en-US Sat, 03 May 2025 10:16:16 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 219078071 A Gay (Happy) Novel��is a celebration of love and self-acceptance. This coming-of-age tale reminds us that sometimes, the happiest endings come from fully embracing who we really are. Perfect for fans of contemporary YA fiction, this debut is a must-read for anyone who believes in the power of finding your place in the world.
]]> 246 Samuel Oliver Steve 0 currently-reading 4.40
author: Samuel Oliver
name: Steve
average rating: 4.40
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Steve 0 to-read 3.66 2015
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Steve
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 185127010 240 Khaled Alesmael 1642861480 Steve 0 to-read 4.00
author: Khaled Alesmael
name: Steve
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/30
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]]> 46129526
In Uganda and Russia, we meet activists for whom cruising can be a matter of life and death; while in the West he shows how cruising circumvents the inequalities and abuses of power that plague heterosexual encounters. Ultimately, Espinoza illustrates how cruising functions as a powerful rebuke to patriarchy and capitalism—unless you are cruising the department store restroom, of course.]]> 238 Alex Espinoza 194470082X Steve 0 3.77 2019
author: Alex Espinoza
name: Steve
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
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]]> 58884736
"A story of love and hope as interweaving characters display: how all moments, big and small, can measure a life. If you want joy, love, romance, and hope—read with us." —Jenna Bush Hager
A luminous, spirit-lifting blockbuster that asks: would you choose to find out the length of your life?

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

The Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.

Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is an ambitious, invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.]]> 353 Nikki Erlick 0063204207 Steve 5 3.96 2022
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Steve
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
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I honestly didn’t know what to expect with this book, but I’m pretty sure this is going to be one that sticks with me for a while. Really emotionally thought provoking! Definitely worth a read
]]> 214151670 A warm and poignant narrative about finding one’s self amidst the grind of restaurant life, the cross-generational immigrant experience, and a daughter’s attempts to connect with parents who have always been just out of reach.

When she was three years old, Rachel Phan met her replacement. Instead of a new sibling, her parents�� time and attention were suddenly devoted entirely to their new family restaurant. For her parents—whose own families fled China during Japanese occupation and then survived bombs and starvation during the war in Vietnam—it was a dream come true. For Rachel, it was something quite different. Overnight, she became a restaurant kid, living on the periphery of her own family and trying her best to stay out of the way.

As Rachel grew up, the restaurant was the most stalwart and suffocating member of her family. For decades, it’s been both her family’s crowning achievement and the origin of so much of their pain and suffering: screaming matches complete with smashed dishes, bodies worn down by long hours and repetitive strain, and tenuous relationships where they love one another deeply without ever really knowing each other.

In Restaurant Kid, Rachel seeks to examine the way her life has been shaped by the rigid boxes placed around her. She had to be a “good daughter,�� never asking questions, always being grateful. She had to be a “real Canadian,�� watching hockey and speaking English so flawlessly that her tongue has since forgotten how to contort around Cantonese tones. As the only Chinese girl at school, she had to alternate between being the sidekick, geek, or Asian fetish, depending on whose gaze was on her.

Now, three decades after their restaurant first opened, Rachel's parents are cautiously talking about retirement. As an adult, Rachel’s “good daughter�� role demands something new of her—and a chance to get to know her parents away from the restaurant.

Bringing to lyric life the poignancy of growing up in a "third culture," Rachel Phan has crafted a vibrant new narrative of growing up, the strength and foibles of family, and how we come to understand ourselves.]]> 272 Rachel Phan 1639368515 Steve 5
The only downside? It made me crave bún riêu, fall off the bone ribs, noodles, dumplings, and literally anything served with chili oil after reading every chapter.

An unforgettable debut. Give this book its oats it deserves and check it out! ]]> 4.54
author: Rachel Phan
name: Steve
average rating: 4.54
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
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Rachel Phan’s debut is painstakingly honest in the most refreshing way. Reading it felt like a heart-to-heart over late-night takeout: comforting, cathartic, and sometimes messy in the best way.

The only downside? It made me crave bún riêu, fall off the bone ribs, noodles, dumplings, and literally anything served with chili oil after reading every chapter.

An unforgettable debut. Give this book its oats it deserves and check it out!
]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Steve 0 to-read 3.86 2019
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Steve
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 195790870 From Chuck Tingle, author of the USA Today bestselling Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale��"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple.

As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late.]]> 295 Chuck Tingle 1250874653 Steve 3 4.13 2024
author: Chuck Tingle
name: Steve
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 35442700
Jordan: The opposite of chill. Poetry. His "wives" and the Chandler Mall. Never been kissed and searching for Mr. Right, who probably won't like him anyway. And a secret: A spiraling out of control mother, and the knowledge that he's the only one who can keep the family from falling apart.

Throw in a rickety, 1980s-era food truck called Coq Au Vinny. Add in prickly pears, cloud eggs, and a murky idea of what's considered locally sourced and organic. Place it all in Mesa, Arizona, in June, where the temp regularly hits 114. And top it off with a touch of undeniable chemistry between utter opposites.

Over the course of one summer, two boys will have to face their biggest fears and decide what they're willing to risk -- to get the thing they want the most.]]> 352 Bill Konigsberg 1338215507 Steve 4
The book follows Max and Jordan �� two totally different guys who team up to save a food truck and end up navigating family struggles, masculinity, and first love along the way. It's funny, messy, and painfully relatable.

Reading this felt like discovering something my younger self desperately needed. Max and Jordan aren’t perfect �� they’re just two kids figuring things out, and that’s what makes it so real. It’s an easy read, but the emotions sneak up on you.

If you’re craving a story that feels authentic, heartfelt, and makes you wish books like this had existed sooner, this one’s for you.]]> 3.83 2019
author: Bill Konigsberg
name: Steve
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/19
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If you’re a millennial like me who never got to read queer YA stories as a teen, The Music of What Happens will hit you right in the feels.

The book follows Max and Jordan �� two totally different guys who team up to save a food truck and end up navigating family struggles, masculinity, and first love along the way. It's funny, messy, and painfully relatable.

Reading this felt like discovering something my younger self desperately needed. Max and Jordan aren’t perfect �� they’re just two kids figuring things out, and that’s what makes it so real. It’s an easy read, but the emotions sneak up on you.

If you’re craving a story that feels authentic, heartfelt, and makes you wish books like this had existed sooner, this one’s for you.
]]> 53290204
As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie’s death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble, letting in the phantom that hungers for him.]]> 372 Lee Mandelo 125079028X Steve 0 to-read 3.80 2021
author: Lee Mandelo
name: Steve
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 43694471


With a background of LA's modern art scene and Hollywood TV drama, "That Summer of '74" is an uplifting, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, story about the joy, pain and timelessness of true love, whether between friends, family or lovers.



WARNING - this book contains adult language and scenes of a sexual nature.]]> 499 Howard Rayner Steve 0 to-read 4.15 2018
author: Howard Rayner
name: Steve
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 18106787
PRAISE:

"A Wind of Knives dusts off the classic western’s most enduring motifs and gives them a shine. With no lack of gunplay and bloodshed, the book also has heart and intelligence. In short, Kurtz delivers an intense, gritty, and moving story that takes a new look at the Old West." –Lee Thomas, Bram Stoker Award and Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The German and Ash Street

“Many Westerns have explored the theme of revenge, but few have done so as provocatively as Ed Kurtz’s A Wind of Knives. And certainly none have approached it in quite the same way. On its surface, this is a familiar story: after his lover is brutally murdered, farmer Daniel Hays seeks revenge. The difference, from the start, is Daniel’s lover is�� was�� a man. And in Texas during the Civil War, justice for the slaying of a ‘sodomite�� is not a priority for the law.

“But if switching up gender roles in an otherwise traditional Western was all A Wind of Knives offered, it would be thin gruel. Kurtz gives us much more than that—sympathetic characters skillful plotting, and most notably a moving and insightful meditation on love and loyalty.�� —Heath Lowrance, author of City of Heretics

"A western must be gritty and raw. The story must embrace not only the manifest destiny of the frontier but the loneliness of the land. Ed Kurtz does all this and more with A Wind of Knives. His rancher possesses a spirit for vengeance (if not justice) that drag readers deeper into the tale while the pages smell of gunsmoke." –Steve Berman, editor of the Wilde Stories annual series

"Daniel Hays is one of the most interesting characters to cross the western terrain." --Edward A. Grainger

About the Author:

Ed Kurtz is the author of BLEED, CONTROL, DEAD TRASH, and A WIND OF KNIVES, as well as numerous short stories. His work has appeared in Dark Moon Digest, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, BEAT to a PULP, Shotgun Honey, and the anthology Mutation Nation: Tales of Genetic Mishaps, Monsters, and Madness. Ed resides in Texas, where he is at work on his next novel and running his genre imprint, Redrum Horror.

Visit Ed Kurtz online at edkurtz.net.]]> 66 Ed Kurtz Steve 0 to-read 4.20 2013
author: Ed Kurtz
name: Steve
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 216557737
Over several days, through multiple glasses of wine and cups of coffee, Jillian digs into Blake's past, unearthing the story of his and Logan’s move from Boston to Los Angeles. Their conversations, tinged with nostalgia, cover Blake’s strained relationship with his father and Hollywood dreams, leading to unforeseen twists, complicated relationships, and the harsh realities of predatory adults preying on young beauty and optimism. As the discussions evolve, Jillian uncovers the depths of Blake’s hurt and anger, revealing a downward spiral of self-destructive behaviors and moral dilemmas that shattered his faith in humanity. Amidst these shared reactions and poignant memories, secrets are unveiled, weaving a tale of loyalty and resilience that grips the heart.]]> 311 Dak Kopec Steve 0 to-read 4.54 2022
author: Dak Kopec
name: Steve
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 28212 By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? In answering these questions, Shilts weaves the disparate threads into a coherent story, pinning down every evasion and contradiction at the highest levels of the medical, political, and media establishments.

