Oli's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 14 Mar 2025 12:06:12 -0700 60 Oli's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life]]> 13369538
All of us lead two parallel lives: the one we are actively living, and the one we feel we should have had or might yet have. As hard as we try to exist in the moment, the unlived life is an inescapable presence, a shadow at our heels. And this itself can become the story of our lives: an elegy to unmet needs and sacrificed desires. We become haunted by the myth of our own potential, of what it might be that we have in ourselves to be or to do. And this can make of our lives a perpetual falling short.

But what happens if we remove the idea of failure from this equation? With his flair for graceful paradox, the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips suggests that if we accept frustration as a way of outlining what we really want, satisfaction suddenly becomes possible. To crave a life without frustration is to crave a life without the potential to identify and accomplish our desires.

In this elegant, compassionate, and absorbing book, Phillips draws deeply on his own clinical experience as well as on the works of Shakespeare and Freud, of Donald Winnicott and William James, to suggest that missing out, getting away with it, and not getting it are all chapters in our unlived lives--and may be essential to the one fully lived.]]> 224 Adam Phillips 024114387X Oli 0 to-read 3.49 2012 Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
author: Adam Phillips
name: Oli
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> Faust 406373 Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.]]> 503 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0385031149 Oli 4 fiction 3.90 1808 Faust
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Oli
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1808
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: fiction
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]]> Understanding Class 23519696 Leading sociologist examines how different readings of class enrich our understanding of capitalismFew ideas are more contested today than “class.� Some have declared its death, while others insist on its centrality to contemporary capitalism. It is said its relevance is limited to explaining individuals� economic conditions and opportunities, while at the same time argued that it is a structural feature of macro-power relations. In Understanding Class, leading left sociologist Erik Olin Wright interrogates the divergent meanings of this fundamental concept in order to develop a more integrated framework of class analysis. Beginning with the treatment of class in Marx and Weber, proceeding through the writings of Charles Tilly, Thomas Piketty, Guy Standing, and others, and finally examining how class struggle and class compromise play out in contemporary society, Understanding Class provides a compelling view of how to think about the complexity of class in the world today.]]> 272 Erik Olin Wright 1781689210 Oli 4 history, marxism, economics 4.18 2015 Understanding Class
author: Erik Olin Wright
name: Oli
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: history, marxism, economics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction]]> 36669668 482 H.P. Lovecraft 9897784284 Oli 3 horror, fiction 4.21 H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Oli
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: horror, fiction
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]]> <![CDATA[Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1]]> 325785 Capital, one of Marx's major and most influential works, was the product of thirty years close study of the capitalist mode of production in England, the most advanced industrial society of his day. This new translation of Volume One, the only volume to be completed and edited by Marx himself, avoids some of the mistakes that have marred earlier versions and seeks to do justice to the literary qualities of the work. The introduction is by Ernest Mandel, author of Late Capitalism, one of the only comprehensive attempts to develop the theoretical legacy of Capital.]]> 1152 Karl Marx 0140445684 Oli 5 marxism, economics 4.28 1867 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1
author: Karl Marx
name: Oli
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1867
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: marxism, economics
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]]> V. 5809 640 Thomas Pynchon 2020418770 Oli 0 fiction 3.97 1963 V.
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Oli
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: fiction
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]]> <![CDATA[Notebooks: 1936-1947 (New York Review Books Classics)]]> 43203192 Available for the first time, Victor Serge's intimate account of the last decade of his life gives a vivid look into the Franco-Russian revolutionary's life, from his liberation from Stalin's Russia to his "Mexico Years," when he wrote his greatest works.

Victor Serge’sdzٱǴǰprovide an intensely personal account of the last decade ofthe legendary Franco-Russian writer and revolutionary. They evoke Popular FrontFrance, the fall of Paris, the “Surrealist Château� in Marseilles, and the flight to theNew World. They are replete with vivid life portraits (Gide, Breton, Saint-Exupéry,Lévi-Strauss), and moving evocations of fallen revolutionary comrades (Gramsci,Nin, Radek, Trotsky) and of doomed colleagues among the Soviet writers (Fedin,Pilniak, Mandelstam, Gorky).

Serge’s Mexican notebooks provide a fascinating account of his exploration of pre-Columbian cultures and portray political and cultural figures in Mexico City, fromthe exiles� psychoanalytic circle, to painters like Dr. Atl and Leonora Carringtonand poets like Octavio Paz. These writings paint a vivid self-portrait and conveythe intense loneliness Serge also felt in these years, cut off as he was from Europe,deprived of a political platform, prey to angina attacks, and anxiously in love witha younger woman.]]> 731 Victor Serge 1681372711 Oli 0 to-read 4.25 1985 Notebooks: 1936-1947 (New York Review Books Classics)
author: Victor Serge
name: Oli
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> The Golden Notebook 24100 640 Doris Lessing 006093140X Oli 0 to-read 3.79 1962 The Golden Notebook
author: Doris Lessing
name: Oli
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital]]> 92487549
Despite insoluble contradictions, intense volatility and fierce resistance, the crisis-ridden capitalism of the 21st century lingers on. To understand capital’s paradoxical expansion and entrenchment amidst crisis and unrest, Mute Compulsion offers a novel theory of the historically unique forms of abstract and impersonal power set in motion by the subjection of social life to the profit imperative.

Building on a critical reconstruction of Karl Marx’s unfinished critique of political economy and a wide range of contemporary Marxist theory, philosopher Søren Mau sets out to explain how the logic of capital tightens its stranglehold on the life of society by constantly remoulding the material conditions of social reproduction.

