en-US Sun, 04 May 2025 03:21:22 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 34122206 The Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of the 75 most fascinating shades, dyes and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book Kassia St Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colours and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilisation. Across fashion and politics, art and war, The Secret Lives of Colour tell the vivid story of our culture.]]> 320 Kassia St. Clair 0143131141 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.08 2016
author: Kassia St. Clair
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/04
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]]> 1249630 Os Maias é uma das obras mais conhecidas do escritor português Eça de Queiroz. O livro foi publicado no Porto em 1888. A acção de Os Maias passa-se em Lisboa, na segunda metade do século XIX, e apresenta-nos a história de três gerações da família Maia. A acção inicia-se no Outono de 1875, quando Afonso da Maia, nobre e pobre proprietário, se instala no Ramalhete com o neto recém formado em Medicina. Neste momento faz-se uma longa descrição da casa - "O Ramalhete," cujo nome tem origem num painel de azulejos com um ramo de girassóis, e não em algo fresco ou campestre, tal como o nome nos remete a pensar. Afonso da Maia era o personagem mais simpático do romance e aquele que o autor mais valorizou, pois não se lhe conhecem defeitos. É um homem de carácter, culto e requintado nos gostos. Em jovem aderiu aos ideais do Liberalismo e foi obrigado, por seu pai, a sair de casa e a instalar-se em Inglaterra. Após o pai falecer regressa a Lisboa para casar com Maria Eduarda Runa, mas pouco tempo depois escolhe o exílio por razões de ordem política. Há em Os Maias um retrato da Lisboa da epóca. Carlos, que mora na Rua das Janelas Verdes, caminha com frequência até ao Rossio (embora, por vezes, vá a cavalo ou de carruagem). Algumas das lojas citadas no livro ainda existem - a Casa Havaneza, no Chiado, por exemplo. É possível seguir os diferentes percursos de Carlos ou do Ega pelas suas da Baixa lisboeta, ainda que algumas tenham mudado de nome. No final do livro, quando Carlos volta a Lisboa muitos anos depois, somos levados a ver as novidades - a Avenida da Liberdade, que substituiu o Passeio Público, e que é descrita como uma coisa nova, e feia pela sua novidade, exactamente como nos anos 70 se falava das casas de emigrante. O romance veicula sobre o país uma perspectiva muito derrotista, muito pessimista. Tirando a natureza (o Tejo, Sintra, Santa Olávia...), é tudo uma choldra ignóbil. Predomina uma visão de estrangeirado, de quem só valoriza as civilizações superiores - da França e Inglaterra, principalmente. Os políticos são mesquinhos, ignorantes ou corruptos (Gouvarinho, Sousa Neto...); os homens das Letras sao boémios e dissolutos, retrógrados ou distantes da realidade concreta (Alencar, Ega...: lembre-se o que se passou no Sarau do Teatro da Trindade); os jornalistas boémios e venais (Palma...); os homens do desporto não conseguem organizar uma corrida de cavalos, pois não há hipódromo à altura, nem cavalos, nem cavaleiros, as pessoas não vestem como o evento exigia, as senhoras traziam vestidos de missa. Para cúmulo de tudo isto, os protagonistas acabam vencidos da vida. Apesar de ser isto referido no fim do livro, pode-se ver que ainda há alguma esperanca implícita, nas passagens em que Carlos da Maia e João da Ega dizem que o apetite humano é a causa de todos os seus problemas e que portanto nunca mais terão apetites, mas logo a seguir dizem que lhes está a apetecer um "prato de paio com ervilhas," ou quando dizem que a pressa não leva a nada e que a vida deve ser levada com calma mas começam a correr para apanhar o americano (eléctrico). Mais do que crítica de costumes, o romance mostra-nos um país - sobretudo Lisboa - que se dissolve, incapaz de se regenerar. Quando o autor escreve mais tarde A Cidade e as Serras, expõe uma atitude muito mais construtiva: o protagonista regenera-se pela descoberta das raízes rurais ancestrais não atingidas pela degradação da civilização, num movimento inverso ao que predomina n'Os Maias.]]> 681 Eça de Queirós 9725681363 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.98 1888
author: Eça de Queirós
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1888
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207781 284 Robert Henri 0064301389 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.92 1929
author: Robert Henri
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 199126293 A biting portrait of British class, politics, and money told through five interconnected families and their rising―and declining―fortunes.

