Emilia's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 06 Jan 2024 10:53:36 -0800 60 Emilia's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Uncommon Reader 1096390 120 Alan Bennett 0374280967 Emilia 0 to-read 3.75 2007 The Uncommon Reader
author: Alan Bennett
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/06
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]]> The English Understand Wool 59468833 Maman was exigeante—there is no English word–and I had the benefit of her training. Others may not be so fortunate. If some other young girl, with two million dollars at stake, finds this of use I shall count myself justified.

Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and English father, a 17-year-old girl has learned above all to avoid mauvais ton ("bad taste" loses something in the translation). One should not ask servants to wait on one during Ramadan: they must have paid leave while one spends the holy month abroad. One must play the piano; if staying at Claridge’s, one must regrettably install a Clavinova in the suite, so that the necessary hours of practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris (whose genius has been supported by purchase of suitable premises). All this and much more she has learned, governed by a parent of ferociously lofty standards. But at 17, during the annual Ramadan travels, she finds all assumptions overturned. Will she be able to fend for herself? Will the dictates of good taste suffice when she must deal, singlehanded, with the sharks of New York?]]> 69 Helen DeWitt 0811230074 Emilia 0 to-read 4.06 2022 The English Understand Wool
author: Helen DeWitt
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

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

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Emilia 0 currently-reading 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/01
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]]> The Fraud 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith Emilia 0 to-read 3.25 2023 The Fraud
author: Zadie Smith
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> Kitchens of the Great Midwest 23398625
Each chapter in J. Ryan Stradal's startlingly original debut tells the story of a single dish and character, at once capturing the zeitgeist of the Midwest, the rise of foodie culture, and delving into the ways food creates community and a sense of identity. By turns quirky, hilarious, and vividly sensory, Kitchens of the Great Midwest is an unexpected mother-daughter story about the bittersweet nature of life--its missed opportunities and its joyful surprises. It marks the entry of a brilliant new talent.]]> 310 J. Ryan Stradal 052542914X Emilia 0 to-read 3.80 2015 Kitchens of the Great Midwest
author: J. Ryan Stradal
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Emilia 0 to-read 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories]]> 58735012 The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief--all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history--about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight.

In "Boys Go to Jupiter," a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain," a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend's unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.]]> 288 Danielle Evans 0593189450 Emilia 5 4.09 2020 The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories
author: Danielle Evans
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[A Very Asian Guide to Filipino Food]]> 159032106 40 Amira Humes 1737240440 Emilia 5 4.61 A Very Asian Guide to Filipino Food
author: Amira Humes
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.61
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/31
date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> My Powerful Hair 61783765
Our ancestors say our hair is our memories,
our source of strength and power,
a celebration of our lives.

Mom never had long hair—she was told it was too wild. Grandma couldn’t have long hair—hers was taken from her. But one young girl can’t wait to grow her hair for herself, for her family, for her connection to her culture and the Earth, and to honor the strength and resilience of those who came before her.

From Carole Lindstrom, author of the New York Times bestseller and Caldecott Medal winner We Are Water Protectors , and debut illustrator Steph Littlebird comes an empowering and healing celebration of hair and its significance across Indigenous cultures.]]> 48 Carole Lindstrom 1419759434 Emilia 5 4.56 2023 My Powerful Hair
author: Carole Lindstrom
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/19
date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> <![CDATA[There Was a Party for Langston: (Caldecott Honor & Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor)]]> 101008178 A Caldecott Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book

New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds’s debut picture book is a snappy, joyous ode to Word King, literary genius, and glass-ceiling smasher Langston Hughes and the luminaries he inspired.

Back in the day, there was a heckuva party, a jam, for a word-making man. The King of Letters. Langston Hughes. His ABCs became drums, bumping jumping thumping like a heart the size of the whole country. They sent some people yelling and others, his word-children, to write their own glory.

Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and more came be-bopping to recite poems at their hero’s feet at that heckuva party at the Schomberg Library, dancing boom da boom, stepping and stomping, all in praise and love for Langston, world-mending word man. Oh, yeah, there was hoopla in Harlem, for its Renaissance man. A party for Langston.]]> 56 Jason Reynolds 1534439455 Emilia 5 4.50 2023 There Was a Party for Langston: (Caldecott Honor & Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor)
author: Jason Reynolds
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/19
date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Identity-Conscious Educator: Building Habits and Skills for a More Inclusive School (Create a Research-based  Learning Environment That Allows Students of all Backgrounds to Learn and Grow Together.)]]> 60494502 The Identity-Conscious Educator provides a framework for building awareness and understanding of five identity race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Connect with vignettes and personal stories from the author that illuminate how to address identity topics in your personal and professional life. Then, develop skills in engaging in meaningful interactions with students and peers.


Discover how identity affects both personal and professional lives.
Review a framework for building habits and skills of identity-conscious teaching and learning.
Build knowledge of five different identity categories and experiences --race, social class, sexual orientation, gender, and disability --and then act for positive change.
Reflect with end-of-chapter questions.
Review practical, research-based strategies, and activities for having difficult conversations and creating more inclusive communities.



Preface

Introduction

Part Getting Ready for Identity Work

Chapter 1: The Journey to Identity Awareness

Chapter 2: The Shift From Avoiding Conflict to Inviting Challenge

Part Building Your Identity-Conscious Practice

Chapter 3: Race

Chapter 4: Class

Chapter 5: Sexual Orientation

Chapter 6: Gender

Chapter 7: Disability

Part Turning Planning Into Action

Chapter 8: From Ally to Abolitionist

Chapter 9: The Role of Failure in Identity Work

Chapter 10: Tools for Extending Your Learning

Chapter 11: From Practitioner to Facilitator

Chapter 12: Beyond The Identity-Conscious Educator

Epilogue

References and Resources

Index]]> 351 Liza A. Talusan 1952812720 Emilia 5 4.40 Identity-Conscious Educator: Building Habits and Skills for a More Inclusive School (Create a Research-based  Learning Environment That Allows Students of all Backgrounds to Learn and Grow Together.)
author: Liza A. Talusan
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/06
date added: 2023/12/06
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]]> Violeta 57933338 The epic story of Violeta del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century.