In the course of doing so, Mau intervenes in classical and contemporary debates about the value form, crisis theory, biopolitics, social reproduction, humanism, logistics, agriculture, metabolism, the body, competition, technology and relative surplus populations.]]> 353 Søren Mau 1839763507 Oli 0 marxism 4.42 2023 Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital
author: Søren Mau
name: Oli
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/18
shelves: marxism
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]]> <![CDATA[Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy]]> 32564819 Reveals the ideal of a sustainable ecosocialist world in Marx's writings

Karl Marx, author of what is perhaps the world's most resounding and significant critique of bourgeois political economy, has frequently been described as a "Promethean." According to critics, Marx held an inherent belief in the necessity of humans to dominate the natural world, in order to end material want and create a new world of fulfillment and abundance--a world where nature is mastered, not by anarchic capitalism, but by a planned socialist economy. Understandably, this perspective has come under sharp attack, not only from mainstream environmentalists but also from ecosocialists, many of whom reject Marx outright.



Kohei Saito's Karl Marx's Ecosocialism lays waste to accusations of Marx's ecological shortcomings. Delving into Karl Marx's central works, as well as his natural scientific notebooks--published only recently and still being translated--Saito also builds on the works of scholars such as John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, to argue that Karl Marx actually saw the environmental crisis embedded in capitalism. "It is not possible to comprehend the full scope of [Marx's] critique of political economy," Saito writes, "if one ignores its ecological dimension."

Saito's book is crucial today, as we face unprecedented ecological catastrophes--crises that cannot be adequately addressed without a sound theoretical framework. Karl Marx's Ecosocialism shows us that Marx has given us more than we once thought, that we can now come closer to finishing Marx's critique, and to building a sustainable ecosocialist world.]]> 368 Kōhei Saitō 1583676414 Oli 0 to-read 4.01 2017 Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy
author: Kōhei Saitō
name: Oli
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism]]> 60473842 300 Kōhei Saitō 1108933548 Oli 0 to-read 3.94 Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism
author: Kōhei Saitō
name: Oli
average rating: 3.94
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]]> The Lover 275 117 Marguerite Duras Oli 0 all-time-faves, sex-and-love 3.79 1984 The Lover
author: Marguerite Duras
name: Oli
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> Moby-Dick or, The Whale 153747 "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."

So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

This edition of Moby-Dick, which reproduces the definitive text of the novel, includes invaluable explanatory notes, along with maps, illustrations, and a glossary of nautical terms.]]> 720 Herman Melville 0142437247 Oli 0 3.53 1851 Moby-Dick or, The Whale
author: Herman Melville
name: Oli
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1851
rating: 0
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]]> Salambo 221599 416 Gustave Flaubert 3492230172 Oli 0 3.67 1862 Salambo
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Oli
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1862
rating: 0
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shelves: currently-reading, history, fantasy
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]]> High-Rise 12331767 208 J.G. Ballard 0871404028 Oli 0 fiction, sci-fi 3.61 1975 High-Rise
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Oli
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/14
date added: 2023/06/14
shelves: fiction, sci-fi
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]]> The Baron in the Trees 9804
Cosimo di Rondó, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life. He adapts efficiently to an existence in the forest canopy—he hunts, sows crops, plays games with earth-bound friends, fights forest fires, solves engineering problems, and even manages to have love affairs. From his perch in the trees, Cosimo sees the Age of Enlightenment pass by, and a new century dawn.

The Baron in the Trees exemplifies Calvino’s peerless ability to weave tales that sparkle with enchantment. This new English rendering by acclaimed translator Ann Goldstein breathes new life into one of Calvino’s most beloved works.]]> 217 Italo Calvino Oli 0 fantasy 4.12 1957 The Baron in the Trees
author: Italo Calvino
name: Oli
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/14
date added: 2023/06/14
shelves: fantasy
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]]> The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 37380 359 Carson McCullers 0618084746 Oli 0 us-south 3.99 1940 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
author: Carson McCullers
name: Oli
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/15
shelves: us-south
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]]> What IS Sex? 36304803 Zupancic argues that sexuality is at the point of a "short circuit" between ontology and epistemology. Sexuality and knowledge are structured around a fundamental negativity, which unites them at the point of the unconscious. The unconscious (as linked to sexuality) is the concept of an inherent link between being and knowledge in their very negativity.

]]> 164 Alenka Zupančič Oli 0 sex-and-love, psychoanalysis 4.33 What IS Sex?
author: Alenka Zupančič
name: Oli
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/15
shelves: sex-and-love, psychoanalysis
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]]> <![CDATA[Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation]]> 55566309
Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.

Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an “anti-state state� that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.

Edited with an introduction by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano.]]> 512 Ruth Wilson Gilmore 1839761709 Oli 0 4.50 Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation
author: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
name: Oli
average rating: 4.50
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]]> <![CDATA[Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)]]> 59463840
“Identity politics� is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests.

Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class� vs. “race.� By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.]]> 157 Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò 1642596884 Oli 0 3.99 2022 Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)
author: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
name: Oli
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Marxism and the Critique of Value]]> 22239052 454 Neil Larsen 0989549704 Oli 0 to-read 4.75 2014 Marxism and the Critique of Value
author: Neil Larsen
name: Oli
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/18
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]]> <![CDATA[A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living (Psychoanalysis and Culture)]]> 6495045 180 Mari Ruti 1438427158 Oli 0 to-read 4.31 2009 A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living (Psychoanalysis and Culture)
author: Mari Ruti
name: Oli
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877]]> 132913 New Republic) made history when it was originally published in 1988. It redefined how Reconstruction was viewed by historians and people everywhere in its chronicling of how Americans -- black and white -- responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) has since gone on to become the classic work on the wrenching post-Civil War period -- an era whose legacy reverberates still today in the United States.]]> 690 Eric Foner 0060937165 Oli 0 history, us-south 4.18 1988 Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877
author: Eric Foner
name: Oli
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: history, us-south
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]]> <![CDATA[Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350]]> 171369
Janet Abu-Lughod's solution to this problem, in this highly influential work, is that Before European Hegemony, a predominantly insular, agrarian world was dominated by groups of mercantile city-states that traded with one another on equal terms across a series of interlocking areas of influence. In this reading of history, China and Japan, the kingdoms of India, Muslim caliphates, the Byzantine Empire and European maritime republics alike enjoyed no absolute dominance over their neighbours and commercial partners - and the egalitarian international trading network that they built endured until European advances in weaponry and ship types introduced radical instability to the system.