Shilts shows that the epidemic spread wildly because the federal government put budget ahead of the nation's welfare; health authorities placed political expediency before the public health; and scientists were often more concerned with international prestige than saving lives. Against this backdrop, Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced. And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly.
]]> 660 Randy Shilts 0312241356 Steve 0 to-read 4.37 1987
author: Randy Shilts
name: Steve
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 18050096 All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom.]]> 256 Dinaw Mengestu 038534998X Steve 0 to-read 3.60 2014
author: Dinaw Mengestu
name: Steve
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 41723513
But for Malone, the endless city nights and Fire Island days, are close to burning out. It is love that Malone is longing for, and soon he will have to set himself free.

First published in 1978, Dancer from the Dance is widely considered the greatest, most exciting novel of the post-Stonewall generation. Told with wit, eroticism and unashamed lyricism, it remains a heart-breaking love letter to New York's hedonistic past, and a testament to the brilliance of our passions as they burn brightest.]]> 259 Andrew Holleran 1529110769 Steve 0 to-read 3.80 1978
author: Andrew Holleran
name: Steve
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 49083140
Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention��

Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.]]> 304 Eliza Clark 1910312649 Steve 0 to-read 3.74 2020
author: Eliza Clark
name: Steve
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> 225878188
'What you into?'
'I can host if ur looking?'
'What you into?'
'Do you like straight married men?'
'What you into?'
'Wanna meet in the bushes at the park?'

So many messages and not a single one asked how I was—or even asked my name. After a few minutes of bleak scrolling, I realised the only things I'm into are basic manners, commitment and being happily married. Which I also realised I wouldn't be finding on here. Still, that didn't stop me going off to meet the ninth stranger to slide into my inbox after finding myself getting sadder and sadder as each anonymous proposition pinged my way.

Raw, moving and savagely funny, What You Into? is Josh Fox's autobiographical account of his spiral into the Grindr world of casual sex, hook-ups and dating apps following the break-up of his marriage.

He documents this journey diary-style, chronicling the often weird, at times dark world of casual sex as he navigates his grief and anger through the consumption of men—only to discover that he too is being consumed by the process.

Fox's unflinching account of his descent into sex addiction, his struggle with depression and his search for a way back is framed within the broader background of his life. He shares his difficult upbringing in a housing estate in Manchester, and gives a self-critical commentary on his media career (and his complicated relationship with 'celebrity'), from his time as a teenage YouTube star and paparazzo through to his work in Australian radio.

What You Into? is a story of the push and pull of addiction, the power of compulsion over shame, the search for healing through destruction—set against the need for love and the desire to feel alive.]]> Joshua Fox Steve 0 to-read 3.28
author: Joshua Fox
name: Steve
average rating: 3.28
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> 213095189 Deathly Hallows Part 1 a stunt went badly wrong and David's spinal cord snapped. He was only 25 and would never walk again.

Sixteen years later, the pain can still be excruciating, his muscles are wasting, and he requires round-the-clock care. His future may seem bleak, but David has accepted his new reality, with all the different possibilities, purposes and powerful human connections that have come with it. His candid and inspiring story shares his life before and after, showing us the importance of making the most of every day, and the good that can come out of even the worst of circumstances.]]> 285 David Holmes 1399738836 Steve 4 4.45
author: David Holmes
name: Steve
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> 60158399
For Madian, this opposition reveals not who he is, but patriarchy, power, and society's efforts to fit us into neat boxes. He is Palestinian, but wasn't raised in Palestine. He is Kuwaiti-born, but not Kuwaiti. He's British-educated, but not a Westerner. He's a Muslim, but can't embrace the Islam of today. He's a gay man, out of the closet but still living in the he has left Jordan, his home, three times in fear of his life.

Madian has searched for acceptance and belonging around the world, joining new communities in San Francisco, New York, Hawaii and Tunisia, yet always finding himself pulled back to Amman. This frank and moving memoir narrates his battles with adversity, racism and homophobia, and a rich life lived with humour, dignity and grace.]]> 263 Madian Al Jazerah 1787386104 Steve 0 to-read 4.62 2021
author: Madian Al Jazerah
name: Steve
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.��Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Steve 4 4.28 2015
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Steve
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 49203397 The Secret History meets Call Me by Your Name in Micah Nemerever's compulsively enjoyable debut novel - a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

When Paul and Julian meet as university freshmen in early 1970s Pittsburgh, they are immediately drawn to one another. A talented artist, Paul is sensitive and agonizingly insecure, incomprehensible to his working-class family, and desolate with grief over his father's recent death. Paul sees his wealthy, effortlessly charming Julian as his sole intellectual equal - an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. He idolizes his friend for his magnetic confidence. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian also is volatile and capriciously cruel. An admiration isn't the same as trust.

As their friendship spirals into an all-consuming intimacy, Paul is desperate to protect their precarious bond, even as it becomes clear that pressures from the outside world are nothing compared with the brutality they are capable of inflicting on one another. Separation is out of the question. But as their orbit compresses and their grip on one another tightens, they are drawn to an act of irrevocable violence that will force the young men to confront a shattering truth at the core of their relationship.

Exquisitely plotted, unfolding with propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is a novel of escalating dread and an excavation of the unsettling depths of human desire.]]> 460 Micah Nemerever 0062963635 Steve 3 3.96 2020
author: Micah Nemerever
name: Steve
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 45047384
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 394 T.J. Klune Steve 4 4.37 2020
author: T.J. Klune
name: Steve
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
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]]> 6261332
Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" (The Boston Globe), Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.]]> 241 Matthew B. Crawford 1594202230 Steve 0 to-read 3.74 2009
author: Matthew B. Crawford
name: Steve
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 11515362 Philadelphia Inquirer

In the years following World War II a group of gay writers established themselves as major cultural figures in American life. Truman Capote, the enfant terrible, whose finely wrought fiction and nonfiction captured the nation's imagination. Gore Vidal, the wry, withering chronicler of politics, sex, and history. Tennessee Williams, whose powerful plays rocketed him to the top of the American theater. James Baldwin, the harrowingly perceptive novelist and social critic. Christopher Isherwood, the English novelist who became a thoroughly American novelist. And the exuberant Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry defied censorship and exploded minds. Together, their writing introduced America to gay experience and sensibility, and changed our literary culture.

But the change was only beginning. A new generation of gay writers followed, taking more risks and writing about their sexuality more openly. Edward Albee brought his prickly iconoclasm to the American theater. Edmund White laid bare his own life in stylized, autobiographical works. Armistead Maupin wove a rich tapestry of the counterculture, queer and straight. Mart Crowley brought gay men's lives out of the closet and onto the stage. And Tony Kushner took them beyond the stage, to the center of American ideas.

With authority and humor, Christopher Bram weaves these men's ambitions, affairs, feuds, loves, and appetites into a single sweeping narrative. Chronicling over fifty years of momentous change-from civil rights to Stonewall to AIDS and beyond.

Eminent Outlaws is an inspiring, illuminating one that reveals how the lives of these men are crucial to understanding the social and cultural history of the American twentieth century.]]> 384 Christopher Bram 0446563137 Steve 0 to-read 4.11 2012
author: Christopher Bram
name: Steve
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54508798
So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules�� ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting—even if temporary—isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.]]> 326 Steven Rowley 0525542280 Steve 0 to-read 4.09 2021
author: Steven Rowley
name: Steve
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 45904728
My name is Amrou Al-Kadhi �� by day. By night, I am Glamrou, an empowered, fearless and acerbic drag queen who wears seven-inch heels and says the things that nobody else dares to.

Growing up in a strict Iraqi Muslim household, it didn’t take long for me to realise I was different. When I was ten years old, I announced to my family that I was in love with Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. The resultant fallout might best be described as something like the Iraqi version of Jerry Springer: The Opera. And that was just the beginning.

This is the story of how I got from there to here: about my teenage obsession with marine biology, and how fluid aquatic life helped me understand my non-binary gender identity; about my two-year scholarship at Eton college, during which I wondered if I could forge a new identity as a British aristocrat (spoiler alert: it didn’t work); about discovering the transformative powers of drag while at university (and how I very nearly lost my mind after I left); and about how, after years of rage towards it, I finally began to understand Islam in a new, queer way.

Most of all, this is a book about my mother. It’s the journey of how we lost and found each other, about forgiveness, understanding, hope �� and the life-long search for belonging.]]> 272 Amrou Al-Kadhi 0008306060 Steve 0 to-read 4.24 2019
author: Amrou Al-Kadhi
name: Steve
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 49977811 Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism,��a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of Andre Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.

When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks camping in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s��Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.

Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly-coveted position in the ministry. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.

Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart,��Swimming in the Dark��is a potent blend of romance, post-war politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski has crafted an indelible and thought-provoking literary debut that explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.]]> 191 Tomasz Jedrowski 006289000X Steve 3 4.25 2020
author: Tomasz Jedrowski
name: Steve
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
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]]> 60840490 Two track and field athletes find an unexpected but powerful love in this unapologetically blunt and unforgettably real YA debut.
��
Sebastian Villeda is over it. Over his rep. Over his bros. Over being "Bash the Flash," fastest sprinter in South Jersey. His dad is gone, his mom is dead, and his stepfather is clueless. Bash has no idea what he wants out of life. Until he meets Sandro.
��
Sandro Miceli is too nice for his own good. The middle child in an always-growing, always-screaming Italian family, Sandro walks around on a broken foot to not bother his busy parents. All he wants is to get out and never look back.
��
When fate—in the form of a party that gets busted—brings these two very different boys together, neither of them could’ve predicted finding a love that they’d risk everything for…]]> 400 James Acker 1335428623 Steve 5 4.24 2023
author: James Acker
name: Steve
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
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]]> 195105544
Monday Rent Boy begins in Somerset, England, in the mid-1980s, with the winning and heart-warming story of two 13-year-old friends and fellow altar boys, Arthur Barnes and Ernie Castlefrank. Endearing outcasts, they try not to speak of the secret tie that binds both boys are routinely preyed on by The Zipper, their nickname for Father Ziperto, the local Catholic priest. Still, they find adventure and release in the mischief they get up to together, as each also tries to survive in other ways. Arthur, a great reader and denier of reality, finds an ally in town bookseller Marina Phillips, who sets him on a path that eventually takes him to university and away. Ernie, a gifted mathematician and animal lover, is not so lucky. As he and Arthur age out of the abuse, Ernie notices younger and equally vulnerable boys being recruited. When he tries to blow the whistle, nobody believes him. At 16, he disappears, a loss that almost destroys his best friend but also confirms for Arthur that he was smart to stay silent.