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.

Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. . . .

She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.

Told through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.]]> 322 Isabel Allende 0593496205 Emilia 4 3.97 2022 Violeta
author: Isabel Allende
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/05
date added: 2023/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Lolas' House: Filipino Women Living with War]]> 34448039
M. Evelina Galang enters into the lives of the women at Lolas� House, a community center in metro Manila. She accompanies them to the sites of their abduction and protests with them at the gates of the Japanese embassy. Each woman gives her testimony, and even though the women relive their horror at each telling, they offer their stories so that no woman anywhere should suffer wartime rape and torture.

Lolas� House is a book of testimony, but it is also a book of witness, of survival, and of the female body. Intensely personal and globally political, it is the legacy of Lolas� House to the world.]]> 280 M. Evelina Galang 0810135868 Emilia 0 to-read 4.42 Lolas' House: Filipino Women Living with War
author: M. Evelina Galang
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.42
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]]> When the Hibiscus Falls 80110988 256 M. Evelina Galang 1566896797 Emilia 0 to-read 4.01 2023 When the Hibiscus Falls
author: M. Evelina Galang
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/04
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]]> Let Us Descend 87556695
“‘Let us descend,� the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’� � Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.]]> 305 Jesmyn Ward 198210449X Emilia 0 to-read 3.68 2023 Let Us Descend
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> The Berry Pickers 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Emilia 0 to-read 4.04 2023 The Berry Pickers
author: Amanda Peters
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything]]> 61281780 368 Kara Gnodde 0063266016 Emilia 0 to-read 3.35 The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything
author: Kara Gnodde
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.35
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness (Ordinary Terrible Things)]]> 39979639 Not My Idea, the latest in the critically-acclaimed Ordinary Terrible Things series, is a book about whiteness.

A white child sees TV news coverage of a white police officer shooting a brown person whose hands were up. Upset, he asks his mother why; she deflects, assuring him that he is safe. Later, they visit an aunt and uncle, where the TV, always on, shows a rally in response to the police shooting. The child glimpses a moving press conference with the victim’s family while his aunt claims she simply “can’t watch the news.�

The book’s narrator accompanies the child as he faces history and himself. The activities section urges kids to grow justice (“like a bean sprout in a milk carton�) inside of themselves, seek out and listen to the truth about racism and white supremacy, and prepare to be changed, heartbroken, and liberated by this experience.

Part history lesson, part compassionate primer to assist children (and parents) past defensiveness, Not My Idea is a tangible tool for necessary conversations.]]> 64 Anastasia Higginbotham 1948340003 Emilia 5 4.02 2020 Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness (Ordinary Terrible Things)
author: Anastasia Higginbotham
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/02
date added: 2023/11/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening]]> 55883882
Collects MONSTRESS #1-6

About the Creators:

New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer Marjorie Liu is best known for her fiction and comic books. She teaches comic book writing at MIT, and leads a class on Popular Fiction at the Voices of Our Nation (VONA) workshop. Ms. Liu's extensive work includes the bestselling "Astonishing X-Men" for Marvel Comics, which featured the gay wedding of X-Man Northstar and was subsequently nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding media images of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Prior to writing full-time, Liu was a lawyer. She currently resides in Boston.

Sana Takeda is an illustrator and comic book artist who was born in Niigata, and now resides in Tokyo, Japan. At age 20 she started out as a 3D CGI designer for SEGA, a Japanese video game company, and became a freelance artist when she was 25. She is still an artist, and has worked on titles such as "X-23" and "Ms. Marvel" for Marvel Comics, and is an illustrator for trading card games in Japan.]]> 192 Marjorie M. Liu 1632157098 Emilia 0 to-read 3.96 2016 Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening
author: Marjorie M. Liu
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/29
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]]> The Mothers 28815371
"All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season."

It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance—and the subsequent cover-up—will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt.

In entrancing, lyrical prose, The Mothers asks whether a "what if" can be more powerful than an experience itself. If, as time passes, we must always live in servitude to the decisions of our younger selves, to the communities that have parented us, and to the decisions we make that shape our lives forever.]]> 288 Brit Bennett 0399184511 Emilia 4 3.87 2016 The Mothers
author: Brit Bennett
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/27
date added: 2023/08/27
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]]> Pageboy 60473073 Pageboy is a groundbreaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. A generation-defining actor and one of the most famous trans advocates of our time, Elliot will now be known as an uncommon literary talent, as he shares never-before-heard details and intimate interrogations on gender, love, mental health, relationships, and Hollywood.]]> 271 Elliot Page Emilia 0 to-read 3.72 2023 Pageboy
author: Elliot Page
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/12
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]]> Family Lore 62949033 From bestselling, National Book Award-winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake--a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led--her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn't the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband's infidelity, but she must now confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor's wake motivates this driven woman to solve her sibling's problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, and often the forgotten one, but she's decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted.

And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi is reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; Ona is married for years and attempting to conceive. Ona must decide whether it's worth it to keep trying--to have a child, and the anthropology research that's begun to feel lackluster.

Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces--one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.]]> 371 Elizabeth Acevedo Emilia 0 to-read 3.51 2023 Family Lore
author: Elizabeth Acevedo
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/12
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]]> Remember 58975114 Michaela Goade, invites young readers to pause and reflect on the wonder of the world around them, and to remember the importance of their place in it.

Remember the sky you were born under,
Know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn,
That is the strongest point of time.