Abu-Lughod's portrait of a more balanced world is a masterpiece of synthesis driven by one highly creative idea: her world system of interlocking spheres of influence quite literally connected masses of evidence together in new ways. A triumph of fine critical thinking.]]> 464 Janet L. Abu-Lughod 0195067746 Oli 5 4.05 1989 Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
author: Janet L. Abu-Lughod
name: Oli
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: history, geography, all-time-faves
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]]> Capital and Community 18334883 399 Jacques Camatte 1466442557 Oli 0 3.79 2011 Capital and Community
author: Jacques Camatte
name: Oli
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: critical-theory, ecology, marxism
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]]> White Noise 28251250
White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra­modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

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

Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition]]> 320 Don DeLillo 0143129554 Oli 0 fiction 3.88 1985 White Noise
author: Don DeLillo
name: Oli
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: fiction
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]]> <![CDATA[Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany]]> 15904297 Delray's New Moon. Topics cover civil rights, road trips in Baja, and Elvis' s visits to his aging mother. Also tributes by authors such as Donna Tartt and Ron Rosenbaum.]]> 380 Charles Portis 1935106503 Oli 0 fiction 3.99 2012 Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany
author: Charles Portis
name: Oli
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> Gringos 52289 320 Charles Portis 1585670936 Oli 0 fiction 3.92 1991 Gringos
author: Charles Portis
name: Oli
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> Norwood 48287 190 Charles Portis 0879517034 Oli 5 3.84 1966 Norwood
author: Charles Portis
name: Oli
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1966
rating: 5
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shelves: all-time-faves, fiction, us-south
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]]> The Dog of the South 938212 246 Charles Portis 0879519312 Oli 0 fiction, us-south 3.83 1979 The Dog of the South
author: Charles Portis
name: Oli
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: fiction, us-south
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]]> Masters of Atlantis 52290 Codex Pappus said to be the sacred Gnomonic text. He expands the noble brotherhood, survives scandalous schism, bids for governor of Indiana, and sees Gnomons gather in East Texas mobile home. This is an America of misfits and con men, oddballs and innocents.]]> 248 Charles Portis 1585670219 Oli 0 fiction 3.72 1985 Masters of Atlantis
author: Charles Portis
name: Oli
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: fiction
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]]> L'Assomoir 40875362 L'Assommoir (1877) is the story of a woman's struggle for happiness in working-class Paris. At the center of the story stands Gervaise, who starts her own laundry and for a time makes a success of it. But her husband soon squanders her earnings in the Assommoir, a local drinking spot, and gradually the pair sink into poverty and squalor. L'Assommoir was a contemporary bestseller, outraged conservative critics, and launched a passionate debate about the legitimate scope of modern literature. This new translation captures not only the brutality but the pathos of its characters' lives.]]> 421 Émile Zola 2363078454 Oli 0 fiction 3.91 1876 L'Assomoir
author: Émile Zola
name: Oli
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1876
rating: 0
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]]> Germinal 28407
Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, in debt, and unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.

•New translation
� Includes introduction, suggestions for further reading, filmography, chronology, explanatory notes, and glossary]]> 592 Émile Zola 0140447423 Oli 0 fiction 4.17 1885 Germinal
author: Émile Zola
name: Oli
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1885
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
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]]> ’Salem’s Lot 11590 Librarian's Note: Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0450031063

Thousands of miles away from the small township of 'Salem's Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to 'Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.]]> 483 Stephen King 0450031063 Oli 0 fiction, horror 4.06 1975 ’Salem’s Lot
author: Stephen King
name: Oli
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: fiction, horror
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]]> Under the Dome 6320534
When food, electricity and water run short, the normal rules of society are changed. A new and more sinister social order develops, Dale Barbara, a young Iraq veteran, teams up with a handful of intrepid citizens to fight against the corruption that is sweeping through the town and to try to discover the source of the Dome before it is too late...]]> 1074 Stephen King 1439148503 Oli 0 fiction, sci-fi 3.92 2009 Under the Dome
author: Stephen King
name: Oli
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: fiction, sci-fi
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]]> <![CDATA[Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944]]> 491063 0 Franz Leopold Neumann 0882548441 Oli 0 to-read 4.32 1942 Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944
author: Franz Leopold Neumann
name: Oli
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Story of the Volsungs: Völsunga Saga]]> 30683768 152 William Morris 1534626522 Oli 4 mythology, fiction 3.95 1000 The Story of the Volsungs: Völsunga Saga
author: William Morris
name: Oli
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1000
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/13
date added: 2021/11/11
shelves: mythology, fiction
review:

]]> No Country for Old Men 12497 Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN 9780375706677

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

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

As Moss tries to evade his pursuers–in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives–McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.
No Country for Old Men is a triumph.]]> 309 Cormac McCarthy Oli 0 to-read 4.15 2005 No Country for Old Men
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Oli
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/05/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Fisherman 29901930
Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.]]> 266 John Langan 1939905214 Oli 0 to-read 3.86 2016 The Fisherman
author: John Langan
name: Oli
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/05/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Imago Sequence and Other Stories]]> 911954 To the long tradition of eldritch horror pioneered and refined by writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti comes Laird Barron, an author whose literary voice invokes the grotesque, the devilish, and the perverse with rare intensity and astonishing craftsmanship.

Collected here for the first time are nine terrifying tales of cosmic horror, including the World Fantasy Award-nominated novella “The Imago Sequence,� the International Horror Guild Award-nominated “Proboscis,� and the never-before-published “Procession of the Black Sloth.� Together, these stories, each a masterstroke of craft and imaginative irony, form a shocking cycle of distorted evolution, encroaching chaos, and ravenous insectoid hive-minds hidden just beneath the seemingly benign surface of the Earth.

