), and there were other incidents that were too convenient as well. Also, the whole pilramige at the end seemed out of place and proselytizing. I had to force myself to finish.
]]> How to Say Babylon 62919742 Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.']]> 352 Safiya Sinclair 1982132337 Brooke 4 4.43 2023 How to Say Babylon
author: Safiya Sinclair
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> All the Colors of the Dark 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Brooke 0 to-read 4.23 2024 All the Colors of the Dark
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)]]> 62202008 When two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection, they must face the depths of hell, in a war among gods, to seal their fate forever.

After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.

To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.

Shadow and Bone meets Lore in Rebecca Ross's Divine Rivals, an epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.]]> 356 Rebecca Ross Brooke 5 4.23 2023 Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
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]]> <![CDATA[A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them]]> 61423989
The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows � their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman � Madge Oberholtzer � who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.]]> 432 Timothy Egan 0735225265 Brooke 0 to-read 4.33 2023 A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
author: Timothy Egan
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Brooke 2 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/29
date added: 2024/04/29
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If we were rating out of 10, I'd give it a 5. Honestly, I just got bored. It felt like the author came up with the title and then had to figure out how to get to 7 husbands. The conversations between Evelyn & Cecilia were repeated throughout the book. The first 3rd was more entertaining, but as it went along, I felt like it just lost any narrative pull to finish. To me, it read like a YA novel for middle-aged women.
]]> <![CDATA[A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)]]> 50659467
At least, he’s not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.]]> 419 Sarah J. Maas 1635575567 Brooke 0 to-read 4.16 2015 A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/29
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]]> Stoner 166997
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]> 292 John Williams 1590171993 Brooke 0 to-read 4.35 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology]]> 60321447
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everythingâ€� from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market â€� runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America's edge isĚýslipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea,ĚýEurope, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil,Ěýis pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity.

Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand.ĚýAmerica has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.

Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips.]]> 464 Chris Miller 1982172002 Brooke 0 to-read 4.38 2022 Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
author: Chris Miller
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark]]> 17349
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.]]> 459 Carl Sagan 0345409469 Brooke 0 currently-reading 4.28 1995 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
author: Carl Sagan
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History]]> 239186
Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature.]]> 323 Erik Larson 0375708278 Brooke 5 4.04 1999 Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
author: Erik Larson
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/04/28
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I am a big fan of Erik Larson. He brings history alive, writing books that read like entertaining fiction. This book was another win for me. He brought to life the heartbreaking tragedy of the hurricane that obliterated a community.
]]> <![CDATA[Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea]]> 40604846 Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.

Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.]]> 338 Barbara Demick Brooke 0 to-read 4.47 2009 Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
author: Barbara Demick
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage]]> 139069 The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

First edition: here.]]> 282 Alfred Lansing Brooke 0 to-read 4.42 1959 Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
author: Alfred Lansing
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/28
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]]> A Brief History of Time 3869
Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,� of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.]]> 226 Stephen Hawking 0553380168 Brooke 0 to-read 4.22 1988 A Brief History of Time
author: Stephen Hawking
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/28
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]]> <![CDATA[No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II]]> 18728 No Ordinary Time is a chronicle of one of the most vibrant & revolutionary periods in US history. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin weaves together a number of story lines—the Roosevelt’s marriage & partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, & FDR’s White House & its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin melds these into an intimate portrait of Eleanor & Franklin Roosevelt & of the time during which a new, modern America was born.]]> 633 Doris Kearns Goodwin 0684804484 Brooke 0 to-read 4.19 1994 No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.]]> 16121 ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýBorn the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýRockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýWhile providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýJohn D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 832 Ron Chernow 1400077303 Brooke 0 to-read 4.15 1998 Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
author: Ron Chernow
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Brooke 0 to-read 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Brooke 0 to-read 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> Romney: A Reckoning 101025305 A remarkably illuminating biography of the political maverick, filled with revelations and written with his full cooperation by an award-winning writer at The Atlantic.

Authoritative, personal, and vividly written, Romney: A Reckoning is a revealing account of Mitt Romney’s life.