Campbell Flynn, art historian and biographer of Vermeer, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public―yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much. Entangled with a brilliant student, he begins to see trouble brewing for his family and friends. All his worlds collide―the art scene and academia, fashion and the English aristocracy, journalism and the internet―as dangerous forces enter his life and Caledonian Road gives up its secrets.
Andrew O’Hagan has written a social novel in the Victorian style, drawing a whole cast of characters into company with each other and revealing the inner energies of the way we live now.

“Not only a peerless chronicler of our times, O’Hagan has generosity, humour and tenderness, which make this novel an utter joy to read.”―Monica Ali, author of Love Marriage and Brick Lane]]> 614 Andrew O'Hagan 1324074876 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.73 2024
author: Andrew O'Hagan
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1593668
Twenty years later, he begins to tell his haunting story of life on the plains. As his story unfolds, the novel becomes, in the words of Murray Bail, 'a mirage of landscape, memory, love and literature itself'.]]> 111 Gerald Murnane 1930974280 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.78 1982
author: Gerald Murnane
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 851541 Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead’s influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy.

Whitehead’s master work in philsophy, Process and Reality propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality into a consistent relation to each other. It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant.

The ultimate edition of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds.]]> 413 Alfred North Whitehead 0029345707 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.20 1929
author: Alfred North Whitehead
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 108713 311 Iceberg Slim 0862415934 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.00 1967
author: Iceberg Slim
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20949444 336 Glyn Johns 0399163875 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.60 2014
author: Glyn Johns
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 938212 246 Charles Portis 0879519312 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.83 1979
author: Charles Portis
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 86524
The Path to Power, Book One, reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and urge to power that set LBJ apart. Chronicling the startling early emergence of Johnson’s political genius, it follows him from his Texas boyhood through the years of the Depression in the Texas hill Country to the triumph of his congressional debut in New Deal Washington, to his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, of the national power for which he hungered.

We see in him, from earliest childhood, a fierce, unquenchable necessity to be first, to win, to dominate—coupled with a limitless capacity for hard, unceasing labor in the service of his own ambition. Caro shows us the big, gangling, awkward young Lyndon—raised in one of the country’s most desperately poor and isolated areas, his education mediocre at best, his pride stung by his father’s slide into failure and financial ruin—lunging for success, moving inexorably toward that ultimate “impossible�� goal that he sets for himself years before any friend or enemy suspects what it may be.

We watch him, while still at college, instinctively (and ruthlessly) creating the beginnings of the political machine that was to serve him for three decades. We see him employing his extraordinary ability to mesmerize and manipulate powerful older men, to mesmerize (and sometimes almost enslave) useful subordinates. We see him carrying out, before his thirtieth year, his first great political inspiration: tapping-and becoming the political conduit for-the money and influence of the new oil men and contractors who were to grow with him to immense power. We follow, close up, the radical fluctuations of his relationships with the formidable “Mr. Sam�� Rayburn (who loved him like a son and whom he betrayed) and with FDR himself. And we follow the dramas of his emotional life-the intensities and complications of his relationships with his family, his contemporaries, his girls; his wooing and winning of the shy Lady Bird; his secret love affair, over many years, with the mistress of one of his most ardent and generous supporters . . .

Johnson driving his people to the point of exhausted tears, equally merciless with himself . . . Johnson bullying, cajoling, lying, yet inspiring an amazing loyalty . . . Johnson maneuvering to dethrone the unassailable old Jack Garner (then Vice President of the United States) as the New Deal’s “connection�� in Texas, and seize the power himself . . . Johnson raging . . . Johnson hugging . . . Johnson bringing light and, indeed, life to the worn Hill Country farmers and their old-at-thirty wives via the district’s first electric lines.

We see him at once unscrupulous, admirable, treacherous, devoted. And we see the country that bred him: the harshness and “nauseating loneliness�� of the rural life; the tragic panorama of the Depression; the sudden glow of hope at the dawn of the Age of Roosevelt. And always, in the foreground, on the move, LBJ.