Arthur eventually also turns his back on the mystery of Ernie's disappearance, but his bookselling mentor and friend Marina Phillips finds a way to follow Ernie where rage and betrayal has led him—into the darkest corners of the dark web—a search that ultimately helps Arthur reckon with what happened to them both. In the novel’s stunning, deeply affecting conclusion, Doherty draws a line directly from the covered-up abuse of children by Catholic priests to the current proliferation of child pornography and predators online—miraculously revealing the true heart of darkness while managing to affirm the light.]]> 352 Susan Doherty 1039006558 Steve 0 to-read 4.50
author: Susan Doherty
name: Steve
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6882
Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who simply would not be defeated.]]> 544 Henri Charrière 0061120669 Steve 0 to-read 4.22 1969
author: Henri Charrière
name: Steve
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 96647 New York Times bestseller by one of rock's most provocative figures Scar Tissue is Anthony Kiedis's searingly honest memoir of a life spent in the fast lane.

In 1983, four self-described "knuckleheads" burst out of the mosh-pitted mosaic of the neo-punk rock scene in L.A. with their own unique brand of cosmic hardcore mayhem funk. Over twenty years later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, against all odds, have become one of the most successful bands in the world. Though the band has gone through many incarnations, Anthony Kiedis, the group's lyricist and dynamic lead singer, has been there for the whole roller-coaster ride. Whether he's recollecting the influence of the beautiful, strong women who have been his muses, or retracing a journey that has included appearances as diverse as a performance before half a million people at Woodstock or an audience of one at the humble compound of the exiled Dalai Lama, Kiedis shares a compelling story about the price of success and excess.

Scar Tissue is a story of dedication and debauchery, of intrigue and integrity, of recklessness and redemption--a story that could only have come out of the world of rock.]]> 465 Anthony Kiedis 1401307450 Steve 0 to-read 4.11 2004
author: Anthony Kiedis
name: Steve
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 34524753
The search for a “patient zero”—popularly understood��to be the first person infected in an epidemic—has been key to media coverage of��major infectious disease outbreaks for more than three decades. Yet��the��term��itself��did not exist��before the��emergence of the HIV/AIDS��epidemic in the 1980s. How did��this idea so swiftly come to exert such a��strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness?��In�� Patient Zero , Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of��archival sources and��interviews��to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas—and fears—about contagion and social disorder.

McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaétan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed—and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control��inadvertently��created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero—adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings—as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic.��With important insights for our interconnected age,�� Patient Zero ��untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when��faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.]]> 400 Richard A. McKay 022606395X Steve 0 4.04 2017
author: Richard A. McKay
name: Steve
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
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]]> 23013953
For too long, the gut has been the body’s most ignored and least appreciated organ, but it turns out that it’s responsible for more than just dirty work: our gut is at the core of who we are. Gut, an international bestseller, gives the alimentary canal its long-overdue moment in the spotlight. With quirky charm, rising science star Giulia Enders explains the gut’s magic, answering questions like: Why does acid reflux happen? What’s really up with gluten and lactose intolerance? How does the gut affect obesity and mood? Communication between the gut and the brain is one of the fastest-growing areas of medical research—on par with stem-cell research. Our gut reactions, we learn, are intimately connected with our physical and mental well-being. Enders’s beguiling manifesto will make you finally listen to those butterflies in your stomach: they’re trying to tell you something important.]]> 273 Giulia Enders 1771641495 Steve 0 to-read 4.04 2014
author: Giulia Enders
name: Steve
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 30687200 Many people dream of escaping modern life, but most will never act on it. This is the remarkable true story of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years, making this dream a reality--not out of anger at the world, but simply because he preferred to live on his own.

In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later, when he was arrested for stealing food. Living in a tent even through brutal winters, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store edibles and water, and to avoid freezing to death. He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothing, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed but terrifying a community never able to solve the mysterious burglaries. Based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, this is a vividly detailed account of his secluded life--why did he leave? what did he learn?--as well as the challenges he has faced since returning to the world. It is a gripping story of survival that asks fundamental questions about solitude, community, and what makes a good life, and a deeply moving portrait of a man who was determined to live his own way, and succeeded.]]> 5 Michael Finkel 1101924926 Steve 0 to-read 3.87 2017
author: Michael Finkel
name: Steve
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40725379 New York Times bestseller, which describes her family's adventure as they move to a farm in southern Appalachia and realign their lives with the local food chain.

Since its publication in 2007, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has captivated readers with its blend of memoir and journalistic investigation. Newly updated with original pieces from the entire Kingsolver clan, this commemorative volume explores how the family's original project has been carried forward through the years.

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family moved from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they took on a new to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. Concerned about the environmental, social, and physical costs of American food culture, they hoped to recover what Barbara considers our nation's lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production. Since 2007, their scheme has evolved enormously. In this new edition, featuring an afterword composed by the entire Kingsolver family, Barbara's husband, Steven, discusses how the project grew into a farm-to-table restaurant and community development project training young farmers in their area to move into sustainable food production. Camille writes about her decision to move back to a rural area after college, and how she and her husband incorporate their food values in their lives as they begin their new family. Lily, Barbara's youngest daughter, writes about how growing up on a farm, in touch with natural processes and food chains, has shaped her life as a future environmental scientist. And Barbara writes about their sheep, and how they grew into her second vocation as a fiber artist, and reports on the enormous response they've received from other home-growers and local-food devotees.

With Americans' ever-growing concern over an agricultural establishment that negatively affects our health and environment, the Kingsolver family's experiences and observations remain just as relevant today as they were ten years ago. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a modern classic that will endure for years to come.]]> 383 Barbara Kingsolver 0062653075 Steve 0 to-read 4.17 2007
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Steve
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 23453112
Some of our problems are unique to our time.��“Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?”��“Should I go out with this girl even though she��listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods?��Combos?!�� “My girlfriend just got a message from��some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he��just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check��just to be sure?”��

But the transformation of our romantic lives��can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short��period of time, the whole culture of finding love��has changed dramatically. A few decades ago,��people would find a decent person who lived in��their neighborhood. Their families would meet��and, after deciding neither party seemed like a��murderer, they would get married and soon have��a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today,��people marry later than ever and spend years of��their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a��soul mate.

For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his��comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern��Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take��things to another level. He teamed up with NYU��sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive��research project, including hundreds of interviews��and focus groups conducted everywhere from��Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed��behavioral data and surveys and created their own��online research forum on Reddit, which drew��thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s��leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen��Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry��Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any��social science or humor book we’ve seen before.

In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his��irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science��to give us an unforgettable tour of our new��romantic world.]]> 279 Aziz Ansari 1594206279 Steve 0 to-read 3.79 2015
author: Aziz Ansari
name: Steve
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17614857 'This is an essential read for every gay person on the planet' - Elton John

WINNER BOYZ BEST LGBT BOOK 2017

LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI BOOK PRIZE 2017

Straight Jacket is a revolutionary clarion call for gay men, the wider LGBT community, their friends and family. Part memoir, part ground-breaking polemic, it looks beneath the shiny facade of contemporary gay culture and asks if gay people are as happy as they could be �� and if not, why not?

Meticulously researched, courageous and life-affirming, Straight Jacket offers invaluable practical advice on how to overcome a range of difficult issues. It also recognizes that this is a watershed moment, a piercing wake-up-call-to-arms for the gay and wider community to acknowledge the importance of supporting all young people �� and helping older people to transform their experience and finally get the lives they really want.]]> 0 Matthew Todd 1448111102 Steve 4 3.91 2012
author: Matthew Todd
name: Steve
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
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]]> 52196685
At eighteen, Brian, like so many other promising young gay men, arrived in New York City without much more than a love for the freedom and release from his past that it promised. But within six short years, AIDS would claim his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories of death, Brian decides to write his mother a letter asking to come back to the place, and family, he was once so desperate to escape.

Set in 1986, a year after Rock Hudson’s death shifted the public consciousness of the epidemic and brought the news of AIDS into living rooms and kitchens across America, it is a novel that speaks to the question of what home and family means when we try to forge a life for ourselves in a world that can be harsh and unpredictable. It is written at the far reaches of love and understanding, and zeroes in on the moments where those two forces reach for each other, and sometimes touch.]]> 288 Carter Sickels 1938235622 Steve 0 to-read 4.42 2020
author: Carter Sickels
name: Steve
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53147843
The Sea of the Unknown lays before us, cold and callous. Behind us stand the comforts of home, the assurance of a path well-trodden. But some of us feel called to something else, something unseen, undefinable. Those hopes and nebulous dreams rest out over the horizon, beyond the chop and spray of the slate-gray sea that crashes at our feet. We know not how to reach those dreams; we know only that we must try.

From the moment I figured out how to operate a crayon, I started writing stories to fill a fantasy world of my own creation. I dreamed of sharing that world, of bringing it to life in the imagination of readers and movie-goers. And I dreamed of building my own life in Paris—the city that most nourished my creativity. But the real world always seemed to send its own monsters to resist, and throw me off my route.

This is the story of how I launched myself into the sea time and time again. How my early attempts at charting a course in the real world failed, my hopes of making a living as a creative in Paris floundering, cracking beneath me, and sinking below the waves. It’s a story of perseverance. Of picking up the pieces, rebuilding my raft, and plotting another new course. There is no map in here for others to follow, but if I can make it this far out into the Sea of the Unknown, and live to tell the tale, then so can you.