Based on dozens of exclusive interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals, this book offers a rare, portrait of a politician who in recent years has been at the center of our nation’s most defining political dramas.]]> 416 McKay Coppins 1982196238 Brooke 0 to-read 4.33 2023 Romney: A Reckoning
author: McKay Coppins
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling]]> 236609 740 Richard L. Bushman 1400077532 Brooke 3 4.07 2005 Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
author: Richard L. Bushman
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/04/13
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review:
I read this book in the fashion it was written, a response to Fawn Brody's "No Man Knows My History.""" Brody's book is a much easier read, and she clearly was not a believer. But she did so much for the field of Mormon History. Her research and leg work allowed this book and so many others on Joseph Smith to be written. The beginning of Rough Stone Rolling is slow, but it does a good job giving context to the world that Joseph lived in. It is certainly no serious critique of Smith; he is usually framed in a positive light, and ciritcism is treated with kid gloves. But Bushman acknowledges that the book is written through the eyes of the believer. What struck me most were not the salacious tales of women and minors (I was well aware), but Bushman , whether intended or not, made Joseph's manipulation, deceit, and desire for power, front and center. To me, that was the most enlightening piece to the puzzle. I gave this 3-stars because of the overly apologetic tone from a well-respected historian. But I think it is necessary read for anyone interested in Mormon History.
]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Brooke 4 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/07
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review:
I read this awhile ago, so I don't remember the details, but I do remember enjoying it.
]]> God Is Disappointed in You 17689005 God Is Disappointed in You is for people who would like to read the Bible... if it would just cut to the chase. Stripped of its arcane language and its interminable passages of poetry, genealogy, and law, every book of the Bible is condensed down to its core message, in no more than a few pages each. Written by Mark Russell with cartoons by New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler, God Is Disappointed in You is a frequently hilarious, often shocking, but always accurate retelling of the Bible, including the parts selectively left out by Sunday School teachers and church sermons. Irreverent yet faithful, this book is a must-read for anyone who wants to see past the fog of religious agendas and cultural debates to discover what the Bible really says.]]> 223 Mark Russell 1603090983 Brooke 4 4.20 2011 God Is Disappointed in You
author: Mark Russell
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/07
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review:
Very entertaining & funny. Brings to light the ridiculous is biblical texts...all religious texts, really.
]]> The Women 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Brooke 3 4.58 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2024
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/04/07
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review:
I would give the first half of the book an 8 out of 10; the second half I would give a 4. So, in the end I will rate it a generous 6 (or 3 with Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ limitations). The 2nd half half just got boring and repetitive. The story and its "twists" turned out to be lazy writing. I seriously struggled to finish it. Oh well, better luck next time.
]]> The Frozen River 56699106
Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546882 Brooke 0 currently-reading 4.52 2023 The Frozen River
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/08
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution]]> 75494215 THE REAL ORIGIN OF OUR SPECIES: a myth-busting, eye-opening landmark account of how humans evolved, offering a paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is, how it came to be, and how this evolution still shapes all our lives today.

How did the female body drive 200 million years of human evolution?
� Why do women live longer than men?
� Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer’s?
� Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet?
� Is sexism useful for evolution?
� And why, seriously why, do women have to sweat through our sheets every night when we hit menopause?

These questions are producing some truly exciting science—and in Eve, with boundless curiosity and sharp wit, Cat Bohannon covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex: "We need a kind of user's manual for the female mammal. A no-nonsense, hard-hitting, seriously researched (but readable) account of what we are. How female bodies evolved, how they work, what it really means to biologically be a woman. Something that would rewrite the story of womanhood. This book is that story. We have to put the female body in the picture. If we don't, it's not just feminism that's compromised. Modern medicine, neurobiology, paleoanthropology, even evolutionary biology all take a hit when we ignore the fact that half of us have breasts. So it's time we talk about breasts. Breasts, and blood, and fat, and vaginas, and wombs—all of it. How they came to be and how we live with them now, no matter how weird or hilarious the truth is."

Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Picking up where Sapiens left off, Eve will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens has become such a successful and dominant species.]]> 624 Cat Bohannon 0385350546 Brooke 0 to-read 4.28 2023 Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
author: Cat Bohannon
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano Brooke 1 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/01/28
date added: 2024/02/05
shelves:
review:
We have a rule at my book club, you are not allowed to give a book a rating if you haven't finished it. I was so annoyed by the writing in this book that I made it my mission to finish it, just so I could rate it. Napolitano wrote the most boring novel I have ever read. There is a reason why biographers write books on people who have accomplished something extraordinary because every day lives are BORING, which is exactly what played out in this book. And yes, I realize this is fiction and not a biography, so there REALLY is no reason you can't write/invent an intersting story. Also, I could not relate to the thoughts and actions of any of the characters. It's like she forced the characters to react in the worst way possible, just so something (anything!) happened. The writing was self-indulgent and overwrought. A good writer constantly edits so that they may get to the essence of the idea or situation with beautiful precision. This thing meandered unrelentlessly to an obvious end.
]]> Roadside Picnic 331256
First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years.]]> 145 Arkady Strugatsky 0575070536 Brooke 0 to-read 4.16 1972 Roadside Picnic
author: Arkady Strugatsky
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Trial of the Sun Queen (Artefacts of Ouranos, #1)]]> 194848627 A Court of Thorns and Roses meets The Fourth WingĚý in this pulse-pounding, enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance—with fae magic, high-stakes trials, and a dark prince—from Booktok favorite author Nisha J. Tuli.Ěý

Ten women. A deadly contest. Only one can win the Sun King's heart.
Lor has endured twelve long years of torment under the Aurora King’s rule. Her only desire is to escape and pay him back for every moment of misery she's endured.

When a surprise release finds her in the hands of the rival Sun King, Lor is thrust into the spotlight as she competes against nine other Tributes for the role of queen. If she wins his heart, she'll earn her freedom and finally get her revenge.

But Lor doesn't belong in the Sun Queen Trials. Not only does she not understand why she was freed, she isn’t a citizen of the Sun King’s court. The other Tributes resent her presence and will stop at nothing to ensure Lor is removed from the competition, permanently.

Now Lor must win, because if she loses, she dies. Or worse, she'll be returned to the evil—and now vengeful—Aurora King.]]> 407 Nisha J. Tuli Brooke 4 4.12 2023 Trial of the Sun Queen (Artefacts of Ouranos, #1)
author: Nisha J. Tuli
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/25
date added: 2024/01/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1)]]> 36315977 here and here.

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart.

Shadow and Bone is the first installment in Leigh Bardugo's Grisha Trilogy.]]> 369 Leigh Bardugo Brooke 0 4.02 2012 Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2)]]> 40930303
The Darkling is more determined than ever to claim Alina’s magic and use it to take the Ravkan throne. With nowhere else to turn, Alina enlists the help of an infamous privateer and sets out to lead the Grisha army.

But as the truth of Alina's destiny unfolds, she slips deeper into the Darkling’s deadly game of forbidden magic, and further away from her humanity. To save her country, Alina will have to choose between her power and the love she thought would always be her shelter. No victory can come without sacrifice—and only she can face the oncoming storm.]]> 448 Leigh Bardugo Brooke 0 currently-reading 3.91 2013 Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> None of This Is True 62334530
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Brooke 4 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/28
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves:
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Good audio and entertaining. Not my genre and the end was too obvious but still an enjoyable story.
]]> The Only Good Indians 52180399 The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.]]> 305 Stephen Graham Jones 1982136456 Brooke 0 to-read 3.69 2020 The Only Good Indians
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> Anxious People 49534036
Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers slowly begin opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.

As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.]]> 346 Fredrik Backman 1501160850 Brooke 0 currently-reading 4.22 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[American Assassin (Mitch Rapp, #1)]]> 7959473 448 Vince Flynn 141659518X Brooke 2 4.24 2010 American Assassin (Mitch Rapp, #1)
author: Vince Flynn
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2023/08/29
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves:
review:
This feels like it was written by a 15 year old boy, hopped up on Red Bull and "I'm Proud to Be An American" music. The world is black and white. America is badass and everyone else is incompetent. It felt like a dumbed-down Clancy novel. I listened to the audio book, which didn't do it any favors. Perhaps the writing gets better as it goes; I'm not sure I'll take the time to find out.
]]> The Guest List 52656911
The bride � The plus one � The best man � The wedding planner � The bridesmaid � The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 319 Lucy Foley Brooke 4 3.82 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/29
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves:
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Thoroughly entertaining. A modern take on Agatha Christie. The narrators are brilliant. Not perfect, but a perfectly fun listen! The audio version is a must.
]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.ĚýYet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Brooke 0 to-read 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal]]> 18773666
Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain’s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War—while he was secretly working for the enemy. And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s best friend and fellow officer in MI6. The two men had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same exclusive clubs, grown close through the crucible of wartime intelligence work and long nights of drink and revelry. It was madness for one to think the other might be a communist spy, bent on subverting Western values and the power of the free world.