Here is Lyndon Johnson—his Texas, his Washington, his America—in a book that brings us as close as we have ever been to a true perception of political genius and the American political process.]]> 882 Robert A. Caro 0679729453 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.39 1982
author: Robert A. Caro
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40969531
Ophelia lives on Anima, an ark where objects have souls. Beneath her worn scarf and thick glasses, the young girl hides the ability to read and communicate with the souls of objects, and the power to travel through mirrors. Her peaceful existence on the Ark of Anima is disrupted when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, from the powerful Dragon clan. Ophelia must leave her family and follow her fiancée to the floating capital on the distant Ark of the Pole. Why has she been chosen? Why must she hide her true identity? Though she doesn’t know it yet, she has become a pawn in a deadly plot.]]> 446 Christelle Dabos 1787701425 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.90 2013
author: Christelle Dabos
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 26931 Cloudsplitter is narrated by the enigmatic Owen Brown, last surviving son of America's most famous and still controversial political terrorist and martyr, John Brown. Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the reader feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.]]> 758 Russell Banks 0060930861 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.94 1998
author: Russell Banks
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 287542 520 C.V. Wedgwood 1590171462 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.17 1938
author: C.V. Wedgwood
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> 13543121
Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.

As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.]]> 432 Christopher Buehlman 1937007863 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.20 2012
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1041398 238 Connie Palmen 9053330283 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.60 1991
author: Connie Palmen
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60582780
Based on Cărtărescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel’s investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art.

The novel is grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life. The text includes sequences in a tuberculosis sanatorium, an encounter with an anti-death protest movement, a society of dream investigators, and an extended visit to the minuscule world of dust mites living on a microscope slide.

Combining fiction with autobiography and history�� the scientists Nicolae Tesla and George Boole, for example, appear alongside the Voynich manuscript―Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various, monstrous dimensions erupt within the Communist present.]]> 639 Mircea Cărtărescu 1646052021 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.31 2015
author: Mircea Cărtărescu
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 786699 325 Derek Walcott 0374523509 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.97 1990
author: Derek Walcott
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61157636 Cold Nights of Childhood grows up in a rapidly changing Turkey, where the atmosphere is nationalist, patriarchal, technocratic. As a misfit in search of freedom, love and happiness, she escapes to Berlin, is overcome by depression on her return, and trapped in a psychiatry clinic for five years. After electroshock therapy and inhumane treatment, she is released into the care of friends and family, making tentative steps in a halting journey towards recovery.

In her unique, unstructured style, Tezer Özlü explores the extremity of her inner life and the painful pleasures of memory. Translated into English for the first time by Maureen Freely, this novel is a classic akin to The Bell Jar and Good Morning, Midnight.]]> 96 Tezer Ozlu 1788168712 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.70 1980
author: Tezer Ozlu
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60707 160 J.L. Carr 0940322471 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.10 1980
author: J.L. Carr
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5315572 302 Ming Dong Gu 079146816X ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.30 2006
author: Ming Dong Gu
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
��
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence �� a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.19 1966
author: Daniel Keyes
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 94034 675 Luther Blissett 0156031965 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.22 1999
author: Luther Blissett
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 11100788
In prose that veers between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a portrait of the artist as a young man in an age of Google searches, pharmaceuticals, and spectacle.]]> 181 Ben Lerner ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.81 2011
author: Ben Lerner
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1330324 513 Amitav Ghosh 071956896X ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.97 2008
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 16046263
In De baron in de bomen onderzoekt Italo Calvino (1923-1985) op een indrukwekkende en geestige manier de spanning tussen werkelijkheid en verbeelding.]]> 256 Italo Calvino 9045002760 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.84 1957
author: Italo Calvino
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 153360 Le Livre de Promethea Hélène Cixous set for herself the task of bridging the immeasurable distance between love and language. She describes a love between two��women in its totality, experienced as both a physical presence, and a sense of infinity. The result is a stunning example of Pecriture feminine that won praise when first published in France in 1983. Its translation into English by Betsy Wing will extend the influence of a writer already famous for her novels and contributions to feminist theory. In her introduction Betsy Wing notes the contemporary emphasis on "fictions of presence." Cixous, in The Book of Promethea, works to "repair the separation between fiction and presence, trying to chronicle a very-present love without destroying it in the writing."]]> 232 Hélène Cixous 0803263430 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.18 1983
author: Hélène Cixous
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58205835 Treacle Walker is a stunning fusion of myth and folklore and an exploration of the fluidity of time, vivid storytelling that brilliantly illuminates an introspective young mind trying to make sense of everything around him.