So begins the picture book adaptation of the poem that encourages young readers to reflect on family, nature, and their heritage. In simple and direct language, Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke Nation, urges readers to pay close attention to who they are, the world they were born into, and how all inhabitants on earth are connected.]]> 40 Joy Harjo Emilia 5 4.44 2023 Remember
author: Joy Harjo
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/12
date added: 2023/08/12
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]]> Once Upon a Book 58064778
Once upon a time, there was a girl.  She went to a place alive with colors, where even the morning dew was warm.   Alice loves to imagine herself in the magical pages of her favorite book. So when it flaps its pages and invites her in, she is swept away to a world of wonder and adventure, riding camels in the desert, swimming under the sea with colorful fish, floating in outer space, and more! But when her imaginative journey comes to an end, she yearns for the place she loves best of all.

Paired with vibrant illustrations, this lyrical, expressive story invites the reader to savor each page and indulge in the power of imagination.]]> 40 Grace Lin 0316541079 Emilia 5 4.21 2023 Once Upon a Book
author: Grace Lin
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/12
date added: 2023/08/12
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]]> The Paper Palace 55994372
Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives.

As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593329825.]]> 400 Miranda Cowley Heller Emilia 4 3.73 2021 The Paper Palace
author: Miranda Cowley Heller
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/02
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves:
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]]> Call Us What We Carry 56805404 The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, Amanda Gorman’s remarkable new collection reveals an energizing and unforgettable voice in American poetry. Call Us What We Carry is Gorman at her finest. Including “The Hill We Climb,� the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, and bursting with musical language and exploring themes of identity, grief, and memory, this lyric of hope and healing captures an important moment in our country’s consciousness while being utterly timeless.

The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman.]]> 228 Amanda Gorman 0593465067 Emilia 4 4.27 2021 Call Us What We Carry
author: Amanda Gorman
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/15
date added: 2023/07/15
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review:

]]> Before the Ever After 51988656 Jacqueline Woodson's novel-in-verse explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed and the cost of professional sports on Black bodies.

For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone's hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he's as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays with as he is to his millions of adoring sports fans. But lately life at ZJ's house is anything but charming. His dad is having trouble remembering things and seems to be angry all the time. ZJ's mom explains it's because of all the head injuries his dad sustained during his career. ZJ can understand that--but it doesn't make the sting any less real when his own father forgets his name. As ZJ contemplates his new reality, he has to figure out how to hold on tight to family traditions and recollections of the glory days, all the while wondering what their past amounts to if his father can't remember it. And most importantly, can those happy feelings ever be reclaimed when they are all so busy aching for the past?]]> 176 Jacqueline Woodson 0399545433 Emilia 4 4.17 2020 Before the Ever After
author: Jacqueline Woodson
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/08
date added: 2023/07/08
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]]> Horse Barbie 63876565
As a young femme in 1990s Manila, Geena Rocero heard, � Bakla, bakla! ,� a taunt aimed at her feminine sway, whenever she left the tiny universe of her eskinita . Eventually, she found her place in trans pageants, the Philippines� informal national sport. When her competitors mocked her as a “horse Barbie� due to her statuesque physique, tumbling hair, long neck, and dark skin, she leaned into the epithet. By seventeen, she was the Philippines� highest-earning trans pageant queen.

A year later, Geena moved to the United States where she could change her name and gender marker on her documents. But legal recognition didn’t mean safety. In order to survive, Geena went stealth and hid her trans identity, gaining one type of freedom at the expense of another. For a while, it worked. She became an in-demand model. But as her star rose, her sense of self eroded. She craved acceptance as her authentic self yet had to remain vigilant in order to protect her dream career. The high-stakes double life finally forced Geena to decide herself if she wanted to reclaim the power of Horse Barbie once and for radiant, head held high, and unabashedly herself.

A dazzling testimony from an icon who sits at the center of transgender history and activism, Horse Barbie is a celebratory and universal story of survival, love, and pure joy.]]> 320 Geena Rocero 0593445880 Emilia 4 4.19 2023 Horse Barbie
author: Geena Rocero
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/07
date added: 2023/07/07
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]]> Yellowface 59357120
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 329 R.F. Kuang Emilia 5 3.84 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/03
date added: 2023/07/03
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]]> Woman Without Shame: Poems 59679549 A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street.

It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home--in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.]]> 161 Sandra Cisneros 0593534824 Emilia 4 4.09 2022 Woman Without Shame: Poems
author: Sandra Cisneros
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/30
date added: 2023/06/30
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]]> The Wind Knows My Name 62583516 This powerful and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea weaves together past and present, tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in the United States in 2019.

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler was six years old when his father disappeared during Kristallnacht—the night their family lost everything. Samuel’s mother secured a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to the United Kingdom, which he boarded alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz, a blind seven-year-old girl, and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. However, their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination she created with her sister back home.

Anita’s case is assigned to Selena Duran, a young social worker who enlists the help of a promising lawyer from one of San Francisco’s top law firms. Together they discover that Anita has another family member in the United States: Leticia Cordero, who is employed at the home of now eighty-six-year-old Samuel Adler, linking these two lives.

Spanning time and place, The Wind Knows My Name is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers—and never stop dreaming.]]> 260 Isabel Allende 0593598105 Emilia 0 to-read 3.93 2023 The Wind Knows My Name
author: Isabel Allende
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

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

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Emilia 5 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves:
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]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Emilia 5 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/14
date added: 2023/06/14
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]]> Berry Song 58064775 Caldecott Medalist Michaela Goade's first self-authored picture book is a celebration of the land she knows well and the wisdom of elders.

On an island at the edge of a wide, wild sea, a girl and her grandmother gather gifts from the earth. Salmon from the stream, herring eggs from the ocean, and in the forest, a world of berries.

Salmonberry, Cloudberry, Blueberry, Nagoonberry.

Huckleberry, Snowberry, Strawberry, Crowberry.

Through the seasons, they sing to the land as the land sings to them. Brimming with joy and gratitude, in every step of their journey, they forge a deeper kinship with both the earth and the generations that came before, joining in the song that connects us all.]]> 40 Michaela Goade 0316494178 Emilia 5 4.41 2022 Berry Song
author: Michaela Goade
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/12
date added: 2023/06/12
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]]> Hot Dog 58065383 From a critically acclaimed creator comes this summery picture book featuring an overheated--and overwhelmed--pup who finds his calm with some sea, sand, and fresh air.