With colorful protagonists, including an over-the-hill CIA agent, a grizzled Pinkerton detective, and a failed actor accompanying a group of bounty hunters, Barron’s stories are resonant and authentic, featuring vulnerable, hard-boiled tough guys attempting to stand against the stygian wasteland of night. Throughout the collection, themes of desolation, fear, and masculine identity are played out against the backdrop of an indifferent, devouring cosmos.]]> 239 Laird Barron 1597800880 Oli 0 to-read 4.01 2007 The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
author: Laird Barron
name: Oli
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution]]> 24121441 146 Oli 0 to-read 4.31 The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution
author: Group of International Communists of Holland
name: Oli
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Surfacing 46755 Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec.Setting out with her lover and another young couple, she soon finds herself captivated by the isolated setting, where a marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just beneath the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices. Surfacing is a work permeated with an aura of suspense, complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose.Here is a rich mine of ideas from an extraordinary writer about contemporary life and nature, families and marriage, and about women fragmented... and becoming whole.

]]> 199 Margaret Atwood 0385491050 Oli 0 to-read 3.47 1972 Surfacing
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Oli
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)]]> 46756 Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.]]> 389 Margaret Atwood Oli 0 to-read 4.01 2003 Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Oli
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life]]> 36906204


Theoretically rigorous and lucidly written, Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings is a trenchant critique of contemporary gender relations. Refuting the idea that we live in a postfeminist world where gender inequalities have been transcended, Ruti describes how neoliberal heteropatriarchy has transformed itself in subtle and stealthy, and therefore all the more insidious, ways. Mobilizing Michel Foucault's concept of biopolitics, Jacques Lacan's account of desire, and Lauren Berlant's notion of cruel optimism, she analyzes the rationalization of intimacy, the persistence of gender stereotypes, and the pornification of heterosexual culture. Ruti shines a spotlight on the depression, anxiety, frustration, and disenchantment that frequently lie beneath our society's sugarcoated mythologies of self-fulfillment, romantic satisfaction, and professional success, speaking to all who are concerned about the emotional costs of the pressure-cooker ethos of our age.]]> 257 Mari Ruti 0231546769 Oli 3
I was repeatedly frustrated by her politics, though. Her critique of capitalism is obviously coming from spending the last however many years in the academy, and she's very much a liberal. I think if the book had stayed in the realm of relationships, sexuality, gender liberation, and expanded on those it would have been stronger and more focused. As is, there's a lot that gives away what her thinking is like politically. (overuse of the word 'neoliberalism' to shy away from an anticapitalist critique, garden variety anticommunism [literally pulling out the "if you're communist why do you use a cell phone" line, though hilariously about a hotel room at a prestigious conference] and perhaps worst dismissing the need for revolutionary change with the alternative that social change will happen if we all just have the right concepts and think about things the right way)

I will say that I plan on checking out Ruti's other work, since I think this is one of the more overtly political texts and she has got me thinking about gender and sex in fresh ways that I find valuable, and I'd love to continue exploring that with less of the somewhat confused politics thrown in.]]> 4.09 2018 Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life
author: Mari Ruti
name: Oli
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2021/03/31
date added: 2021/03/31
shelves: psychoanalysis, critical-theory, feminism
review:
This book is great to read for getting into lacanians from a more casual perspective outside of the academic sphere. She presents concepts like ontological lack, the impossibility of ideal phallic power, etc in a fresh and contemporary way through rehabilitating freud's maligned concept of penis envy from a feminist perspective.

I was repeatedly frustrated by her politics, though. Her critique of capitalism is obviously coming from spending the last however many years in the academy, and she's very much a liberal. I think if the book had stayed in the realm of relationships, sexuality, gender liberation, and expanded on those it would have been stronger and more focused. As is, there's a lot that gives away what her thinking is like politically. (overuse of the word 'neoliberalism' to shy away from an anticapitalist critique, garden variety anticommunism [literally pulling out the "if you're communist why do you use a cell phone" line, though hilariously about a hotel room at a prestigious conference] and perhaps worst dismissing the need for revolutionary change with the alternative that social change will happen if we all just have the right concepts and think about things the right way)

I will say that I plan on checking out Ruti's other work, since I think this is one of the more overtly political texts and she has got me thinking about gender and sex in fresh ways that I find valuable, and I'd love to continue exploring that with less of the somewhat confused politics thrown in.
]]> <![CDATA[Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict (Field Notes)]]> 36376765
Urgent and unsparing, this book opens our eyes to America’s new heart of darkness. Driven by an ever-expanding socioeconomic crisis, America’s class structure is recomposing itself in new geographies of race, poverty, and production. The center has fallen. Riots ricochet from city to city led by no one in particular. Anarchists smash financial centers as a resurgent far right builds power in the countryside. Drawing on his direct experience of recent popular unrest, from the Occupy movement to the wave of riots and blockades that began in Ferguson, Missouri, Phil A. Neel provides a close-up view of this landscape in all its grim but captivating detail. Inaugurating the new Field Notes series, published in association with the Brooklyn Rail , Neel’s book tells the intimate story of a life lived within America’s hinterland.]]> 192 Phil A. Neel 1780239025 Oli 4 geography, sociology 4.19 2018 Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict (Field Notes)
author: Phil A. Neel
name: Oli
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2021/03/31
date added: 2021/03/31
shelves: geography, sociology
review:
Great analysis of the geographic trends capital is taking in the 21st century if you can ignore the ex-occupy guy riot porn prose
]]> <![CDATA[Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era]]> 8147859 947 James M. McPherson 0199743908 Oli 0 to-read 4.60 1988 Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
author: James M. McPherson
name: Oli
average rating: 4.60
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bloodchild and Other Stories 60930
Appearing in print for the first time, "Amnesty" is a story of a woman named Noah who works to negotiate the tense and co-dependent relationship between humans and a species of invaders. Also new to this collection is "The Book of Martha" which asks: What would you do if God granted you the ability—and responsibility—to save humanity from itself?
Like all of Octavia Butler’s best writing, these works of the imagination are parables of the contemporary world. She proves constant in her vigil, an unblinking pessimist hoping to be proven wrong, and one of contemporary literature’s strongest voices.