But Philby was secretly betraying his friend. Every word Elliott breathed to Philby was transmitted back to Moscow—and not just Elliott’s words, for in America, Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton's and Elliott’s unwitting disclosures helped Philby sink almost everyĚýimportant Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading countless operatives to their doom. Even as the web of suspicion closed around him, and Philby was driven to greater lies to protect his cover, his two friends never abandoned him—until it was too late. The stunning truth of his betrayal would have devastating consequences on the two men who thought they knew him best, and on the intelligence services he left crippled in his wake.

Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, A Spy Among Friends is Ben Macintyre’s best book yet, a high-water mark in Cold War history telling.]]> 368 Ben Macintyre 0804136637 Brooke 4 4.14 2014 A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/24
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The audio book was thoroughly entertaining. Before reading/listening to this book I always had the idea that British Intelligence during WWII & Cold War were top notch, but the blatant alcoholism and sloppiness shown by the top spies was jaw dropping. Le Carre's use of the events from this book to create his novels were screaming loud & clear.
]]> <![CDATA[Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania]]> 24356669 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER â€� From theĚýbestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania“Both terrifying and enthralling.”—Entertainment Weeklyâ€�Thrilling, dramatic and powerful.â€�—N±Ę¸éâ€�Thoroughly engrossing.â€�—George R.R. MartinOn May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.ĚýGermany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.Ěý Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.Finalist for the Washington State Book Award â€� One of the Best Books of the The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami Herald, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, LibraryReads, Indigo]]> 482 Erik Larson 0553446754 Brooke 0 currently-reading 4.26 2015 Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
author: Erik Larson
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Homegoing 49985946
Effia and Esi are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
--penguinrandomhouse.com]]> 313 Yaa Gyasi 1101947144 Brooke 4 4.51 2016 Homegoing
author: Yaa Gyasi
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/24
date added: 2023/06/24
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]]> Malibu Rising 55404546 Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them... and what they will leave behind.]]> 369 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798657 Brooke 3 4.02 2021 Malibu Rising
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/05/22
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley, #3)]]> 19494 212 John Le Carré Brooke 0 to-read 4.07 1963 The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley, #3)
author: John Le Carré
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[A Legacy of Spies (George Smiley, #9)]]> 34496624
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.]]> 264 John Le Carré 0735225117 Brooke 4 3.79 2017 A Legacy of Spies (George Smiley, #9)
author: John Le Carré
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/05/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Brooke 0 to-read 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post]]> 57792084 Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . .

So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie was inspired by a few simple rules: always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard—even when deemed American royalty, even while covered in imperial diamonds. Marjorie had an insatiable drive to live and love and to give more than she got. From crawling through Moscow warehouses to rescue the Tsar's treasures to outrunning the Nazis in London, from serving the homeless of the Great Depression to entertaining Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Hollywood's biggest stars, Marjorie Merriweather Post lived an epic life few could imagine.

Marjorie's journey began gluing cereal boxes in her father's barn as a young girl. No one could have predicted that C. W. Post's Cereal Company would grow into the General Foods empire and reshape the American way of life, with Marjorie as its heiress and leading lady. Not content to stay in her prescribed roles of high-society wife, mother, and hostess, Marjorie dared to demand more, making history in the process. Before turning thirty she amassed millions, becoming the wealthiest woman in the United States. But it was her life-force, advocacy, passion, and adventurous spirit that led to her stunning legacy.

And yet Marjorie's story, though full of beauty and grandeur, set in the palatial homes she built such as Mar-a-Lago, was equally marked by challenge and tumult. A wife four times over, Marjorie sought her happily-ever-after with the blue-blooded party boy who could not outrun his demons, the charismatic financier whose charm turned to betrayal, the international diplomat with a dark side, and the bon vivant whose shocking secrets would shake Marjorie and all of society. Marjorie did everything on a grand scale, especially when it came to love.