It's summer in the city, and this hot dog has had enough! Enough of sizzling sidewalks, enough of wailing sirens, enough of people's feet right in his face. When he plops down in the middle of a crosswalk, his owner endeavors to get him the breath of fresh air he needs. She hails a taxi, hops a train, and ferries out to the beach.

Here, a pup can run!

With fluid art and lyrical text that have the soothing effect of waves on sand, Doug Salati shows us how to find calm and carry it back with us so we can appreciate the small joys in a day.
]]> 40 Doug Salati 0593308433 Emilia 4 4.29 2022 Hot Dog
author: Doug Salati
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/12
date added: 2023/06/12
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]]> The Remains of the Day 274186 here.

The Remains of the Day is a profoundly compelling portrait of the perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world postwar England. At the end of his three decades of service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a country drive, during which he looks back over his career to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving “a great gentleman.� But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington’s “greatness� and graver doubts about his own faith in the man he served.]]> 245 Kazuo Ishiguro 0679731725 Emilia 4 4.17 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2006/06/28
date added: 2023/05/16
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]]> Our Missing Hearts 60149573 A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture� in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.]]> 335 Celeste Ng 0593492544 Emilia 4 3.74 2022 Our Missing Hearts
author: Celeste Ng
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/05
date added: 2023/03/05
shelves:
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I can understand why Our Missing Hearts doesn't sit well with many readers. It's damn bleak. However, this book was personal for me. Celeste Ng created a world that's already happened and she challenges us to think this could happen again.
]]> Detransition, Baby 48890225 A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.]]> 337 Torrey Peters 0593133374 Emilia 0 to-read 3.94 2021 Detransition, Baby
author: Torrey Peters
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The 1619 Project: Born on the Water]]> 57569796 The 1619 Project’s lyrical picture book in verse chronicles the consequences of slavery and the history of Black resistance in the United States, thoughtfully rendered by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and Newbery honor-winning author Renée Watson.

A young student receives a family tree assignment in school, but she can only trace back three generations. Grandma gathers the whole family, and the student learns that 400 years ago, in 1619, their ancestors were stolen and brought to America by white slave traders.

But before that, they had a home, a land, a language. She learns how the people said to be born on the water survived.]]> 48 Nikole Hannah-Jones 0593307356 Emilia 5 4.69 2021 The 1619 Project: Born on the Water
author: Nikole Hannah-Jones
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/27
date added: 2023/02/27
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion]]> 43126457 Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.]]> 303 Jia Tolentino 0525510540 Emilia 0 to-read 4.04 2019 Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
author: Jia Tolentino
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[My Life: Growing Up Asian in America]]> 59441873
There are 23 million people, representing more than 20 countries, each with unique languages, histories, and cultures, clumped under "Asian American." Though their experiences are individual, certain commonalities appear.

-The pressure to perform and the weight of the model minority myth.
-The proximity to whiteness (for many) and the resulting privileges.
-The desexualizing, exoticizing, and fetishizing of their bodies.
-The microaggressions.
-The erasure and overt racism.

Through a series of essays, poems, and comics, 30 creators give voice to moments that defined them and shed light on the immense diversity and complexity of the Asian American identity. Edited by CAPE and with an introduction by renowned journalist SuChin Pak, My Life: Growing Up Asian in America is a celebration of community, a call to action, and a road map for a brighter future.

Featuring contributions from bestselling authors Melissa de la Cruz, Marie Lu, and Tanaïs; journalists Amna Nawaz, Edmund Lee, and Aisha Sultan; TV and film writers Teresa Hsiao, Heather Jeng Bladt, and Nathan Ramos-Park; and industry leaders Ellen K. Pao and Aneesh Raman, among many more.]]> 256 1982195355 Emilia 0 to-read 4.27 2022 My Life: Growing Up Asian in America
author: CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Walk with Vanessa: A Story About a Simple Act of Kindness]]> 35758098 32 ë 1524769568 Emilia 5 4.38 2018 I Walk with Vanessa: A Story About a Simple Act of Kindness
author: ë
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/05
date added: 2023/02/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Henna Artist (The Jaipur Trilogy, #1)]]> 53007917 Vivid and compelling in its portrait of one woman’s struggle for fulfillment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern, The Henna Artist opens a door into a world that is at once lush and fascinating, stark and cruel.

Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist—and confidante—to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own�

Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who could ruin her reputation and her livelihood. As she pursues her dream of an independent life, she is startled one day when she is confronted by her husband, who has tracked her down these many years later with a high-spirited young girl in tow—a sister Lakshmi never knew she had. Suddenly the caution that she has carefully cultivated as protection is threatened. Still she perseveres, applying her talents and lifting up those that surround her as she does.]]> 368 Alka Joshi 1488055440 Emilia 4 4.38 2020 The Henna Artist (The Jaipur Trilogy, #1)
author: Alka Joshi
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/04
date added: 2023/02/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Black Cake 57926137 We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right�? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.]]> 385 Charmaine Wilkerson Emilia 5 4.06 2022 Black Cake
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/09
date added: 2023/01/09
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]]> A Long Petal of the Sea 45897568 From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits comes an epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents, following two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a new place to call home.

In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life irreversibly intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them wants, and together are sponsored by poet Pablo Neruda to embark on the SS Winnipeg along with 2,200 other refugees in search of a new life. As unlikely partners, they embrace exile and emigrate to Chile as the rest of Europe erupts in World War.

Starting over on a new continent, their trials are just beginning. Over the course of their lives, they will face test after test. But they will also find joy as they wait patiently for a day when they are exiles no more, and will find friends in the most unlikely of places. Through it all, it is that hope of being reunited with their home that keeps them going. And in the end, they will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along.]]> 325 Isabel Allende 198482015X Emilia 4 3.92 2019 A Long Petal of the Sea
author: Isabel Allende
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/28
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The Dark is Rising 785125 This night will be bad and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.