Bloodchild
The evening and the morning and the night
Near of kin
Speech sounds
Crossover
Positive obsession
Furor scribendi
Amnesty
The Book of Martha]]> 214 Octavia E. Butler 1583226982 Oli 0 to-read 4.35 1995 Bloodchild and Other Stories
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Oli
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #3)]]> 9804779 533 Anne Rice Oli 0 to-read 3.96 1994 Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #3)
author: Anne Rice
name: Oli
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #1)]]> 11901
Demonstrating, once again, her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches—a family given to poetry and to incest, to murder and to philosophy; a family that, over the ages, is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being.

On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking... and The Witching Hour begins.

It begins in our time with a rescue at sea.Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life.He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.

As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV.An intricate tale of evil unfolds—an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first "witch," Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher... a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.

From the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien—the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers—provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing.And always—through peril and escape, tension and release—there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death.With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax.]]> 1207 Anne Rice 0099471426 Oli 4 horror, us-south 4.11 1990 The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #1)
author: Anne Rice
name: Oli
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2021/03/14
date added: 2021/03/14
shelves: horror, us-south
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Feet of Clay (Discworld, #19; City Watch, #3)]]> 34527
But for Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City Watch, that's only the start...

There's treason in the air.
A crime has happened.

He's not only got to find out whodunit, but howdunit too. He's not even sure what they dun. But as soon as he knows what the questions are, he's going to want some answers.]]> 411 Terry Pratchett 0552153257 Oli 3 fantasy 4.31 1996 Feet of Clay (Discworld, #19; City Watch, #3)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Oli
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2021/03/08
date added: 2021/03/08
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Second Foundation (Foundation, #3)]]> 29580 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803735 Oli 4 sci-fi 4.27 1953 Second Foundation (Foundation, #3)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Oli
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at: 2021/03/05
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi
review:

]]> The Well at the World's End 3218173 562 William Morris 0345244826 Oli 5 fantasy, all-time-faves 3.80 1896 The Well at the World's End
author: William Morris
name: Oli
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1896
rating: 5
read at: 2021/03/05
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fantasy, all-time-faves
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)]]> 13642
Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.]]> 183 Ursula K. Le Guin Oli 4 4.02 1968 A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Oli
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The Prophet 2547 The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.

The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.]]> 127 Kahlil Gibran 000100039X Oli 4 philosophy, fiction 4.27 1923 The Prophet
author: Kahlil Gibran
name: Oli
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1923
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: philosophy, fiction
review:

]]> Dune (Dune, #1) 234225 Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the "spice" melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for...

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul's family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.]]> 604 Frank Herbert 0340839937 Oli 4 sci-fi, fiction 4.21 1965 Dune (Dune, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Oli
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dune Messiah (Dune Chronicles, #2)]]> 106
Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known—and feared—as the man christened Muad’Dib. As Emperor of the known universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremen, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he displaced when he assumed the throne—and a conspiracy conducted within his own sphere of influence.

And even as House Atreides begins to crumble around him from the machinations of his enemies, the true threat to Paul comes to his lover, Chani, and the unborn heir to his family’s dynasty...]]> 331 Frank Herbert 0441172695 Oli 3 sci-fi, fiction 3.88 1969 Dune Messiah (Dune Chronicles, #2)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Oli
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Oli 4 horror, fiction 4.15 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Oli
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: horror, fiction
review:

]]> The Stranger 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Oli 4 philosophy, fiction 4.04 1942 The Stranger
author: Albert Camus
name: Oli
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: philosophy, fiction
review:

]]> Foundation (Foundation, #1) 29579 The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.]]> 244 Isaac Asimov 0553803719 Oli 4 sci-fi, fiction 4.18 1951 Foundation (Foundation, #1)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Oli
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> The Martian Chronicles 76778
The Martian Chronicles tells the story of humanity’s repeated attempts to colonize the red planet. The first men were few. Most succumbed to a disease they called the Great Loneliness when they saw their home planet dwindle to the size of a fist. They felt they had never been born. Those few that survived found no welcome on Mars. The shape-changing Martians thought they were native lunatics and duly locked them up.

But more rockets arrived from Earth, and more, piercing the hallucinations projected by the Martians. People brought their old prejudices with them � and their desires and fantasies, tainted dreams. These were soon inhabited by the strange native beings, with their caged flowers and birds of flame.

Contents:
Rocket Summer
Ylla
The Summer Night
The Earth Men
The Taxpayer
The Third Expedition
-And the Moon Be Still As Bright
The Settlers
The Green Morning
The Locusts
Night Meeting
The Shore
Interim
The Musicians
Way in the Middle of the Air
The Naming of Names
Usher II
The Old Ones
The Martian
The Luggage Store
The Off Season
The Watchers
The Silent Towns
The Long Years
There Will Come Soft Rains
The Million Year Picnic]]> 182 Ray Bradbury 0553278223 Oli 5 sci-fi, fiction 4.16 1950 The Martian Chronicles
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Oli
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1950
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> Nostromo 115476 ]]> 336 Joseph Conrad 0486424529 Oli 3 fiction 3.81 1904 Nostromo
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Oli
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1904
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> A Collapse of Horses 25330189
In these stories, Brian Evenson unsettles us with the everyday and the extraordinary—the terror of living with the knowledge of all we cannot know.]]> 220 Brian Evenson 1566894131 Oli 4 horror, fiction 4.02 2016 A Collapse of Horses
author: Brian Evenson
name: Oli
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: horror, fiction
review:
Most of the horror in these stories revolves around micro-alienation: between person and small group, or between two people. In this book, Evenson develops a horror style which is uniquely chilling in the contemporary period. Good luck sleeping also.
]]> <![CDATA[The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard]]> 70239 First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. His tales of the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology, as viewed through a strong microscope, were eerily prescient and now provide greater perspective on our computer-dominated culture. Ballard's voice and vision have long served as a font of inspiration for today's cyber-punks, the authors and futurist who brought the information age into the mainstream.
]]> 302 J.G. Ballard 0312278446 Oli 4 sci-fi, fiction 4.19 1978 The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Oli
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2019/03/07
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) 77507 In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research and cutting-edge science in the first of a trilogy chronicling the colonization of Mars.