'Ragbone! Ragbone! Any rags! Pots for rags! Donkey stone!'

Joe looked up from his comic and lifted his eye patch. There was a white pony in the yard. It was harnessed to a cart, a flat cart, with a wooden chest on it. A man was sitting at a front corner of the cart, holding the reins. His face was creased. He wore a long coat and a floppy high-crowned hat, with hair straggling beneath, and a leather bag was slung from his shoulder across his hip.

Joe Coppock squints at the world with his lazy eye. He reads his comics, collects birds' eggs and treasures his marbles, particularly his prized dobbers. When Treacle Walker appears off the Cheshire moor one day - a wanderer, a healer - an unlikely friendship is forged and the young boy is introduced to a world he could never have imagined.]]> 152 Alan Garner 0008477795 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.10 2021
author: Alan Garner
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 256279
1919: After surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer makes his way to Ireland, hoping to discover whether he is indeed betrothed to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the once-aptly-named Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough. But his fiancée is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles."

Troubles is a hilarious and heartbreaking work by a modern master of the historical novel.]]> 459 J.G. Farrell 1590170180 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.85 1970
author: J.G. Farrell
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.05 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 460635 The powerful, visionary, Booker Award–winning novel about the complicated relationships between three outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage.

“This book is just amazingly, wondrously great.�� —Alice Walker

In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes: part Maori, part European, asexual and aromantic, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family.

One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession.

As Kerewin succumbs to Simon’s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality.

Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where indigenous and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.

Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity.]]> 450 Keri Hulme 0140089225 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.05 1984
author: Keri Hulme
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10475220 De welwillenden geeft Max Aue een minutieus verslag van alles wat hij tijdens de oorlog als 'functionaris van de dood' heeft meegemaakt. Aue schrijft om na te gaan 'of hij nog iets kan voelen, of hij nog kan lijden' na alles wat hij, als gezagsgetrouwe onderdaan, in opdracht van zijn land heeft moeten doorstaan.

In De welwillenden worden de gruwelen van de Tweede Wereldoorlog beschreven vanuit het perspectief van de dader; dat gegeven, gecombineerd met een duizelingwekkende kennis van details, maakt dit boek tot een zeldzaam literair monument.]]> 981 Jonathan Littell 902956654X ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.24 2006
author: Jonathan Littell
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 14276 135 William Maxwell 1860464181 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.91 1980
author: William Maxwell
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 278232 S. reveals one of the most horrifying aspects of any war: the rape and torture of civilian women by occupying forces. S. is the story of a Bosnian woman in exile who has just given birth to an unwanted child—one without a country, a name, a father, or a language. Its birth only reminds her of an even more grueling experience: being repeatedly raped by Serbian soldiers in the "women's room" of a prison camp. Through a series of flashbacks, S. relives the unspeakable crimes she has endured, and in telling her story—timely, strangely compelling, and ultimately about survival—depicts the darkest side of human nature during wartime. "S. may very well be one of the strongest books about war you will ever read. . . .The writing is taut, precise, and masterful."]]> 220 Slavenka Drakulić 0140298444 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.26 1999
author: Slavenka Drakulić
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/22
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]]> 7628 The Good Soldier relates the complex social and sexual relationships between two couples, one English, one American, and the growing awareness by the American narrator John Dowell of the intrigues and passions behind their orderly Edwardian facade. It is the attitude of Dowell, his puzzlement, his uncertainty, and the seemingly haphazard manner of his narration that make the book so powerful and mysterious. Despite its catalogue of death, insanity, and despair, the novel has many comic moments, and has inspired the work of several distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. This is the only annotated edition available.]]> 368 Ford Madox Ford 1551113813 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.69 1915
author: Ford Madox Ford
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1915
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/03
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]]> 753252
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony is a masterful retelling of the ancient myths and fables we may only think we know. From the tale of Europa and the bull to the fall of Troy, Roberto Calasso weaves his way through the entire world of Greek mythology with a captivating sense of curiosity and intrigue that casts these classical stories in a whole new light for a modern reader.]]> 416 Roberto Calasso 0679733485 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.32 1988
author: Roberto Calasso
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/29
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]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]> 653 Hilary Mantel ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.90 2009
author: Hilary Mantel
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/21
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]]> 5439 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.]]> 198 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618101365 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.18 1999
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 95186 357 Kiran Desai 0802142818 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.46 2005
author: Kiran Desai
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 101094
In the decade since it won the Booker Prize, Ben Okri's Famished Road has become a classic. Like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, it combines brilliant narrative technique with a fresh vision to create an essential work of world literature.