It's Midwinter's Eve, the day before Will's eleventh birthday. But there is an atmosphere of fear in the familiar countryside around him. This will be a birthday like no other. Will discovers that he has the power of the Old Ones, and that he must embark on a quest to vanquish the terrifyingly evil magic of the Dark.

The second novel in Susan Cooper's highly acclaimed Dark is Rising sequence.]]> 216 Susan Cooper 0701150173 Emilia 0 to-read 4.09 1973 The Dark is Rising
author: Susan Cooper
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)]]> 6411961
Washington DC: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned at the last minute to deliver an evening lecture in the Capitol Building. Within moments of his arrival, however, a disturbing object - gruesomely encoded with five symbols - is discovered at the epicentre of the Rotunda. It is, he recognises, an ancient invitation, meant to beckon its recipient towards a long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon's revered mentor, Peter Solomon - philanthropist and prominent mason - is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes that his only hope of saving his friend's life is to accept this mysterious summons and follow wherever it leads him.

Langdon finds himself quickly swept behind the facade of America's most historic city into the unseen chambers, temples and tunnels which exist there. All that was familiar is transformed into a shadowy, clandestine world of an artfully concealed past in which Masonic secrets and never-before-seen revelations seem to be leading him to a single impossible and inconceivable truth.

A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories, arcane icons and enigmatic codes, The Lost Symbol is an intelligent, lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn. For, as Robert Langdon will discover, there is nothing more extraordinary or shocking than the secret which hides in plain sight...]]> 509 Dan Brown 0385504225 Emilia 0 to-read 3.75 2009 The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)
author: Dan Brown
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Diving Into the Wreck 130810 I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail." These provocative poems move with the power of Rich's distinctive voice.]]> 62 Adrienne Rich 0393311635 Emilia 0 to-read 4.24 1973 Diving Into the Wreck
author: Adrienne Rich
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The End of Imagination 27131081 408 Arundhati Roy 1608466191 Emilia 0 to-read 4.19 1998 The End of Imagination
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir 53376379 For readers of Helen Macdonald and Elizabeth Alexander, an intimate and haunting portrait of grief and the search for meaning from a singular new talent as told through the prism of three generations of her Chinese American family.

Born two years after her parents' only son died just hours after his birth, Kat Chow became unusually fixated with death. She worried constantly about her parents dying -- especially her mother. One morning, when Kat was nine, her mother, a vivacious and mischievous woman, casually made a morbid joke: When she eventually dies, she said laughing, she'd like to be stuffed and displayed in Kat's future apartment in order to always watch over her.

Four years later when her mother dies unexpectedly from cancer, Kat, her two older sisters, and their father are plunged into a debilitating, lonely grief. With a distinct voice that is wry and heartfelt, Kat weaves together what is part ghost story and part excavation of her family's history of loss spanning three generations and their immigration from China and Hong Kong to America and Cuba. This redemptive coming-of-age story uncovers the uncanny parallels in Kat's lineage, including the strength of sisterhood and the complicated duty of looking after parents, even after death.

Seeing Ghosts asks what it means to claim and tell your family's story: Is writing an exorcism or is it its own form of preservation? What do we owe to our families in our grief, and how does it shape us? In order to answer these questions and to understand her family's ghosts, Kat unearths their sorrow and challenges the power structures of race, class, and gender. The result is an extraordinary new contribution to the literature of grief and the American family, and a provocative and transformative meditation on who we become under the specter of loss.]]> 368 Kat Chow 1538716321 Emilia 0 to-read 3.92 2021 Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir
author: Kat Chow
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)]]> 30868 232 Barbara Kingsolver 0812474945 Emilia 0 to-read 4.00 1988 The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> By the Book (Meant to Be, #2) 58950845 A tale as old as time—for a new generation�

Isabelle is completely lost. When she first began her career in publishing right out of college, she did not expect to be twenty-five, living at home, still an editorial assistant, and the only Black employee at her publishing house. Overworked and underpaid, constantly torn between speaking up or stifling herself, Izzy thinks there must be more to this publishing life. So when she overhears her boss complaining about a beastly high-profile author who has failed to deliver his long-awaited manuscript, Isabelle sees an opportunity to finally get the promotion she deserves.

All she has to do is go to the author’s Santa Barbara mansion and give him a quick pep talk or three. How hard could it be?

But Izzy quickly finds out she is in over her head. Beau Towers is not some celebrity lightweight writing a tell-all memoir. He is jaded and withdrawn and—it turns out—just as lost as Izzy. But despite his standoffishness, Izzy needs Beau to deliver, and with her encouragement, his story begins to spill onto the page. They soon discover they have more in common than either of them expected, and as their deadline nears, Izzy and Beau begin to realize there may be something there that wasn't there before.

Best-selling author Jasmine Guillory’s reimagining of a beloved fairy tale is a romantic triumph of love and acceptance and learning that sometimes to truly know a person you have to read between the lines. ]]> 320 Jasmine Guillory 1368053386 Emilia 4 3.68 2022 By the Book (Meant to Be, #2)
author: Jasmine Guillory
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/01
date added: 2023/01/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Paper Girls, Volume 1 28204534
In the early hours after Halloween of 1988, four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time. Suburban drama and otherworldly mysteries collide in this smash-hit series about nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood.

Collects PAPER GIRLS #1-5.]]> 144 Brian K. Vaughan 1632156741 Emilia 3 3.89 2016 Paper Girls, Volume 1
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2022/12/31
date added: 2022/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Bitch Planet, Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine (Bitch Planet Collected Editions, #1)]]> 25074849
In a future just a few years down the road in the wrong direction, a woman's failure to comply with her patriarchal overlords will result in exile to the meanest penal planet in the galaxy. When the newest crop of fresh femmes arrive, can they work together to stay alive or will hidden agendas, crooked guards, and the deadliest sport on (or off!) Earth take them to their maker?