----
Jay Swanson is an American author and YouTuber living in Paris, France. His videos on YouTube have racked up over 7Million views with his guides to Paris most popular among them. This book follows Jay's journey back to Paris, from the recession of 2008 through volunteering on a hospital ship in West Africa to traveling around the United States as a consultant (a lifestyle frighteningly similar to George Clooney's in 'Up in the Air').

Follow along as Jay tries to strike out on a path that will lead him to his dream of being a full-time creative, only to be rebuffed again and again before finally making it back to Paris.]]> 240 Jay Swanson 0996902163 Steve 4
Really enjoyed reading about the authors experiences getting to the land of the baguette! ]]> 4.52
author: Jay Swanson
name: Steve
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:
Sea of the Unknown is like taking a surprise road trip with your coolest, weirdest, most philosophical friend—except instead of a car, you're on a wobbly raft, and instead of snacks, you’ve got existential dread....And somehow, it’s the most fun you’ve ever had.

Really enjoyed reading about the authors experiences getting to the land of the baguette!
]]> 30360170 A new book from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson, destined to be a classic—part therapy, part best friend, part humor, part coloring book.

When Jenny Lawson is anxious, one of the things she does is to draw. Elaborate doodles, beautiful illustrations, often with captions that she posts online. At her signings, fans show up with printouts of these drawings for Jenny to autograph. And inevitably they ask her when will she publish a whole book of them. That moment has arrived.

You Are Here is something only Jenny could create. A combination of inspiration, therapy, coloring, humor, and advice, this book is filled with Jenny’s amazingly intricate illustrations, all on perforated pages that can be easily torn out, hung up, and shared. Drawing on the tenets of art therapy—which you can do while hiding in the pillow fort under your bed��You Are Here is ready to be made entirely your own.

Some of the material is dark, some is light; some is silly and profane and irreverent. Gathered together, this is life, happening right now, all around, in its messy glory, as only Jenny Lawson could show us.]]> 160 Jenny Lawson 125011988X Steve 0 to-read 4.30 2017
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Steve
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 103454862
Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers�� Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung’s, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is both a memoir and an to step inside one boy’s childhood oasis, scoot into a vinyl booth, and grow up with him—and perhaps even share something off the secret menu.]]> 291 Curtis Chin 0316507652 Steve 4
Curtis shares the challenges of balancing family expectations, cultural stereotypes, and his own queer self-discovery in a way that’s both deeply personal and universal.

The book dives into themes of belonging, community, and resilience, while also highlighting the racism and homophobia he faced. It’s a powerful, eye-opening story that’s filled with humor and heart.]]> 3.78 2023
author: Curtis Chin
name: Steve
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:
It’s one of those books that feels both personal and universal at the same time.

Curtis shares the challenges of balancing family expectations, cultural stereotypes, and his own queer self-discovery in a way that’s both deeply personal and universal.

The book dives into themes of belonging, community, and resilience, while also highlighting the racism and homophobia he faced. It’s a powerful, eye-opening story that’s filled with humor and heart.
]]> 31019941
Forward by Tony Hawk

Skateboarder and Jackass star Brandon Novak comes clean about his crazy rise to fame, tailspin into addiction, and other death-defying stunts on the road to recovery...

At seven, Brandon was a skateboard prodigy. By the time he was fourteen, he was living the dream. Discovered by skate legends Bucky Lasek and Tony Hawk. Touring the U.S. with the elite Powell-Peralta team. Signing autographs and appearing in films and magazines. Brandon had it all. Then he got hooked on heroin.

Soon the up-and-coming star was living a down-and-out life in a garage, begging for change, and hustling to score his next fix. He stole from his family and friends. He pushed the fantasy that everything was okay, that he was going to rehab, getting help, and getting better. But it was all a lie.

This is the story of an addict—a dreamseller who stopped believing the lies he was selling and started believing in himself. With the help of his celebrity buddy Bam Margera of Jackass fame, Brandon joined the cast of MTV’s Viva La Bam and made an honest reach for sobriety. The road was hard, and he had some falls. But like any great skateboarder, Brandon Novak was always determined to get up again . . .

“Entertaining, shocking, crazy, unimaginable.”—Bam Margera

With 24 pages of photos

Updated with a New Epilogue]]> 288 Brandon Novak 0806538287 Steve 0 to-read 4.38
author: Brandon Novak
name: Steve
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207567836 From the executive director of music at��Billboard, an extensive look inside the 20+ year career of mega-selling rock band Linkin Park, featuring new interviews, exclusive quotes, and insights from the band’s associates and collaborators Linkin Park is one of the 21st��Century’s most important--and most underrated--rock bands. When you look at album and streaming numbers, hit singles, tickets sold, their enduring legacy within rock and the contributions that this groundbreaking band have made in all metrics of music consumption and fandom, there’s no group bigger in recent memory. Despite this, there has not yet been a full, comprehensive biography of the band--until now. In��IT STARTS WITH ONE, Billboard's executive director of music, Jason Lipshutz, chronicles the story of this legendary band, from their early childhoods to the moment their paths crossed to the genesis of their iconic first album,��Hybrid Theory,��and all that followed. The book features in-depth reporting and interviews, as well as new reflections from their collaborators and contemporaries. Through it all,��Lipshutz explores how one band could mean so much to so many people; how they were able, in an post-grunge era of the late 90s and early 2000s, to synthesize trends in pop and hip-hop; and finally, rightfully, place Linkin Park in the pantheon of American rock acts.��
���� Linkin Park helped usher in an era of artists (and fans) that are more open to discussing mental health and prioritizing inclusivity, led by their front men, Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda, who balanced each other artistically and chose to write about their issues openly rather than suffer in silence. The philosophy of the band was to combine sounds, artistry, and talents into something that truly hadn’t been heard before. And the people loved it. Tragically, Chester succumbed to his demons and passed away in 2017, but the music endures, and the fans are primed for the real behind-the-scenes story.
�� Beyond anything else, Linkin Park’s singular power was to bring people together, but along the way they made music history and changed what we expect from musicians.��IT STARTS WITH ONE��is finally here to cement that legacy.]]> 368 Jason Lipshutz 030683250X Steve 0 to-read 4.35
author: Jason Lipshutz
name: Steve
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211350635 In one of the last great remaining untold stories in all of sports, the Hall of Fame Toronto Maple Leafs captain Mats Sundin shares for the first time an unfiltered look at playing hockey in Sweden and across North America as part of the sport’s most fabled franchises.

Growing up in Sollentuna, Sweden, on the outskirts of Stockholm, Mats Sundin skated on the lake downhill from his house, a house his father had built with his own hands, on land his mother insisted on buying for their future. In the darkness of the Scandinavian winter Sundin would chase after his older brother on that lake for countless hours. Summers spent in nature with his grandparents instilled a lifelong love for the outdoors. Playing hockey in their driveway, the three Sundin brothers imagined scenes of suiting up for Sweden’s national team and scoring a game winning goal against their favoured rival, the Soviet Union. It wasn’t until his late teens that he caught the eyes of scouts and coaches from the other side of the Atlantic. At the 1989 NHL draft, eighteen-year-old Sundin was as surprised as anyone when he was selected first overall by the Quebec Nordiques.

After a few years as a Nordique, Sundin was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for the highly popular Leaf captain, Wendel Clark. In his early years in Toronto, he felt both at home and from away, working extra hard to gain acceptance in the world’s toughest hockey market. Even once he was named captain, Sundin didn’t deviate from his quiet nature but instead lead by example, never asking anyone to work harder than he did. Over thirteen seasons with the team, he would learn just how fiery the cauldron of Leafs Nation could be.

In Home and Away, Mats Sundin writes openly for the first time about what it was like for him to uproot his life in Sweden to embark on a long hockey career an ocean away. Home and Away is an elegiac, heartfelt, and honest story of a man who followed his passions, cherished his family, faced heavy scrutiny, and ultimately earned his way into both the hearts of fans and the hockey record books. His journey transcends the rink and shows what it means to be a quiet and unpretentious Swedish kid who went on to become one of the most accomplished players in the history of the game.]]> 320 Mats Sundin 1668053535 Steve 0 to-read 4.35
author: Mats Sundin
name: Steve
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213943852 A breathtakingly candid memoir by Joanna "JoJo" Levesque, the chart-topping, multi-platinum recording artist behind hits like “Leave (Get Out),�� “Too Little, Too Late��, and the Grammy Award-winning "Say So"

Signed to a major recording deal at just 12 years old, JoJo catapulted to the top of the pop-and-R&B-infused charts in the mid 2000's. The relatability of her youth and the appeal of her cool-girl mystique earned her millions of fans around the world. JoJo was an undeniable superstar and pop culture fixture, spanning roles in major studio films, omnipresence on Top 40 radio, frequenting magazine covers, and appearing on national TV. Then, out of the blue, everything came to a halt and JoJo seemingly stepped out of the spotlight, leaving many fans to ��What happened to JoJo?

In OVER THE INFLUENCE, JoJo holds nothing back as she brings her against-the-odds story of adversity and triumph to center stage. From being raised by parents who were both battling addiction and depression, to emerging victorious in a never-ending lawsuit with her record label, to putting the fragmented pieces of herself together after a maddening period of rebellion and self-betrayal, she takes the reader through the turbulent years that led her to where she is releasing new music under her own imprint, performing in shows and festivals around the world, headlining a Broadway show, and beyond.�� In this raw,��behind-the-scenes look at her life,��both personal and professional, JoJo’s unflinching vulnerability allows readers to connect with her on a whole new level through stories of success, heartbreak, redemption, and resilience.

More than a victory lap from an artist with over two decades in an ever-changing entertainment industry, OVER THE INFLUENCE��is an unapologetic rallying cry to anyone who’s ever�� been terrified to fail and still said, “Count me in.”]��> 341 Joanna "JoJo" Levesque 0306833166 Steve 0 to-read 4.02 2024
author: Joanna "JoJo" Levesque
name: Steve
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> 97905 The definitive guide to working with -- and surviving -- bullies, creeps, jerks, tyrants, tormentors, despots, backstabbers, egomaniacs, and all the other assholes who do their best to destroy you at work.

What an asshole!