For eons, sandstorms have swept the desolate landscape. For centuries, Mars has beckoned humans to conquer its hostile climate. Now, in 2026, a group of 100 colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers and Arkady Bogdanov lead a terraforming mission. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness. For others it offers an opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. For the genetic alchemists, it presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life and death. The colonists orbit giant satellite mirrors to reflect light to the surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth. Massive tunnels, kilometers deep, will be drilled into the mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves and friendships will form and fall to pieces—for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in evolution, creating a world in its entirety. It shows a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision.]]> 572 Kim Stanley Robinson 0553560735 Oli 4 sci-fi, fiction 3.86 1992 Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Oli
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/05
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]> 36402034 258 Philip K. Dick Oli 3 sci-fi, fiction 4.16 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Oli
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2019/02/20
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation]]> 39863330 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST ANTHOLOGY

Sixteen short stories from China's groundbreaking science fiction writers, edited and translated by award-winning author Ken Liu.

In Hugo award-winner Liu Cixin's ‘Moonlight,� a man is contacted by three future versions of himself, each trying to save their world from destruction. Hao Jingfang’s ‘The New Year Train� sees 1,500 passengers go missing on a train that vanishes into space. In the title story by Tang Fei, a young girl is shown how the stars can reveal the future.

In addition, three essays explore the history and rise of Chinese science fiction publishing, contemporary Chinese fandom, and how the growing interest in Chinese SF has impacted writers who had long laboured in obscurity.

By turns dazzling, melancholy and thought-provoking, Broken Stars celebrates the vibrancy and diversity of SFF voices emerging from China.

Stories include:
“Goodnight, Melancholy� by Xia Jia
“The Snow of Jinyang� by Zhang Ran
“Broken Stars� by Tang Fei
“Submarines� by Han Song
“Salinger and the Koreans� by Han Song
“Under a Dangling Sky� by Cheng Jingbo
“What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear� by Baoshu
“The New Year Train� by Hao Jingfang
“The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales� by Fei Dao
“Moonlight� by Liu Cixin
“The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge" by Anna Wu
“The First Emperor’s Games� by Ma Boyong
“Reflection� by Gu Shi
“The Brain Box� by Regina Kanyu Wang
“Coming of the Light� by Chen Qiufan
“A History of Future Illnesses� by Chen Qiufan

Essays:
“A Brief Introduction to Chinese Science Fiction and Fandom,� by Regina Kanyu Wang,
“A New Continent for China Scholars: Chinese Science Fiction Studies� by Mingwei Song
“Science Fiction: Embarrassing No More� by Fei Dao

For more Chinese SF in translation, check out Invisible Planets.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 480 Ken Liu 1250297664 Oli 4 sci-fi, fiction 3.84 2019 Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
author: Ken Liu
name: Oli
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/02
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories]]> 41888678 208 Brian Evenson 1566895480 Oli 4 horror, fiction 3.88 2019 Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories
author: Brian Evenson
name: Oli
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/18
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: horror, fiction
review:

]]> Home 13152998
Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he's hated all his life. As Frank revisits his memories from childhood and the war that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again.

A deeply moving novel about an apparently defeated man finding his manhood - and his home.]]> 147 Toni Morrison 0307594165 Oli 4 fiction 3.81 2012 Home
author: Toni Morrison
name: Oli
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Paradise Rot 39216527 A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery

Jo is in a strange new country for university, and having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive. Jo’s sensitivity, and all her senses, become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, and dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.

This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval, presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.]]> 160 Jenny Hval Oli 3 fiction 3.49 2009 Paradise Rot
author: Jenny Hval
name: Oli
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> The Brothers Karamazov 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Oli 4 modernist, fiction 4.36 1880 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Oli
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1880
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: modernist, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)]]> 12749 In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann’s Way.]]> 468 Marcel Proust 0142437964 Oli 5 4.12 1913 Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Oli
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1913
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: all-time-faves, modernist, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories]]> 655
Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time. In the early story 'Family Happiness', Tolstoy explores courtship and marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In 'The Kreutzer Sonata' he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown, in 'The Devil' a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation, and, in perhaps the finest of all, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality.

Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 1840224533 here.]]> 304 Leo Tolstoy 0451528808 Oli 4 modernist, fiction 4.13 1886 The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Oli
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1886
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: modernist, fiction
review:

]]> Between the World and Me 25489625 “This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.�

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,� a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.]]> 152 Ta-Nehisi Coates Oli 1 black-radicals 4.40 2015 Between the World and Me
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Oli
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2015
rating: 1
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date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: black-radicals
review:

]]> Anna Karenina 152
«Nos capítulos iniciais de Anna Karénina, somos conduzidos, uma e outra vez, a um sentido de analogia musical. Há efeitos de contraponto e harmonia no desenvolvimento das principais tramas do “prelúdio Oblonski� (o acidente na estação ferroviária, a zombadora discussão sobre o divórcio entre Vronski e a baronesa Chilton, o deslumbramento do fogo vermelho diante dos olhos de Anna). O método de Tolstoi é polifónico; mas as harmonias principais desen- volvem-se com uma tremenda força e amplitude. As técnicas musicais e linguísticas não podem comparar-se de um modo exato. Mas como poderíamos elucidar de outro modo o sentimento de que as novelas de Tolstoi surgem de um princípio interior de ordem e vitalidade, enquanto as dos escritores menos importantes parecem alinhavadas?»