The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute.]]> 512 Ben Okri 0385425139 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.76 1991
author: Ben Okri
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 764165 338 Peter Matthiessen 0140255087 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.08 1978
author: Peter Matthiessen
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 785371 (Summary by Annise )]]> 78 David Garnett 1932416056 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.63 1922
author: David Garnett
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30659 Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Marcus Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and readers throughout the centuries.]]> 254 Marcus Aurelius 0140449337 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.29 180
author: Marcus Aurelius
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.29
book published: 180
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/12/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.70 2010
author: Jennifer Egan
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/11/27
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]]> 189123 Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.]]> 321 Eileen Chang 1590171780 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.91 1943
author: Eileen Chang
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50732671 From the National Book Award-winning and bestselling author of Let the Great World Spin comes an epic novel rooted in the real-life friendship between two men united by loss.

Colum McCann's most ambitious work to date, Apeirogon--named for a shape with a countably infinite number of sides--is a tour de force concerning friendship, love, loss, and belonging.

Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their daily lives, from the roads they are allowed to drive on, to the schools their daughters, Abir and Smadar, each attend, to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate.

Their worlds shift irreparably after ten-year-old Abir is killed by a rubber bullet and thirteen-year-old Smadar becomes the victim of suicide bombers. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other's stories, they recognize the loss that connects them and they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace.

McCann crafts Apeirogon out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material. He crosses centuries and continents, stitching together time, art, history, nature, and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate, and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our time.]]> 15 Colum McCann 030787804X ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.22 2019
author: Colum McCann
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/31
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]]> 466518 251 Willem Frederik Hermans 9023401735 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.87 1966
author: Willem Frederik Hermans
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40881621 The Book of Disquiet is the Portuguese modernist master Fernando Pessoa’s greatest literary achievement. An “autobiography�� or “diary�� containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and ruminations, this classic work grapples with all the eternal questions. Now, for the first time the texts are presented chronologically, in a complete English edition by master translator Margaret Jull Costa. Most of the texts in The Book of Disquiet are written under the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper. This existential masterpiece was first published in Portuguese in 1982, forty-seven years after Pessoa’s death. A monumental literary event, this exciting, new, complete edition spans Fernando Pessoa’s entire writing life.]]> 433 Fernando Pessoa 0811226948 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.39 1982
author: Fernando Pessoa
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 109812
This new enlarged edition combines two collections previously published in the United States as Kolyma Tales and Graphite.]]> 508 Varlam Shalamov 0140186956 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.30 1966
author: Varlam Shalamov
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1078
Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought force them to seek work in the city. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.]]> 418 Pearl S. Buck 1416500189 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.00 1931
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1931
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/05/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35743 580 Günter Grass 0099483505 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 3.96 1959
author: Günter Grass
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/05/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1071726
It is this extraordinary metamorphosis, magical and terrifying, that these beautifully written pages record.]]> 191 J.A. Baker ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.15 1967
author: J.A. Baker
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 168642
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.]]> 343 Truman Capote 0679745580 ����ï���Ჹ�� 0 to-read 4.08 1966
author: Truman Capote
name: ����ï���Ჹ��
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/06
shelves: to-read
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]]>