How many times have you said that about someone at work? You're not alone! In this groundbreaking book, Stanford University professor Robert I. Sutton builds on his acclaimed Harvard Business Review article to show you the best ways to deal with assholes...and why they can be so destructive to your company. Practical, compassionate, and in places downright funny, this guide offers:

Strategies on how to pinpoint and eliminate negative influences for good
Illuminating case histories from major organizations
A self-diagnostic test and a program to identify and keep your own inner jerk from coming out


The No Asshole Rule is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Business Week bestseller.]]> 224 Robert I. Sutton 0446526568 Steve 0 to-read 3.59 2007
author: Robert I. Sutton
name: Steve
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> 61916989 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 by The New York Times, Bustle, ŷ������, The Boston Globe, LitHub, and more!

The debut novel from television WRITER/PRODUCER OF THE CHI, NARCOS, and BEL-AIR tells a fierce and riveting queer coming-of-age story following the personal and political awakening of a young, gay, Black man in 1980s New York City.

"This book is a truly unique queer coming-of-age novel." �� Buzzfeed

“Full of joy and righteous anger, sex and straight talk, brilliant storytelling and humor... A spectacularly researched Dickensian tale with vibrant characters and dozens of famous cameos, it is precisely the book we’ve needed for a long time.�� —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

Earl "Trey" Singleton III arrives in New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, at 17, he is ready to leave his overbearing parents and their expectations behind.

In the city, Trey meets up with a cast of characters that changes his life forever. He volunteers at a renegade home hospice for AIDS patients, and after being put to the test by gay rights activists, becomes a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Along the way Trey attempts to navigate past traumas and searches for ways to maintain familial relationships—all while seeking the meaning of life amid so much death.

Vibrant, humorous, and fraught with entanglements, Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me is an exhilarating, fast-paced coming-of-age story that lends itself to a larger discussion about what it means for a young gay Black man in the mid-1980s to come to terms with his role in the midst of a political and social reckoning.]]> 338 Rasheed Newson 1250833531 Steve 5
It’s inspiring, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking all at once—definitely a story that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page.]]> 4.35 2022
author: Rasheed Newson
name: Steve
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
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This book is an incredibly powerful and moving story about a Black, queer individual finding their way in New York during the height of the AIDS crisis. It’s the kind of book that pulls you in completely, with its raw honesty and deeply personal perspective.

It’s inspiring, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking all at once—definitely a story that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
]]> 16044961
On ship-tracking websites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a ship; each ship is laden with boxes; each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we must ship. Without shipping there would be no clothes, food, paper, or fuel. Without all those dots, the world would not work.

Freight shipping has been no less revolutionary than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, shipping revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system of "flags of convenience." Infesting our waters, poisoning our air, and a prime culprit of acoustic pollution, shipping is environmentally indefensible. And then there are the pirates.

Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains, and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales.

Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.]]> 304 Rose George 0805092633 Steve 0 to-read 3.68 2013
author: Rose George
name: Steve
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> 33413883 New York Times��best-selling author with unique access to Ali’s inner circle

He was the wittiest, the prettiest, the strongest, the bravest, and, of course, the greatest (as he told us himself). Muhammad Ali was one of the twentieth century’s most fantastic figures and arguably the most famous man on the planet.

But until now, he has never been the subject of a complete, unauthorized biography. Jonathan Eig, hailed by Ken Burns as one of America’s master storytellers, radically reshapes our understanding of the complicated man who was Ali. Eig had access to all the key people in Ali’s life, including his three surviving wives and his managers. He conducted more than 500 interviews and uncovered thousands of pages of previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department files, as well dozens of hours of newly discovered audiotaped interviews from the 1960s. Collectively, they tell Ali’s story like never before—the story of a man who was flawed and uncertain and brave beyond belief.

“I am America,�� he once declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me—black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.��

He was born Cassius Clay in racially segregated Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a sign painter and a housekeeper. He went on to become a��heavyweight boxer with a dazzling mix of power and speed, a warrior for racial pride, a comedian, a preacher, a poet, a draft resister, an actor, and a lover. Millions hated him when he changed his religion, changed his name, and refused to fight in the Vietnam War. He fought his way back, winning hearts, but at great cost. Like so many boxers, he stayed too long.

Jonathan Eig’s��Ali��reveals Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding important new light on his politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition.��Ali��is a story about America, about race, about a brutal sport, and about a courageous man who shook up the world. ��]]> 640 Jonathan Eig Steve 0 to-read 4.44 2017
author: Jonathan Eig
name: Steve
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> 36204894
In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of the Communist party rule, the regime's control over scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else.

Today, the risk of another Chernobyl looms in the mismanagement of nuclear power in the developing world. A moving and definitive account, Chernobyl is also an urgent call to action.]]> 404 Serhii Plokhy 1541617096 Steve 0 to-read 4.21 2018
author: Serhii Plokhy
name: Steve
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> 43345615 A riveting, adrenaline-fueled tour of a vast and lawless world that few have ever seen: the high seas.

There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. Perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.

Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways �� drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil, and shipping industries, and on which the world’s economies rely.

Along the way, Urbina vividly re-creates his own experiences at sea. He recounts a dramatic near-mutiny miles from shore and a tense showdown with the Vietnamese navy, and he captures the squalid conditions of everyday life aboard a ship. Urbina also explores the complex social world of sea workers, where he had to earn the trust of cautious men accustomed to long and profound silences.

Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.]]> 544 Ian Urbina 0451492943 Steve 0 to-read 4.37 2019
author: Ian Urbina
name: Steve
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 42983957 The instant New York Times bestseller
An international bestseller
Finalist for the Lane Anderson Award
Finalist for the RBC Taylor Award

A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity's fate

Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution?

The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito.

Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power.

The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village.

Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter? Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable.

Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito's reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.]]> 496 Timothy C. Winegard 0735235791 Steve 0 to-read 3.63 2019
author: Timothy C. Winegard
name: Steve
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 42377825 For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White.

June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.]]> 335 New York Public Library 052550530X Steve 0 to-read 4.35 2019
author: New York Public Library
name: Steve
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 49808906 The epic story of how coffee connected and divided the modern world

Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world--one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism, the leading source of the world's most popular drug, and perhaps the most widespread word on the planet. Augustine Sedgewick's Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of how this came to be, tracing coffee's five-hundred-year transformation from a mysterious Muslim ritual into an everyday necessity.

This story is one that few coffee drinkers know. It centers on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of Manchester, England, founded one of the world's great coffee dynasties at the turn of the twentieth century. Adapting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to plantation agriculture, Hill helped to turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history, a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality, and violence.

Following coffee from Hill family plantations into supermarkets, kitchens, and workplaces across the United States, and finally into today's ubiquitous caf�s, Sedgewick reveals how coffee bred vast wealth and hard poverty, at once connecting and dividing the modern world. In the process, both El Salvador and the United States earned the nickname "Coffeeland," but for starkly different reasons, and with consequences that reach into the present. This extraordinary history of coffee opens up a new perspective on how the globalized world works, ultimately provoking a reconsideration of what it means to be connected to faraway people and places through the familiar things that make up our day-to-day lives.]]> 448 Augustine Sedgewick 1594206155 Steve 0 to-read 3.57 2021
author: Augustine Sedgewick
name: Steve
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 48983247
What does it take to master French cooking? This is the question that drives Bill Buford to abandon his perfectly happy life in New York City and pack up and (with a wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow) move to Lyon, the so-called gastronomic capital of France. But what was meant to be six months in a new and very foreign city turns into a wild five-year digression from normal life, as Buford apprentices at Lyon’s best boulangerie, studies at a legendary culinary school, and cooks at a storied Michelin-starred restaurant, where he discovers the exacting (and incomprehensibly punishing) rigueur of the professional kitchen.

With his signature humor, sense of adventure, and masterful ability to bring an exotic and unknown world to life, Buford has written the definitive insider story of a city and its great culinary culture.]]> 432 Bill Buford 0307271013 Steve 0 to-read 3.55 2020
author: Bill Buford
name: Steve
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 13166586 A��legendary tale, both true and astonishing,��from the��author of Israel is Real and Sweet and Low

When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. In between, he worked as a fruit peddler, a banana hauler, a dockside hustler, and a plantation owner. He battled and conquered the United Fruit Company, becoming a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures. In Latin America, when people shouted “Yankee, go home!�� it was men like Zemurray they had in mind.

���������������������� Rich Cohen’s brilliant historical profile The Fish That Ate the Whale unveils Zemurray as a hidden kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary, driven by an indomitable will to succeed. Known as El Amigo, the Gringo, or simply Z, the Banana Man lived one of the great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. From hustling on the docks of New Orleans to overthrowing Central American governments, from feuding with Huey Long to working with the Dulles brothers, Zemurray emerges as an unforgettable figure, connected to the birth of modern American diplomacy, public relations, business, and war—a monumental life that reads like a parable of the American dream.




��]]> 288 Rich Cohen 0374299277 Steve 0 to-read 4.06 2012
author: Rich Cohen
name: Steve
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> 36546612 A "magnificent book" (Sebastian Junger) and "monumental achievement" (Mitchell Zuckoff) that tells the epic story of the world's last subsistence whalers and the threats posed to a tribe on the brink


"An extraordinary feat of reportage and illumination." --Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams. "From the very first lines, I was riveted." --Robert Moor, On Trails. "A true work of art . . . Lyrically written and richly observed." --Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods. "Intimate and moving." --Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River. "Remarkable, gorgeously written." --Bronwen Dickey, Pit Bull.
On a volcanic island in the Savu Sea so remote that other Indonesians call it "The Land Left Behind" live the Lamalerans: a tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who are the world's last subsistence whalers. They have survived for half a millennium by hunting whales with bamboo harpoons and handmade wooden boats powered by sails of woven palm fronds. But now, under assault from the rapacious fores of the modern era and a global economy, their way of life teeters on the brink of collapse.