«Anna Karénina morre no mundo do romance; mas cada vez que lemos o livro ela ressuscita, e mesmo depois de o termos acabado adquire outra vida na nossa recordação. Em cada personagem literária existe algo da Fénix imortal. Através das vidas perduráveis das suas personagens, a própria existência de Tolstoi teve a sua eternidade.» [George Steiner, Tolstoi ou Dostoievski]]]> 960 Leo Tolstoy Oli 5 3.96 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Oli
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1878
rating: 5
read at: 2019/08/29
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: modernist, all-time-faves, fiction
review:

]]> Wuthering Heights 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë Oli 5 3.89 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: Oli
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 5
read at: 2019/09/10
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: modernist, fiction, all-time-faves
review:

]]> Frankenstein: The 1818 Text 35031085 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780143131847.

Mary Shelley's seminal novel of the scientist whose creation becomes a monster.

This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.]]> 260 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 0143131842 Oli 4 horror, modernist, fiction 4.02 1818 Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Oli
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1818
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/24
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: horror, modernist, fiction
review:

]]> The Open Curtain 146770


When Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school project, he runs across a series of articles from the 1902 New York Times chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young. Delving deeply into the Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice used in the murders, Rudd, along with his newly discovered half-brother, Lael, becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic effects of this violent, antique ritual.


As the past and the present become an increasingly tangled knot, Rudd is found at the scene of a multiple murder at a remote campsite with minor injuries and few memories. Lyndi, the daughter of the victims, tries to help Rudd recover his memory and, together, they find a strength unique to survivors of terrible tragedies. But Rudd, desperate to protect Lyndi and unable to let the past be still, tries to manipulate their Mormon wedding ceremony to trick the priests (and God) by giving himself and Lyndi new secret names—names that match the killer and the victim in the one hundred-year-old murder. The nightmare has just begun . . .

]]> 223 Brian Evenson 1566891884 Oli 3 horror, fiction 3.89 2006 The Open Curtain
author: Brian Evenson
name: Oli
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: horror, fiction
review:

]]> Ball Lightning 32076670 A new standalone military SF adventure from the bestselling and award-winning author of The Three-Body Problem.

When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of mysterious natural phenomena. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station. The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier in particle physics. Although Chen’s quest provides a purpose for his lonely life, his reasons for chasing his elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge.

Ball Lightning, by award-winning Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu, is a fast-paced story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against a push to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences.

The original Chinese version was published in 2004. In 2018 the English version, translated by Joel Martinsen, was published in the US by Tor Books.]]> 384 Liu Cixin 0765394073 Oli 2 sci-fi, fiction 3.76 2004 Ball Lightning
author: Liu Cixin
name: Oli
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> Story of the Eye 436806
Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each new generation. Most recently, the Icelandic pop singer Björk Guðdmundsdóttir cites Story of the Eye as a major inspiration: she made a music video that alludes to Bataille's erotic uses of eggs, and she plans to read an excerpt for an album.

Warning: Story of the Eye is graphically sexual, and is only suited for adults who are not easily offended.]]> 103 Georges Bataille 0872862097 Oli 4 sex-and-love, fiction 3.71 1928 Story of the Eye
author: Georges Bataille
name: Oli
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sex-and-love, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lilith's Brood (Xenogenesis, #1-3)]]> 60926 746 Octavia E. Butler 0446676101 Oli 5 sci-fi, fiction 4.35 1987 Lilith's Brood (Xenogenesis, #1-3)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Oli
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> The Left Hand of Darkness 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 304 Ursula K. Le Guin Oli 5 utopia, fiction 4.11 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Oli
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: utopia, fiction
review:

]]> The Wood Beyond the World 723155 118 William Morris 1587152142 Oli 4 fantasy, fiction 3.48 1894 The Wood Beyond the World
author: William Morris
name: Oli
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1894
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/10
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fantasy, fiction
review:

]]> The Possibility of an Island 263985
Surprisingly poignant, philosophically compelling, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, The Possibility of an Island is at once an indictment, an elegy, and a celebration of everything we have and are at risk of losing. It is a masterpiece from one of the world's most innovative writers.]]> 352 Michel Houellebecq 0307275213 Oli 2 fiction 3.84 2005 The Possibility of an Island
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Oli
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2019/08/19
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> A Tale of Two Cities 1953 A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.]]> 489 Charles Dickens 0141439602 Oli 4 fiction 3.86 1859 A Tale of Two Cities
author: Charles Dickens
name: Oli
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1859
rating: 4
read at: 2019/07/17
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Madame Bovary 2175 329 Gustave Flaubert 0192840398 Oli 4 modernist, fiction 3.70 1856 Madame Bovary
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Oli
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1856
rating: 4
read at: 2019/07/17
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: modernist, fiction
review:

]]> Crash 70241 Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.]]> 224 J.G. Ballard 0312420331 Oli 4 horror, sex-and-love, fiction 3.62 1973 Crash
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Oli
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at: 2019/07/26
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: horror, sex-and-love, fiction
review:

]]> The Sorrows of Young Werther 16640 149 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0812969901 Oli 4 fiction, sex-and-love 3.71 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Oli
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1774
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/11
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction, sex-and-love
review:

]]> Absalom, Absalom! 373755 316 William Faulkner 0679732187 Oli 4 us-south, fiction 3.97 1936 Absalom, Absalom!
author: William Faulkner
name: Oli
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1936
rating: 4
read at: 2020/05/05
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: us-south, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower]]> 28385 In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is Proust’s spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. At the heart of the story lies his relationships with his grandmother and with the Swann family. As a meditation on different forms of love, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower has no equal. Here, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup. It is memorable as well for the first appearance of the two figures who for better or worse are to dominate the narrator’s life—the Baron de Charlus and the mysterious Albertine.
First time in Penguin Classics