Collects BITCH PLANET #1-5.]]> 156 Kelly Sue DeConnick 1632153661 Emilia 0 to-read 4.02 2015 Bitch Planet, Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine (Bitch Planet Collected Editions, #1)
author: Kelly Sue DeConnick
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> Romantic Comedy 62628727 A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions. Romantic Comedy is a hilarious, observant and deeply tender novel from New York Times–bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld.

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life.

But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman.

Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her...right?

With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.]]> 309 Curtis Sittenfeld 0399590943 Emilia 0 to-read 3.60 2023 Romantic Comedy
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Lives of Church Ladies]]> 51582376 The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions.

There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher’s wife. At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta’s “same time next year� arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other.

With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be.]]> 217 Deesha Philyaw 1949199738 Emilia 4 4.16 2020 The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
author: Deesha Philyaw
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/31
date added: 2022/12/31
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I loved this collection of short stories. Each one was so engaging, with strong and not-so-strong women characters. Going to church each Sunday, the church ladies were always proper and friendly. Now after reading this, I wonder what kind of lives they led at home. Excellent book to end the year!
]]> White Turtle 1557999 189 Merlinda Bobis 1875559892 Emilia 0 to-read 3.94 1999 White Turtle
author: Merlinda Bobis
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Blackmail and Bibingka (Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery, #3)]]> 60046855 When her long lost cousin comes back to town just in time for the holidays, Lila Macapagal knows that big trouble can't be far behind in this new mystery by Mia P. Manansala, author of Arsenic and Adobo.

It's Christmastime in Shady Palms, but things are far from jolly for Lila Macapagal. Sure, her new business, The Brew-ha Cafe, is looking to turn a profit in its first year. And yes, she's taken the first step in a new romance with her good friend, Jae Park. But her cousin Ronnie is back in town after ghosting the family fifteen years ago, claiming that his recent purchase of a local winery shows that he's back on his feet and ready to give back to the Shady Palms community. Tita Rosie is thrilled with the return of her prodigal son, but Lila knows that wherever Ronnie goes, trouble follows.

She's soon proven right when Ronnie is accused of murder, and secrets and rumors surrounding her shady cousin and those involved with the winery start piling up. Now Lila has to put away years of resentment and distrust to prove her cousin's innocence. He may be a jerk, but he's still family. And there's no way her flesh and blood could actually be a murderer...right?]]> 270 Mia P. Manansala 059320171X Emilia 0 to-read 3.70 2022 Blackmail and Bibingka (Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery, #3)
author: Mia P. Manansala
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Homicide and Halo-Halo (Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery, #2)]]> 58082198
To add to her feelings of sticky unease, Lila's little town of Shady Palms has resurrected the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which she won many years ago--a fact that serves as a wedge between Lila and her cousin slash rival, Bernadette. But when the head judge of the pageant is murdered and Bernadette becomes the main suspect, the two must put aside their differences and solve the case--because it looks like one of them might be next.]]> 279 Mia P. Manansala 0593201698 Emilia 0 to-read 3.66 2022 Homicide and Halo-Halo (Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery, #2)
author: Mia P. Manansala
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Child of Books 28686931 I am a child of books.

I come from a world of stories.

A little girl sails her raft across a sea of words, arriving at the house of a small boy. She invites him to go away with her on an adventure into the world of stories... where, with only a little imaginaton, anything at all can happen.

Irresistibly engaging characters by Oliver Jeffers set sail and chart their way through Sam Winston's fascinating typographical landscapes in this extraordinary ode to the power and promises of storytelling. Forty treasured children's classics and lullabies are featured in the pictures, providing endless opportunities for discovery, memories and sharing.

Woven together by a simple story line, the one-of-a-kind illustrations in a A Child of Books provide an unforgettable reading experience that will inspire and encourage readers of all ages to explore, question, and imagine timeless stories of their own.]]> 40 Oliver Jeffers 0763690775 Emilia 4 4.13 2016 A Child of Books
author: Oliver Jeffers
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/30
date added: 2022/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us]]> 59575939 A grand tour through the hidden realms of animal senses that will transform the way you perceive the world --from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes.

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension--the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

In An Immense World, author and acclaimed science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.]]> 464 Ed Yong Emilia 0 to-read 4.46 2022 An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
author: Ed Yong
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/30
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]]> The Sense of Wonder 61030525 A look at the ways Asian Americans navigate the thorny worlds of sports and entertainment when everything is stacked against them.

An Asian American basketball star walks into a gym. No one recognizes him, but everyone stares anyway. It is the start of a joke but what is the punchline? When Won Lee, the first Asian American in the NBA, stuns the world in a seven-game winning streak, the global media audience dubs it “The Wonder”—much to Won’s chagrin. Meanwhile, Won struggles to get attention from his coach, his peers, his fans, and most importantly, his hero, Powerball!, who also happens to be Won’s teammate and the captain. Covering it all is sportswriter Robert Sung, who writes about Won's stardom while grappling with his own missed hoops opportunities as well as his place as an Asian American in media. And to witness it all is Carrie Kang, a big studio producer, who juggles a newfound relationship with Won while attempting to bring K-drama to an industry not known to embrace anything new or different.

The Sense of Wonder follows Won and Carrie as they chronicle the human and professional tensions exacerbated by injustices and fight to be seen and heard on some of the world’s largest stages.]]> 256 Matthew Salesses 0316425710 Emilia 0 to-read 3.64 2023 The Sense of Wonder
author: Matthew Salesses
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories]]> 30861 A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.

The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.]]> 192 Sandra Cisneros 0679738568 Emilia 0 to-read 4.06 1991 Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
author: Sandra Cisneros
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> Zikora 55612579 The emotional storms weathered by a mother and daughter yield a profound new understanding in a moving short story by the bestselling, award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists

When Zikora, a DC lawyer from Nigeria, tells her equally high-powered lover that she's pregnant, he abandons her. But it's Zikora's demanding, self-possessed mother, in town for the birth, who makes Zikora feel like a lonely little girl all over again. Shunned by the speed with which her ideal life fell apart, Zikora turns to reflecting on her mother's painful past and struggle for dignity. Preparing for motherhood, Zikora begins to see more clearly what her own mother wants for her, for her new baby, and for herself.