Award-winning journalist Doug Bock Clark, one of a handful of Westerners who speak the Lamaleran language, lived with the tribe across three years, and he brings their world and their people to vivid life in this gripping story of a vanishing culture. Jon, an orphaned apprentice whaler, toils to earn his harpoon and provide for his ailing grandparents, while Ika, his indomitable younger sister, is eager to forge a life unconstrained by tradition, and to realize a star-crossed love. Frans, an aging shaman, tries to unite the tribe in order to undo a deadly curse. And Ignatius, a legendary harpooner entering retirement, labors to hand down the Ways of the Ancestors to his son, Ben, who would secretly rather become a DJ in the distant tourist mecca of Bali.


Deeply empathetic and richly reported, The Last Whalers is a riveting, powerful chronicle of the collision between one of the planet's dwindling indigenous peoples and the irresistible enticements and upheavals of a rapidly transforming world.


]]> 368 Doug Bock Clark 0316390623 Steve 0 to-read 4.00 2019
author: Doug Bock Clark
name: Steve
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
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]]> 58082714 The Nineties: a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn't know who it was. By the end, exposing someone's address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn't know who it was. The '90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we're still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.

Beyond epiphenomena like Cop Killer and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a '90s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it.

In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, "The video for 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany" make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.]]> 370 Chuck Klosterman 0735217955 Steve 0 to-read 3.86 2022
author: Chuck Klosterman
name: Steve
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 27774750
Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages.��Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable�� New York Times Magazine�� cover story. Now comes the powerful new work that has always been his ultimate goal,�� The Way to the Spring .

We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places��on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of��people suffering from extremes of oppression and Katherine��Boo,��Ryszard Kapuściński, Ted Conover,��and Philip��Gourevitch among them. Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one's politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away.]]> 448 Ben Ehrenreich 1594205906 Steve 0 to-read 4.32 2016
author: Ben Ehrenreich
name: Steve
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> 23398580
The fourth gospel tells of Jesus arriving in the room where the disciples are gathered, full of fear, on Easter Sunday. He does not chide or admonish; instead he says 'Peace be with you', which, in the Aramaic of his day, was simply a greeting. 'Hello,' he said, welcoming people locked in a room of fear to a place of deep encounter; encounter with themselves, with their fear, with each other and with the incarnate one in their midst.

Interweaving everyday stories with analysis, gospel reflections with mindfulness and Celtic spirituality with poetry, this book explores the practice of welcoming as a spiritual discipline. In particular, Pádraig tells careful stories of welcoming parts of life that are often unwelcome.]]> 261 Pádraig Ó Tuama 1444791702 Steve 0 to-read 4.53 2015
author: Pádraig Ó Tuama
name: Steve
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 40658257 0 Craig Seymour Steve 0 to-read 3.88 2008
author: Craig Seymour
name: Steve
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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]]> 165156879 184 Caitlin Donohue 1728429536 Steve 0 to-read 3.67
author: Caitlin Donohue
name: Steve
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/09
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]]> 52872524 288 Craig Jennex Steve 0 favorites 4.41
author: Craig Jennex
name: Steve
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/30
date added: 2025/01/09
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]]> 209567126
In A Cheesemonger's Tour de France, Ned Palmer wends his way around the country's regions, meeting the remarkable cheesemakers who carry the torch for France's oldest and most intense traditions. As he explains the mysteries of terroir and why each of those different fromages taste as they do, he shows that a French cheeseboard offers genuine insights into la Belle République.]]> 384 Ned Palmer 1782838007 Steve 0 to-read 4.67
author: Ned Palmer
name: Steve
average rating: 4.67
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rating: 0
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]]> 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Steve 0 to-read 4.35 2018
author: Delia Owens
name: Steve
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/08
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]]> 42872919
“Kwame Onwuachi’s story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world.�� —Questlove

By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.�� He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef .

Through it all, Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color. In this inspirational memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age; a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest account of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected.]]> 275 Kwame Onwuachi 0525433910 Steve 5 favorites 4.15 2019
author: Kwame Onwuachi
name: Steve
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: favorites
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]]> 54305363 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy and Let’s Pretend This Never Happened comes a deeply relatable book filled with humor and honesty about depression and anxiety.

As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.

With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor―the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball―is present throughout.

A treat for Jenny Lawson’s already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.]]> 285 Jenny Lawson 1250077036 Steve 5 favorites 4.01 2021
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Steve
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2025/01/08
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]]> 58885793 An enlightening and deliciously witty collection of essays on Blackness, faith, pop culture, and the challenges--and rewards--of finding one's way in the world, from a BuzzFeed editor and podcast host.

"A memoir that is immense in its desire to give . . . a rich offering of image, of music, of place."--Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022--The Millions

At twelve years old, Elamin Abdelmahmoud emigrates with his family from his native Sudan to Kingston, Ontario, arguably one of the most homogenous cities in North America. At the airport, he's handed his Blackness like a passport, and realizes that he needs to learn what this identity means in a new country.

Like all teens, Abdelmahmoud spent his adolescence trying to figure out who he was, but he had to do it while learning to balance a new racial identity and all the false assumptions that came with it. Abdelmahmoud learned to fit in, and eventually became "every liberal white dad's favorite person in the room." But after many years spent trying on different personalities, he now must face the parts of himself he's kept suppressed all this time. He asks, "What happens when those identities stage a jailbreak?"

In his debut collection of essays, Abdelmahmoud gives full voice to each and every one of these conflicting selves. Whether reflecting on how The O.C. taught him about falling in love, why watching wrestling allowed him to reinvent himself, or what it was like being a Muslim teen in the aftermath of 9/11, Abdelmahmoud explores how our experiences and our environments help us in the continuing task of defining who we truly are.

With the perfect balance of relatable humor and intellectual ferocity, Son of Elsewhere confronts what we know about ourselves, and most important, what we're still learning.]]> 288 Elamin Abdelmahmoud 059349685X Steve 4 4.17 2022
author: Elamin Abdelmahmoud
name: Steve
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
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]]> 112093865 From “weird, scary, ingenious�� (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, a brutally honest and hilariously frenetic memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems—from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Suzuki violin training, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs.

Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it.

In Bamford’s signature voice, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult, brings us on a quest to participate in something. With sincerity and transparency, she recounts every anonymous fellowship she has joined (including but not limited Debtors Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous), every hypomanic episode (from worrying about selling out under capitalism to enforcing union rules on her Netflix TV show set to protect her health), and every easy 1-to-3-step recipe for fudge in between.

Singular and inimitable, Bamford’s memoir explores what it means to keep going, and to be a member of society (or any group she’s invited to) despite not being very good at it. In turn, she hopes to transform isolating experiences into comedy that will make you feel less alone (without turning into a cult following).]]> 276 Maria Bamford 1982168560 Steve 5 favorites 3.71 2023
author: Maria Bamford
name: Steve
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 6431988 The mother of Matthew Shepard shares her story about her son's death and the choice she made to become an international gay rights activist

Today, the name Matthew Shepard is synonymous with gay rights, but before his grisly murder in 1998, Matthew was simply Judy Shepard's son. For the first time in book form, Judy Shepard speaks about her loss, sharing memories of Matthew, their life as a typical American family, and the pivotal event in the small college town that changed everything.

The Meaning of Matthew follows the Shepard family in the days immediately after the crime, when Judy and her husband traveled to see their incapacitated son, kept alive by life support machines; how the Shepards learned of the incredible response from strangers all across America who held candlelit vigils and memorial services for their child; and finally, how they struggled to navigate the legal system as Matthew's murderers were on trial. Heart-wrenchingly honest, Judy Shepard confides with readers about how she handled the crippling loss of her child, why she became a gay rights activist, and the challenges and rewards of raising a gay child in America today.

The Meaning of Matthew not only captures the historical significance and complicated civil rights issues surrounding one young man's life and death, but it also chronicles one ordinary woman's struggle to cope with the unthinkable.

]]> 271 Judy Shepard 1594630577 Steve 5 favorites 4.32 2009
author: Judy Shepard
name: Steve
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/01
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 250539 Josh Kilmer-Purcell 0739468081 Steve 5 favorites 4.14 2006
author: Josh Kilmer-Purcell
name: Steve
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/01
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 43671672 National bestseller

A thrilling odyssey through an unforgiving landscape, from "Canada's greatest living explorer."

In the spring of 2017, Adam Shoalts, bestselling author and adventurer, set off on an unprecedented solo journey across North America's greatest wilderness. A place where, in our increasingly interconnected, digital world, it's still possible to wander for months without crossing a single road, or even see another human being.

Between his starting point in Eagle Plains, Yukon Territory, to his destination in Baker Lake, Nunavut, lies a maze of obstacles: shifting ice floes, swollen rivers, fog-bound lakes, and gale-force storms. And Shoalts must time his departure by the breakup of the spring ice, then sprint across nearly 4,000 kilometers of rugged, wild terrain to arrive before winter closes in.

He travels alone up raging rivers that only the most expert white-water canoeists dare travel even downstream. He must portage across fields of jagged rocks that stretch to the horizon, and navigate labyrinths of swamps, tormented by clouds of mosquitoes every step of the way. And the race against the calendar means that he cannot afford the luxuries of rest, or of making mistakes. Shoalts must trek tirelessly, well into the endless Arctic summer nights, at times not even pausing to eat.

But his reward is the adventure of a lifetime.

Heart-stopping, wonder-filled, and attentive to the majesty of the natural world, Beyond the Trees captures the ache for adventure that afflicts us all.]]> 288 Adam Shoalts 0735236836 Steve 5 favorites 3.92 2019
author: Adam Shoalts
name: Steve
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/01
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 33916288 The sweeping, epic story of the mysterious land that came to be called "Canada" like it's never been told before.

Every map tells a story. And every map has a purpose--it invites us to go somewhere we've never been. It's an account of what we know, but also a trace of what we long for.

Ten Maps conjures the world as it appeared to those who were called upon to map it. What would the new world look like to wandering Vikings, who thought they had drifted into a land of mythical creatures, or Samuel de Champlain, who had no idea of the vastness of the landmass just beyond the treeline?

Adam Shoalts, one of Canada's foremost explorers, tells the stories behind these centuries old maps, and how they came to shape what became "Canada."