Bestselling and acclaimed author Allison Pataki has crafted an intimate portrait of a larger-than-life woman, a powerful story of one woman falling in love with her own voice and embracing her own power while shaping history in the process.]]> 400 Allison Pataki 0593355687 Brooke 4 4.05 2022 The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post
author: Allison Pataki
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/05/13
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Good but doesn't delve into the complicated reality of life.
]]> Burial Rites 55230943 Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

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

Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?]]> 353 Hannah Kent Brooke 5 4.04 2013 Burial Rites
author: Hannah Kent
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/09
date added: 2023/05/12
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I really loved this book. The author created a beautiful, painful, bleak painting of 19th century Iceland. I look forward to reading more from Hannah Kent.
]]> <![CDATA[Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood]]> 29780253
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents� indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.]]> 289 Trevor Noah 0385689225 Brooke 0 currently-reading 4.48 2016 Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
author: Trevor Noah
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/25
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Entitlemania: How Not to Spoil Your Kids and What to Do If You Have]]> 30315885 ENTITLEMANIA IS AN EPIDEMIC. Well-intentioned parents across the country are enabling a ''me'' generation of children who lack the wisdom and satisfaction of accomplishment that only struggle and adversity can bring.

As a veteran advisor and legal counsel to America's most successful families, Richard Watts has seen the extremes of entitlement up close and wants to help you avoid creating it in your own children. Entitlemania will teach you how to redirect kids and repair adults who believe the world owes them something. Your greatest challenge may be learning to control your own actions!

Entitlemania will provide practical strategies like creating boundaries, walking your talk, and allowing children to fend for themselves. A groundbreaking book that sheds important light on an increasingly pervasive social trend affecting children at every age—and at every income bracket! The big takeaway for You may have to let your children fail so they can learn how to succeed.]]> 202 Richard C. Watts 1626343497 Brooke 0 to-read 3.79 Entitlemania: How Not to Spoil Your Kids and What to Do If You Have
author: Richard C. Watts
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.79
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Short Stay in Hell 13456414
In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.]]> 110 Steven L. Peck 098374842X Brooke 4 4.17 2011 A Short Stay in Hell
author: Steven L. Peck
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/01/31
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]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Brooke 5 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/01/31
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review:
This was a perfectly entertaining book that left me feeling zen and dreaming of the PNW. I was always looking forward to hopping in the car to listen to this book. Is it Earth shattering? No. A book that requires analysis and critical thought? No. Did I thoroughly enjoy it and the narration? 100% Yes. I am so glad I listened to this one. It is a perfect book for the winter doldrums.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)]]> 23168277
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]> 371 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802123457 Brooke 0 to-read 4.00 2015 The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #1)]]> 15803037
In present-day Russia, ruled by blue-eyed, unblinking President Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence jungle. Ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,� a trained seductress, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole.

Spies have long relied on the “honey trap,� whereby vulnerable men and women are intimately compromised. Dominika learns these techniques of “sexpionage� in Russia’s secret “Sparrow School,� hidden outside of Moscow. As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States, Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and—inevitably—forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well. As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads. Soon one of them begins a dangerous double existence in a life-and-death operation that consumes intelligence agencies from Moscow to Washington, DC.

Page by page, veteran CIA officer Jason Matthews’s Red Sparrow delights and terrifies and fascinates, all while delivering an unforgettable cast, from a sadistic Spetsnaz “mechanic� who carries out Putin’s murderous schemes to the weary CIA Station Chief who resists Washington “cake-eaters� to MARBLE, the priceless Russian mole. Packed with insider detail and written with brio, this tour-de-force novel brims with Matthews’s life experience, including his knowledge of espionage, counterintelligence, surveillance tradecraft, spy recruitment, cyber-warfare, the Russian use of “spy dust,� and covert communications. Brilliantly composed and elegantly constructed, Red Sparrow is a masterful spy tale lifted from the dossiers of intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Authentic, tense, and entertaining, this novel introduces Jason Matthews as a major new American talent.]]> 434 Jason Matthews 1476706123 Brooke 0 to-read 3.86 2013 Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #1)
author: Jason Matthews
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Brooke 2 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 2
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date added: 2022/10/24
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review:
I was quite intrigued by the opening of this book, but by the end I simply didn't care about anyone's story. It felt like the author was trying to hard to write a deep book and in the end fell flat. This would be a generous review compared with what the rest of my bookclub thought (insert laugh).
]]> <![CDATA[This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor]]> 35510008 Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know � and more than a few things you didn't � about life on and off the hospital ward.

As seen on ITV's Zoe Ball Book Club

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

]]> 285 Adam Kay Brooke 4 4.40 2017 This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
author: Adam Kay
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/24
date added: 2022/10/24
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Pretty funny. Kay came across a little too uncaring and snarky for me to really love this book, even for a Brit.(; But I still enjoyed it and I laughed outloud more than once.
]]> <![CDATA[The Brain: All about Our Nervous System and More! (Smithsonian-science)]]> 408622 32 Seymour Simon 0060877197 Brooke 0 to-read 4.01 1997 The Brain: All about Our Nervous System and More! (Smithsonian-science)
author: Seymour Simon
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> Chasing Lincoln's Killer 3790380 Based on rare archival material, obscure trial manuscripts, and interviews with relatives of the conspirators and the manhunters, CHASING LINCOLN'S KILLER is a fast-paced thriller about the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth: a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia.