A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition


The first completely new translation of Proust's novel since the 1920s, following Lydia Davis's brilliant translation of Swann's Way


]]> 533 Marcel Proust 0143039075 Oli 5 modernist, fiction 4.42 1919 In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
author: Marcel Proust
name: Oli
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1919
rating: 5
read at: 2020/06/14
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: modernist, fiction
review:

]]> I Burn Paris 12943902 � Marianne

Bruno Jasienski’s I Burn Paris has remained one of Poland’s most uncomfortable masterstrokes of literature since its initial and controversial serialization in 1928 in the French magazine ’HܳԾé (for which Jasienski was deported). It tells the story of a disgruntled factory worker who, finding himself on the streets, takes the opportunity to poison Paris's water supply with a deadly virus. With the deaths piling up, we encounter Chinese communists, rabbis, disillusioned scientists, American millionaires and a host of others as the city sections off into ethnic enclaves and everyone plots their route of escape. At the heart of the cosmopolitan city is a deep-rooted xenophobia and hatred � the one thread that binds all these groups together. As Paris lies in ruin, Jasienski issues a rallying cry to the downtrodden of the world while mixing "The Internationale" with a broadcast of popular music.

With its montage strategies reminiscent of early avant-garde cinema and fist-to-the-gut metaphors, I Burn Paris has lost none of its vitality and vigor. Ruthlessly dissecting various utopian fantasies, Jasienski is out to disorient, and he has a seemingly limitless ability to transform the Parisian landscape into the product of disease-addled minds. An exquisite example of literary Futurism and Catastrophism, the novel presents a filthy, degenerated world where factories and machines have replaced the human, but rather than cliché and simplistic propaganda, these features are given an immediacy that depicts the modern metropolis as only superficially cosmopolitan, as hostile and animalistic to its core.]]> 309 Bruno Jasieński 8086264378 Oli 4 fantasy, horror, fiction 4.19 1929 I Burn Paris
author: Bruno Jasieński
name: Oli
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1929
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/30
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fantasy, horror, fiction
review:

]]> Mason & Dixon 413
We follow the mismatch'd pair—one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic—from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.]]> 773 Thomas Pynchon 0312423209 Oli 5 all-time-faves, fiction 4.12 1997 Mason & Dixon
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Oli
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/26
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: all-time-faves, fiction
review:
The first book to make me laugh out loud in as long as I can remember. Deeply funny, but also haunting in a way that's hard to describe, especially for someone who loves both maps and americana
]]> When the Great Days Come 12020266
Contents
15 � Introduction (When the Great Days Come) � (2011) � essay by Robert Silverberg
21 � Counterfactual � (2006) � novelette by Gardner Dozois
38 � The Hanging Curve � (2002) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
48 � Recidivist � (2010) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
63 � When the Great Days Came � (2005) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
68 � The Peacemaker � (1983) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
83 � Fairy Tale � (2003) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
97 � Chains of the Sea � (1973) � novella by Gardner Dozois
148 � Solace � (1989) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
157 � A Cat Horror Story � (1994) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
164 � Disciples � (1981) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
173 � Ancestral Voices � (1998) � novella by Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick
226 � Dinner Party � (1984) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
240 � A Dream at Noonday � (1970) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
251 � A Special Kind of Morning � (1971) � novelette by Gardner Dozois
287 � Morning Child � (1984) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
294 � A Kingdom by the Sea � (1972) � novelette by Gardner Dozois
315 � Community � (1996) � shortstory by Gardner Dozois
323 � A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows � (1999) � novelette by Gardner Dozois]]> 384 Gardner Dozois 1607012308 Oli 4 sci-fi, fiction 3.73 2011 When the Great Days Come
author: Gardner Dozois
name: Oli
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:
Visions of the present and future both bleak and beautiful. Every story hits hard.
]]> <![CDATA[The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia]]> 13651 387 Ursula K. Le Guin Oli 5 4.24 1974 The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Oli
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, utopia, all-time-faves, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Foundation and Empire (Foundation, #2)]]> 29581 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803727 Oli 5 sci-fi, fiction 4.23 1952 Foundation and Empire (Foundation, #2)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Oli
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Oli 4 sci-fi, fiction 4.21 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Oli
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: sci-fi, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress]]> 533465 184 Dai Sijie 0385722206 Oli 3 fiction 3.64 2000 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
author: Dai Sijie
name: Oli
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> East, West 9868 224 Salman Rushdie 0099533014 Oli 3 fiction 3.57 1994 East, West
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Oli
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> The Nikopol Trilogy 472473
This hardcover volume presents The Carnival of Immortals, The Woman Trap, and Equator Cold, three of Europe's best-selling graphic novels of all time.]]> 176 Enki Bilal 0967240123 Oli 3 fiction 4.09 1992 The Nikopol Trilogy
author: Enki Bilal
name: Oli
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Inferno 15645
A groundbreaking bilingual edition of Dante's masterpiece that includes a substantive Introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante's key sources and influences. Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. With this major new translation, Anthony Esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem's line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure, yielding an Inferno that will be as popular with general readers as with scholars, teachers, and students. For, as Dante insists, without a trace of sentimentality or intellectual compromise, even Hell is a work of divine art.

Esolen's edition also provides a critical ntroduction and endnotes, with appendices containing Dante's most important sources—from Virgil to Saint Thomas Aquinas and beyond —that deftly illuminate the religious universe the poet inhabited.

Verse Translation by Anthony Esolen
Illustrations by Gustave Doré]]> 490 Dante Alighieri 0812970063 Oli 4 fiction 4.02 1320 Inferno
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Oli
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1320
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> The Alchemist 865 197 Paulo Coelho 0061122416 Oli 3 fiction 3.85 1988 The Alchemist
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Oli
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/03/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]>