It's a story that will surprise readers, and reveal the Canada we never knew was hidden. It brings to life the characters and the bloody disputes that forged our history, by showing us what the world looked like before it entered the history books. Combining storytelling, cartography, geography, archaeology and of course history, this book shows us Canada in a way we've never seen it before.]]> 352 Adam Shoalts 0670069469 Steve 5 favorites 4.40 2017
author: Adam Shoalts
name: Steve
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/01
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 146531996 272 Shreve Stockton Steve 5 favorites 5.00
author: Shreve Stockton
name: Steve
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/10
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 518982 Prayers for Bobby, nominated for a 1996 Lambda Literary Award, is the story of the emotional journey that led Bobby to this tragic conclusion. But it is also the story of Bobby's mother, a fearful churchgoer who first prayed that her son would be "healed," then anguished over his suicide, and ultimately transformed herself into a national crusader for gay and lesbian youth.

As told through Bobby's poignant journal entries and his mother's reminiscences, Prayers for Bobby is at once a moving personal story, a true profile in courage, and a call to arms to parents everywhere.]]> 271 Leroy Aarons 0062511238 Steve 5 favorites 4.28 1995
author: Leroy Aarons
name: Steve
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> 53690508 The tragic and resonant story of the disappearance of eight men--the victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur--from Toronto's queer community.��Shortlisted for the 2021 Toronto Book AwardsIn 2013, the Toronto Police Service announced that the disappearances of three men--Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Majeed Kayhan--from Toronto's gay village were, perhaps, linked. When the leads ran dry, the investigation was shut down, on paper classified as "open but suspended." By 2015, investigative journalist Justin Ling had begun to retrace investigators' steps, convinced there was evidence of a serial killer. Meanwhile, more men would go missing, and police would continue to deny that there was a threat to the community. On January 18, 2018, Bruce McArthur, a landscaper, would be arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder. In February 2019, he was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of eight men.�������� This extraordinary book tells the complete story of the McArthur murders. Based on more than five years of in-depth reporting, this is also a story of police failure, of how the queer community responded, and the story of the eight men who went missing and the lives they left behind. In telling that story, Justin Ling uncovers the latent homophobia and racism that kept this case unsolved and unseen. This gripping book reveals how police agencies across the country fail to treat missing persons cases seriously, and how policies and laws, written at every level of government, pushed McArthur's victims out of the light and into the shadows.]]> 300 Justin Ling 0771048653 Steve 5 favorites 4.22 2020
author: Justin Ling
name: Steve
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 59883585 A searing exposé on the whiteness of running, a supposedly egalitarian sport, and a call to reimagine the industry

"Runners know that running brings us to ourselves. But for Black people, the simple act of running has never been so simple. It is a declaration of the right to move through the world. If running is claiming public space, why, then, does it feel like a negotiation?"

Running saved Alison Désir's life. At rock bottom and searching for meaning and structure, Désir started marathon training, finding that it vastly improved both her physical and mental health. Yet as she became involved in the community and learned its history, she realized that the sport was largely built with white people in mind.

Running While Black draws on Désir's experience as an endurance athlete, activist, and mental health advocate to explore why the seemingly simple, human act of long distance running for exercise and health has never been truly open to Black people. Weaving historical context--from the first recreational running boom to the horrific murder of Ahmaud Arbery--together with her own story of growth in the sport, Désir unpacks how we got here and advocates for a world where everyone is free to safely experience the life-changing power of movement.

As America reckons with its history of white supremacy across major institutions, Désir argues that, as a litmus test for an inclusive society, the fitness industry has the opportunity to lead the charge--fulfilling its promise of empowerment.]]> 264 Alison Mariella Désir 059341862X Steve 5 favorites 4.56 2022
author: Alison Mariella Désir
name: Steve
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/17
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 61062194 From the magical moments on set as Draco Malfoy to the challenges of growing up in the spotlight, get a backstage pass into Tom Felton’s life on and off the big screen in this #1 New York Times bestseller.

Tom Felton’s adolescence was anything but ordinary. His early rise to fame in beloved films like The Borrowers catapulted him into the limelight, but nothing could prepare him for what was to come after he landed the iconic role of the Draco Malfoy, the bleached blonde villain of the Harry Potter movies. For the next ten years, he was at the center of a huge pop culture phenomenon and yet, in between filming, he would go back to being a normal teenager trying to fit into a normal school.

Speaking with great candor and his signature humor, Tom shares his experience growing up as part of the wizarding world while also trying to navigate the muggle world. He tells stories from his early days in the business like his first acting gig where he was mistaken for fellow blonde child actor Macaulay Culkin and his Harry Potter audition where, in a very Draco-like move, he fudged how well he knew the books the series was based on (not at all). He reflects on his experiences working with cinematic greats such as Alan Rickman, Sir Michael Gambon, Dame Maggie Smith, and Ralph Fiennes (including that awkward Voldemort hug). And, perhaps most poignantly, he discusses the lasting relationships he made over that decade of filming, including with Emma Watson, who started out as a pesky nine-year-old whom he mocked for not knowing what a boom mic was but who soon grew into one of his dearest friends. Then, of course, there are the highs and lows of fame and navigating life after such a momentous and life-changing experience.

Tom Felton’s Beyond the Wand is an entertaining, funny, and poignant must-read for any Harry Potter fan. Prepare to meet a real-life wizard.]]> 288 Tom Felton 1538741369 Steve 5 favorites 4.28 2022
author: Tom Felton
name: Steve
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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]]> 207298107
From his earliest days as a kid in Canada, Deryck Whibley was a punk who loved music and couldn’t wait to achieve something bigger and better than the humble path that lay before him. Raised by a single mom and constantly moving from place to place, Deryck was used to being the new kid, starting fights (or finishing them), and finding friends who shared his sensibility for chaotic fun and loud music. Sum 41 was born of a group of friends who loved to jam, shared a DIY ethos, and were determined to be rock stars one day.

Walking Disaster is Deryck’s story, but it is also the untold story of Sum 41. Deryck takes you backstage, into the recording booth, and through the highest highs and lowest lows of the band whose story is inextricably woven with his own.

With his insightful, earnest, and genuine voice, Deryck gets real about fame, fortune, and the music industry. From winning at the MTV Video Music Awards, being nominated for a Grammy, his high-profile relationships and friendships, contending with invasive paparazzi, and suffering from health issues that brought him to the brink, Deryck offers a forthright and unforgettable memoir.]]> 272 Deryck Whibley 166804501X Steve 5 favorites 4.39
author: Deryck Whibley
name: Steve
average rating: 4.39
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 56898257
You Can’t Be Serious is a series of funny, consequential, awkward, and ridiculous stories from Kal’s idiosyncratic life. It’s about being the grandson of Gandhian freedom fighters, and the son of immigrant parents: people who came to this country with very little and went very far—and whose vision of the American dream probably never included their son sliding off an oiled-up naked woman in a raunchy Ryan Reynolds movie…or getting a phone call from Air Force One as Kal flew with the country’s first Black president.

With intelligence, humor, and charm on every page, Kal reflects on the most exasperating and rewarding moments from his journey so far. He pulls back the curtain on the nuances of opportunity and racism in the entertainment industry and recounts how he built allies, found encouragement, and dealt with early reminders that he might never fit in. And of course, he reveals how, after a decade and a half of fighting for and enjoying successes in Hollywood, he made the terrifying but rewarding decision to take a sabbatical from a fulfilling acting career for an opportunity to serve his country as a White House aide.

Above all, You Can’t Be Serious shows that everyone can have more than one life story. Kal demonstrates by example that no matter who you are and where you come from, you have many more choices than those presented to you. It’s a story about struggle, triumph, and learning how to keep your head up. And okay, yes, it’s also about how he accidentally (and very stupidly) accepted an invitation to take the entire White House Office of Public Engagement to a strip club—because, let’s be honest, that’s the kind of stuff you really want to hear about.]]> 368 Kal Penn 1982171383 Steve 5 favorites 4.20 2021
author: Kal Penn
name: Steve
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 1241 Before considering reading this book, please see the BookBrowse note on the book jacket/review page.

BookBrowse Note: January 9th 2006: An article in the Smoking Gun claimed that James Frey (author of A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard) fabricated key parts of his books. They cited police records, court documents and interviews with law enforcement agents which belie a number of Frey's claims regarding criminal charges against him, jail terms and his fugitive status.

In an interview with the Smoking Gun, Frey admitted that he had 'embellished central details' in A Million Little Pieces and backtracked on claims he made in the book.

January 26th 2006. Frey's publisher stated that while it initially stood by him, after further questioning of the author, the house has "sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished." It will be adding a a publisher's note and author's note to all future editions of A Million Little Pieces.]]> 515 James Frey 0307276902 Steve 4 3.68 2003
author: James Frey
name: Steve
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 181109983
A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity,�� The House of Hidden Meanings ��is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag. Central to RuPaul’s success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and supermogul.

Yet that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known. Stripping away all artifice, RuPaul recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.

Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living—a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly. If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.��]]> 256 RuPaul 0063263904 Steve 3 3.78 2024
author: RuPaul
name: Steve
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/22
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 52961539
Heartbroken, unhappy and unsure of what to do next, he leaves the hometown he has been in all his life to embark on a journey that takes him all around the world, from teaching in a school on the outskirts of Rome to exploring the sex clubs of Berlin, to raising tigers in an animal sanctuary deep in the jungles of Thailand. Along the way, he meets LGBT+ people from all walks of life and every part of the rainbow - from an Italian teenager struggling with a homophobic father to a kathoey navigating life as a trans person in Thailand, to a young HIV-positive man living on the streets of London.

Their individual stories, not only of hardship and sorrow but also of profound strength and hope, show the breadth and depth of queer life and experience, shedding light on themes such as homophobia, sexual violence, marriage equality and gender identity. Through these meetings and friendships, Calum not only finds the encouragement to embrace life after heartbreak, but also discovers a beautiful, loving global community who support and uplift him through the best and worst moments of his time on the road.