"This story is true. All the characters are real and were alive during the great manhunt of April 1865. Their words are authentic and come from original sources: letters, manuscripts, trial transcripts, newspapers, government reports, pamphlets, books and other documents. What happened in Washington, D.C., that spring, and in the swamps and rivers, forests and fields of Maryland and Virginia during the next twelve days, is far too incredible to have been made up."

So begins this fast-paced thriller that tells the story of the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth and gives a day-by-day account of the wild chase to find this killer and his accomplices. Based on James Swanson's bestselling adult book MANHUNT: THE 12-DAY CHASE FOR LINCOLN'S KILLER, this young people's version is an accessible look at the assassination of a president, and shows readers Abraham Lincoln the man, the father, the husband, the friend, and how his death impacted those closest to him.

]]> 194 James L. Swanson 0545204704 Brooke 0 to-read 3.83 2009 Chasing Lincoln's Killer
author: James L. Swanson
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Uncle John's Strange and Scary Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!]]> 963811 144 Bathroom Readers' Institute 1592233856 Brooke 0 to-read 4.04 2005 Uncle John's Strange and Scary Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!
author: Bathroom Readers' Institute
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing]]> 53238858 Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You? provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand.

“Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships. It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives.�—Oprah Winfrey

This book is going to change the way you see your life.

Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question.

Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?� to “What happened to you?�

Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own past, understanding through experience the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma and adversity at a young age. In conversation throughout the book, she and Dr. Perry focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future—opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.]]> 304 Bruce D. Perry 1250223180 Brooke 0 to-read 4.43 2021 What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
author: Bruce D. Perry
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Project Hail Mary 54906250 An impossible mission.
An ally he never imagined.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it's up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery-and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he's got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]> 549 Andy Weir Brooke 4 4.57 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/08
date added: 2022/05/08
shelves:
review:
I enjoyed this book. Andy Weir has a knack for making science and math interesting to those of us who aren't strong in either. His creativity is truly a gift. I definitely preferred The Martian; this book got a little too unrealistic for me. I look forward to Weir's next adventure.
]]> <![CDATA[Eyewitness To Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton (A Political History and Leadership Bestseller)]]> 46124 Few Americans have observed the ups and downs of presidential leadership more closely over the past thirty years -- from Nixon to Clinton and Watergate to Whitewater -- than David Gergen. A White House adviser to four presidents, both Republican and Democrat, he offers a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of their struggles to exercise power and draws from them key lessons for leaders of the future. Taking us inside the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, Gergen reflects on everything from why Nixon was the best global strategist among recent presidents to how the Bill-and-Hillary seesaw rocked the White House during Clinton's tenure as president.
Gergen argues that, as the twenty-first century begins, our success as a country will depend heavily upon the success of a new generation in power. Drawing upon his many experiences in the White House, he offers seven vital elements for future leaders. What they must have, he says, are inner mastery; a central, compelling purpose rooted in moral values; a capacity to persuade; skills in working within the system; a fast start; a strong, effective team; and a passion that inspires others to keep the flame alive.]]> 384 David Gergen 0743203224 Brooke 0 to-read 3.90 2000 Eyewitness To Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton (A Political History and Leadership Bestseller)
author: David Gergen
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Island of Missing Trees 56587382 A rich, magical new book on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love.

Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited -- her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.