©2020 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc, all rights reserved.]]> 39 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Emilia 0 to-read 4.27 2020 Zikora
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/28
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]]> Notes on Grief 57032570 Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure.

Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page--and never without touches of rich, honest humor--Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria. In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book--a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever--and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.]]> 86 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 0593320808 Emilia 0 to-read 4.26 2021 Notes on Grief
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/28
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]]> No Sweet Without Brine: Poems 61423069 Cynthia Manick’s poetry collection personifies love of self and culture through fresh observations and bitter truths voiced with breathtaking lyricism.

No Sweet Without Brine is both a soulful and celebratory collection that summons sticky sweet memories with an acrid aftertaste of deep thought. Satisfying moments are captured in odes to Idris Elba’s dulcet tones on a meditation app and the satisfaction of half-priced Entenmann’s poundcake; in childlike observations of parental Black love, the coveted female form on Jet Magazine covers, and the desire for Zamunda to be a real place full of Black joy. The sour taps into an analysis of reclusiveness, silencing catcalls from men on the street, and detailed recipes and advice to the Black girls forced to endow themselves with armor against the world.

Cynthia Manick’s latest is a playlist of everyday life, introverted thoughts, familial bonds, and social commentary. In piercing language, she traces the circle of life for a narrator who dares to exist between youthful remembrances and adulthood realities. Each poem in No Sweet Without Brine is a reminder that a hint of sorrow makes the celebration and recognition of the glory of Blackness in all ways, and through all people, that much sweeter.]]> 144 Cynthia Manick 0063244306 Emilia 0 to-read 4.27 2023 No Sweet Without Brine: Poems
author: Cynthia Manick
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Ordinary Hazards 43787195
Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night—and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this memoir, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards—ordinary and extraordinary—of her life.]]> 325 Nikki Grimes 1629798819 Emilia 0 to-read 4.40 2019 Ordinary Hazards
author: Nikki Grimes
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/27
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]]> Time Is a Mother 58582927 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
]]> 114 Ocean Vuong 0593300238 Emilia 0 to-read 3.94 2022 Time Is a Mother
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions]]> 33566870 From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today--written as a letter to a friend.

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response.

Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions--compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive--for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.]]> 0 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 0525494707 Emilia 5 4.57 2017 Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/27
date added: 2022/12/27
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]]> Ayiti 11535502 121 Roxane Gay 145077671X Emilia 5 4.29 2011 Ayiti
author: Roxane Gay
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/27
date added: 2022/12/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist for Justice]]> 60165401
In his first-ever memoir for young readers, Tommie Smith looks back on his childhood growing up in rural Texas through to his stellar athletic career, culminating in his historic victory and Olympic podium protest.]]> 208 Tommie Smith 1324003901 Emilia 4 4.41 2022 Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist for Justice
author: Tommie Smith
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/25
date added: 2022/12/25
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]]> Everything I Never Told You 18693763
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.

Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.

Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.]]> 297 Celeste Ng 159420571X Emilia 0 to-read 3.81 2014 Everything I Never Told You
author: Celeste Ng
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> All My Rage 57899793 Lahore, Pakistan. Then.
Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Cloud’s Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start.

Juniper, California. Now.
Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding.

Now, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah’s health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle’s liquor store while hiding the fact that she’s applying to college so she can escape him—and Juniper—forever.

When Sal’s attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth—and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst.

From one of today’s most cherished and bestselling young adult authors comes a breathtaking novel of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness—one that’s both tragic and poignant in its tender ferocity.]]> 376 Sabaa Tahir 0593202341 Emilia 0 to-read 4.48 2022 All My Rage
author: Sabaa Tahir
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/25
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]]> <![CDATA[I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir]]> 40909448 I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir is a triumphant tale of self-discovery, a celebration of a family's rich heritage, and a love letter to American immigrant freedom. Malaka Gharib's illustrations come alive with teenage antics and earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised.

Malaka's upbringing will look familiar to anyone who grew up in the pre-internet era, but her particular story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream.

The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigates her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid.

I Was Their American Dream is at once a journal of growing up and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children.]]> 160 Malaka Gharib 0525575111 Emilia 5 4.07 2019 I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir
author: Malaka Gharib
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/23
date added: 2022/12/23
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]]> The Idea of You 31450913
What begins as a series of clandestine trysts quickly evolves into a passionate and genuine relationship. It is a journey that spans continents as Solène and Hayes navigate each other’s worlds: from stadium tours to international art fairs to secluded hideaways in Paris and Miami. For Solène, it is a reclaiming of self, as well as a rediscovery of happiness and love. When Solène and Hayes� romance becomes a viral sensation, and both she and her daughter become the target of rabid fans and an insatiable media, Solène must face how her romantic life has impacted the lives of those she cares about most.]]> 372 Robinne Lee 1250125901 Emilia 3 3.67 2017 The Idea of You
author: Robinne Lee
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2022/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong]]> 42513484 0 Dawn Bohulano Mabalon 1732199329 Emilia 5 4.63 2018 Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong
author: Dawn Bohulano Mabalon
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/17
date added: 2022/11/17
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]]> <![CDATA[So Each May Soar: The Principles and Practices of Learner-Centered Classrooms]]> 57937473 * How to assemble a curriculum that ignites students' imaginations and drives discovery.
* How to guide classroom experiences that develop the mind of each learner in accordance with that learner's marvelous individuality.
* How to shape curriculum, assessment, and instruction to support both equity and excellence. Examples from all kinds of learner-centered classrooms clarify what this approach looks like across grade levels and subject areas and confirm its viability in schools with budgets both big and small. A must-have touchstone for veterans, a beacon for middle-career educators, and a mission statement for those just beginning their careers, So Each May Soar celebrates the commitment of teachers and the opportunity they have to help each young person in their care build a better future and lead a wonderful life.]]> 278 Carol Ann Tomlinson 1416630295 Emilia 4 3.75 So Each May Soar: The Principles and Practices of Learner-Centered Classrooms
author: Carol Ann Tomlinson
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/17
date added: 2022/11/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Mindful Admissions: An Insider's Guide to Staying Sane, Applying Well and Getting Accepted to College]]> 60188459 Does the college process seem overly complicated, stressful, and unpredictable?