A travel memoir with a difference, Eat, Gay, Love is a celebration of the power of community and a personal tribute to the extraordinary lives of LGBT+ people everywhere in the world.]]> 304 Calum McSwiggan 1529384486 Steve 5 favorites 3.99 2020
author: Calum McSwiggan
name: Steve
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: favorites
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]]> 242006 336 Augusten Burroughs 031242227X Steve 5 favorites 3.77 2002
author: Augusten Burroughs
name: Steve
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 62330020
The holly-jolly holidays aren’t for everyone, least of all when you look back on that one Christmas when there were two definitely haunted dolls waiting for you and your sister under the tree. You have to assume that’s where it all started.

And so it was for Jenny Lawson. Now, she lives in the land of eternal Halloween, as evidenced by her interior decor and general state of darkness. (Although, if you ask her, her taxidermy zoo is less dark, more delightful. But not everyone has taste, so what are you going to do?)

This essay takes Jenny back to where it all started, from her humble beginnings as a trick-or-treater in the 1980s, on high alert for (logistically improbable) candy laced with razor blades and the (allegedly) ever-present threat of satanists on the loose. From there, she has risen from the candy-wrapper ashes of her childhood to claim her rightful lifestyle as the queen of Halloween.]]> 25 Jenny Lawson 1662511116 Steve 5 favorites 3.95 2022
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Steve
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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]]> 23848559
In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:

"I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people' also might never understand. And that's what Furiously Happy is all about."

Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. Furiously Happy appeals to Jenny's core fan base but also transcends it. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family—and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message (via a taxidermied roadkill raccoon). Let's Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it's about joy—and who doesn't want a bit more of that?]]> 329 Jenny Lawson 1250077001 Steve 5 favorites 3.88 2015
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Steve
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 12868761 318 Jenny Lawson 0399159010 Steve 5 favorites 3.89 2012
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Steve
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 63133205 The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]> 288 Britney Spears 1668009048 Steve 5
It’s obvious how much her fans mean to her through this book, especially after her family pulled her through the dirt.

Highly recommend! ]]> 3.83 2023
author: Britney Spears
name: Steve
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/07
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I couldn’t put it down. Growing up with Britney’s music but knowing minimal details about the conservatorship - I was shocked about what she had gone through.

It’s obvious how much her fans mean to her through this book, especially after her family pulled her through the dirt.

Highly recommend!
]]> 19501
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

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

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.]]> 368 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143038419 Steve 0 to-read 3.64 2006
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Steve
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 60320723
A waiter's job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door . . . is hell.

Edward Chisholm's spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you beneath the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world—and right into its glorious underbelly.

He inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep and dive bars; scraping by on coffee, bread and cigarettes, often under sadistic managers, with a wage so low you're fighting your colleagues for tips. Your colleagues—including thieves, narcissists, ex-soldiers, immigrants, wannabe actors, and drug dealers—are the closest thing to family that you've got.

It's physically demanding, frequently humiliating and incredibly competitive. But it doesn't matter because you're in Paris, the center of the universe, and there's nowhere else you'd rather be in the world.]]> 384 Edward Chisholm 1639362835 Steve 0 to-read 3.97 2022
author: Edward Chisholm
name: Steve
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 55207391
No Shame is a very funny, candid and emotional ride of a memoir by one of our most beloved comedians. The working-class son of a coach driver, and the youngest member of the Noel Coward Society, Tom Allen grew up in 90s suburbia as the eternal outsider.

In these hilarious, honest and heart breaking stories Tom recalls observations on childhood, his adolescence, the family he still lives with, and his attempts to come out and negotiate the gay dating scene. They are written with his trademark caustic wit and warmth, and will entertain, surprise and move you in equal measure.]]> 304 Tom Allen 1529348900 Steve 0 to-read 4.08 2020
author: Tom Allen
name: Steve
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 58604390 A deeply personal and inspiring memoir from one of the most celebrated and influential names in British sport.

Tom Daley captured the hearts of the nation with his unforgettable medal-winning performance in the London 2012 Olympics. At this year’s Games in Tokyo, he triumphed to win gold and became the most decorated British diver of all time.

In this deeply personal book, Tom explores the experiences that have shaped him and the qualities to which he owes his contentment and success; from the resilience he developed competing at world-class level, to the courage he discovered while reclaiming the narrative around his sexuality, and the perspective that family life has brought him.

Candid and perceptive, Coming Up for Air offers a unique insight into the life and mindset of one our greatest and most-loved athletes.]]> 298 Tom Daley 0008217920 Steve 0 to-read 4.05 2021
author: Tom Daley
name: Steve
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 38521 The lead singer of the acclaimed, platinum-selling group Franz Ferdinand takes readers on a rock-and-roll culinary adventure around the world The extremely successful neo–New Wave band Franz Ferdinand has millions of fans around the globe, and the group’s frequent tours bring its members not only to a wide variety of places but also face to face with a wide range of food. Here, lead singer Alex Kapranos collects his humorous and insightful reflections—compiled partly from his column in the Guardian (London)—on his many international gastronomic encounters, both savory and not so savory. From the charms of a donut shop in a Polish-speaking part of Brooklyn to a decidedly less charming pair of bull’s testicles in Buenos Aires to the seductive, almost-vegetarian allure of a heavenly Singaporean buffet, Kapranos always gets the mouthwatering details just right while delivering an entertaining look at rock-and-roll life on the road.

]]> 144 Alex Kapranos 0143038087 Steve 0 to-read 3.71 2006
author: Alex Kapranos
name: Steve
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 123194968 280 Niall Harbison 0008627207 Steve 0 to-read 4.58 2023
author: Niall Harbison
name: Steve
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61335651
The brilliant debut novel from author, presenter and LGBTQ+ advocate Calum McSwiggan!

Seventeen-year-old Max has always been out, proud and just a little spoiled. Frustrated by the lack of romantic options in his small-town high school, during an argument with his lifelong best friend Dean, Max lashes out and says he wishes he had never been born gay.

Max gets more than he bargained for when he wakes up to find his wish has come true - not only have his feelings for boys vanished, but so has Dean.

With his school life turned upside down and his relationship with his family in tatters, Max sets out on a journey of rediscovery to find a way back to the life he took for granted, and the romance he thought he'd never have.

Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Sex Education.]]> 331 Calum McSwiggan 0241551153 Steve 0 to-read 3.82
author: Calum McSwiggan
name: Steve
average rating: 3.82
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]]> 195790706 A young gay man upends the lives of a powerful art-world couple in this steamy novel of self-discovery.

It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon―handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction―takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites�� dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him―and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself.

A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Phillip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulation, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him.

Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.]]> 288 Thomas Grattan 0374608180 Steve 0 to-read 3.93 2024
author: Thomas Grattan
name: Steve
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/05
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]]> 212923976 Gay Bar comes a rule-breaking, sweat-soaked, genre-busting story of outlaw love.


It’s 1996, and Jeremy Atherton Lin has met the boy of his dreams �� a mumbling, starry-eyed Brit �� just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights including immigration. The pair steals away to remote forests and vast deserts, London fashion shows and Berlin sex clubs, dinner parties, back alleys, East Village hotel rooms, and San Francisco dives. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in a “city of refuge.��


With Atherton Lin’s inimitable blend of tenderness and wicked humor, Deep House moves through the couple’s string of rented apartments while unlocking doors to a lineage of gay men who have come before �� smuggling a foreign partner through national checkpoints or going public to stand up for the right to get down in the privacy of their own homes. They include hapless criminals, sexpot bartenders, friars, pirates, government workers who subverted the system, activists who went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the celebrated artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres.


Following Gay Bar �� called “a rich tapestry�� by Vanity Fair and “an absolute tour de force�� by Maggie Nelson �� Deep House juxtaposes whispered disclosures of undocumented domesticity with courtroom drama and political stunts to explore myriad forms of intimacy while questioning the mechanisms that legitimize love. Deep House is at once a historical kaleidoscope and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle.]]> 416 Jeremy Atherton Lin 0316545791 Steve 0 to-read 4.27
author: Jeremy Atherton Lin
name: Steve
average rating: 4.27
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date added: 2025/01/05
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]]> 58787306 *A BUZZFEED BEST BOOK OF JUNE*
*A Washington Post “Book to Read This Summer��*
*AN ADVOCATE BEST LGBTQ+ BOOK OF 2022 *
* A USA Today "Book to Celebrate Pride Month"*
*A New York Times "Editor's Pick"*
* A Kirkus Reviews Hottest Book of Summer*

A groundbreaking account of New York's Fire Island, chronicling its influence on art, literature, culture and queer liberation over the past century

Fire Island, a thin strip of beach off the Long Island coast, has long been a vital space in the queer history of America. Both utopian and exclusionary, healing and destructive, the island is a locus of contradictions, all of which coalesce against a stunning ocean backdrop.

Now, poet and scholar Jack Parlett tells the story of this iconic destination—its history, its meaning and its cultural significance—told through the lens of the artists and creators who sought refuge on its shores. Together, figures as divergent as Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Carson McCullers, Frank O'Hara, Patricia Highsmith and Jeremy O. Harris tell the story of a queer space in constant evolution.

Transporting, impeccably researched and gorgeously written, Fire Island is the definitive book on an iconic American destination and an essential contribution to queer history.]]> 272 Jack Parlett 1335475184 Steve 0 to-read 3.71 2022
author: Jack Parlett
name: Steve
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 53915332
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR The New York Times * NPR * Vogue��* Gay Times * Artforum *

�� Gay Bar is an absolute tour de force.�� –Maggie Nelson

"Atherton Lin has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-esque range for discussing gay sex.”���� New York Times Book Review

As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what’s being lost in this indispensable, intimate, and stylish celebration of queer history.

Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last ��the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression—whatever your scene, whoever you’re seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?

In Gay Bar, ��the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.��

The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity—a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.]]> 320 Jeremy Atherton Lin 0316458732 Steve 4 3.78 2021
author: Jeremy Atherton Lin
name: Steve
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
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