A moving, beautifully written and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak’s best work yet.]]> 354 Elif Shafak 0241434998 Brooke 3 4.13 2021 The Island of Missing Trees
author: Elif Shafak
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/04/09
shelves:
review:
This book had some beautiful writing, but ultimately I didn't connect with the story. Truthfully, I found it boring and a struggle to finish. I did listen to it; perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I read it.
]]> God and His Demons 7281520 284 Michael Parenti 1616141778 Brooke 0 to-read 3.88 2010 God and His Demons
author: Michael Parenti
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/03/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy]]> 32494938 A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on mathematical modeling—a pervasive new force in society that threatens to undermine democracy and widen inequality.
Ěý
We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated. But as Cathy O’Neil reveals in this shocking book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can’t get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his race or neighborhood), he’s then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a “toxic cocktail for democracy.� Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.
Ěý
Tracing the arc of a person’s life, from college to retirement, O’Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society. Models that score teachers and students, sort resumes, grant (or deny) loans, evaluate workers, target voters, set parole, and monitor our health—all have pernicious feedback loops. They don’t simply describe reality, as proponents claim, they change reality, by expanding or limiting the opportunities people have. O’Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for how their algorithms are being used. But in the end, it’s up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives. This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions, uncover the truth, and demand change.]]> 7 Cathy O'Neil Brooke 0 to-read 3.84 2016 Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
author: Cathy O'Neil
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/02/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 25597060
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.]]> 416 Liu Cixin Brooke 0 to-read 4.08 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/02/04
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz]]> 51187948
On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London.

Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."--]]> 546 Erik Larson 038534872X Brooke 5 4.30 2020 The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
author: Erik Larson
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/02/03
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review:
Full disclosure, I am a huge fan of Erik Larson's writing. He makes history read like a novel. This book was no different. While I have heard and read much of the early days of WWII, I still thoroughly enjoyed this book. It made me want to read even more books on the era, a testament to its greatness. Churchill certainly was no perfect man (the Irish can attest), but he was perfect for the moment. He kept democracy alive.
]]> Eleni 224285
Nicholas Gage joined his father in Massachusetts at the age of nine and grew up to become a top New York Times investigative reporter, honing his skills with one thought in mind: to return to Greece and uncover the one story he cared about most: the story of his mother.

Eleni takes you into the heart a village destroyed in the name of ideals and into the soul of a truly heroic woman.]]> 630 Nicholas Gage 0345410432 Brooke 5 4.42 1983 Eleni
author: Nicholas Gage
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/02/03
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I read this book as a teenager (a recommendation of my mother's). While I may know longer remember the details, the indelible feeling this book left with me lives on today. Even as a kid I recognized its brilliant writing. Just writing this review makes me realize I need to read it again. I hope it lives up to my memories.
]]> <![CDATA[Remembrance of Earth's Past: The Three-Body Trilogy (Remembrance of Earth's Past, #1-3)]]> 34569357 This discounted ebundle includes: The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death’s End

"Wildly imaginative, really interesting." —President Barack Obama

The Three-Body trilogy by New York Times bestseller Cixin Liu keeps you riveted with high-octane action, political intrigue, and unexpected twists in this saga of first contact with the extraterrestrial Trisolaris.


The Three-Body Problem � An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

The Dark Forest � In The Dark Forest, the aliens' human collaborators may have been defeated, but the presence of the sophons, the subatomic particles that allow Trisolaris instant access to all human information remains. Humanity responds with the Wallfacer Project, a daring plan that grants four men enormous resources to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer and sociologist, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead.

Death’s End � Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?

Other Books by Cixin Liu (Translated to English)

The Remembrance of Earth's Past
The Three-Body Problem
The Dark Forest
Death's End

Other Books
Ball Lightning

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

]]> 1884 Liu Cixin Brooke 0 to-read 4.62 2012 Remembrance of Earth's Past: The Three-Body Trilogy (Remembrance of Earth's Past, #1-3)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/02/03
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]]> Eleanor & Park 15745753 "So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"I'm not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "we're 16."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused, then dead."
"I love you," Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"I'm not kidding," he says.
"You should be."

Set over one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.]]> 328 Rainbow Rowell 1250012570 Brooke 4 3.92 2012 Eleanor & Park
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Brooke
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2022/01/27
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]]> Napoleon: A Life 20821092 The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War—winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and theĚýGrand Prix of the Fondation NapoleonĚýĚý

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.

Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.

An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.]]> 976 Andrew Roberts 0670025321 Brooke 0 to-read 4.19 2014 Napoleon: A Life
author: Andrew Roberts
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/24
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]]> American Gods 30165203
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...]]> 635 Neil Gaiman Brooke 3 4.11 2001 American Gods
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2001
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/11/27
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review:
I love Neil Gaiman but I just couldn't get into this one. It was a bit of a struggle to listen to, maybe it would have been better had I actually read it.
]]> American Dirt 45721673
Lydia Quixano PĂ©rez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?]]> 389 Jeanine Cummins Brooke 5 4.52 2020 American Dirt
author: Jeanine Cummins
name: Brooke
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/11/12
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]]>