The ultimate goal of Mindful Admissions is to educate, empower, and enlighten high school parents and teens so they are better able to envision their future in a clear and meaningful way—taking away the college admissions craziness, stress, and pressure.

This is the time to embrace all the wonderful experiences life has to offer you.

Mindful Admissions will serve as a soul-centered guide, a moral compass, and a trusted toolkit for parents and their college-bound teens. It is important to have a purposeful road map, helpful reminders, and a reliable GPS to navigate the road ahead.

Your college process is not about doing more.

It is about being introspective and mindful of yourself first and then thoughtfully uncovering your goals and aspirations, which will help you plan your next steps effectively.

Your worth and value should not be driven by living a life of box-checking and résumé building. Instead, every teen should place themself in the spotlight first, not focusing solely on a particular college acceptance. Once you do the inner work, you will soon find that you are a compelling applicant to not one coveted college but many.

Mindful Admissions A detailed step-by-step guide for each year of high school.Impactful exercises to discover distinguishable qualities that you possess.Highly effective tools to identify college characteristics that fit you best.Expert advice for crafting authentic and compelling applications and essays.Trusted mindfulness resources that can keep stress and overwhelm at bay.Plus, much, much more.So, if you don’t know how to begin or proceed with the college process, Mindful Admissions will be an invaluable resource for you.]]> 234 Lauren Carter Emilia 5 4.62 Mindful Admissions: An Insider's Guide to Staying Sane, Applying Well and Getting Accepted to College
author: Lauren Carter
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.62
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/15
date added: 2022/08/15
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]]> Know My Name: A Memoir 46264398
Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways—there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.

A NOTE ON THE JACKET
The gold veins on the cover represent the Japanese art of kintsugi, "golden repair," in which pieces of broken pottery are mended with powdered gold and lacquer, rather than treating the breaks as blemishes to conceal. The technique shows us that although an object cannot be returned to its original state, fragments can be made whole again.]]> 357 Chanel Miller 073522370X Emilia 5 4.73 2019 Know My Name: A Memoir
author: Chanel Miller
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.73
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/22
date added: 2022/07/22
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]]> Happy Endings 55004145 With her debut novel, Thien-Kim Lam serves up a sexy second-chance romance about exes with unfinished business. When working together reignites their passion, will these former flames sizzle or get burned all over again? 

Trixie Nguyen is determined to make her sex toy business a success, proving to her traditional Vietnamese parents that she can succeed in a nontraditional career. She's made a fresh start in Washington DC, and her first pop-up event is going well—until she runs into the ex who dumped her. With a Post-it note.

The last person Andre Walker expected to see in his soul food restaurant was the woman he left behind in New Orleans. Their chemistry is still scorching, but he's desperately trying to save his family restaurant from gentrifying developers. The solution? Partnering with his ex to turn Mama Hazel’s into a vibrator pop-up shop for hungry and horny clients.

Thanks to their steamy truce, both businesses start to sizzle and their red-hot desire soon reignites deeper feelings. But when Trixie receives an incredible career opportunity, will pride ruin their second chance at happiness?]]> 320 Thien-Kim Lam 0063040840 Emilia 0 to-read 3.17 2021 Happy Endings
author: Thien-Kim Lam
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Proposal (The Wedding Date, #2)]]> 37584991 The author of The Wedding Date serves up a novel about what happens when a public proposal doesn't turn into a happy ending, thanks to a woman who knows exactly how to make one on her own...

When someone asks you to spend your life with him, it shouldn't come as a surprise--or happen in front of 45,000 people.

When freelance writer Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, his man bun, and his bros, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn't the hard part--they've only been dating for five months, and he can't even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans...

At the game with his sister, Carlos Ibarra comes to Nik's rescue and rushes her away from a camera crew. He's even there for her when the video goes viral and Nik's social media blows up--in a bad way. Nik knows that in the wilds of LA, a handsome doctor like Carlos can't be looking for anything serious, so she embarks on an epic rebound with him, filled with food, fun, and fantastic sex. But when their glorified hookups start breaking the rules, one of them has to be smart enough to put on the brakes...]]> 325 Jasmine Guillory 0399587683 Emilia 5 3.45 2018 The Proposal (The Wedding Date, #2)
author: Jasmine Guillory
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/23
date added: 2022/06/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Arsenic and Adobo (Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery, #1)]]> 54351235 The first book in a new culinary cozy series full of sharp humor and delectable dishes—one that might just be killer....

When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case.

With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila's left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block�
]]> 336 Mia P. Manansala 059320168X Emilia 5 3.54 2021 Arsenic and Adobo (Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery, #1)
author: Mia P. Manansala
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/20
date added: 2022/06/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse (Chet Gecko Mystery #1)]]> 1269216 112 Bruce Hale 0152022813 Emilia 3 3.74 2000 The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse (Chet Gecko Mystery #1)
author: Bruce Hale
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/18
date added: 2022/05/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Who Stole the Wizard of Oz? 122900 128 Avi 0394849922 Emilia 4 3.58 1981 Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?
author: Avi
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/29
date added: 2022/04/29
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]]> The Body Papers 40680094 The Body Papers bravely explores her experiences with sexual abuse, depression, cancer, and life as a Filipino immigrant, supplemented with government documents, medical records, and family photos.

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family’s legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were “illegal.� Family, she’s told, must be put first.

The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family’s ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.

Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating and documenting such abuse and trauma, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.

ձ> 272 Grace Talusan 163206183X Emilia 5 4.28 2019 The Body Papers
author: Grace Talusan
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/17
date added: 2022/04/17
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Nanny Piggins (Nanny Piggins, #1)]]> 7744252
The three Green children are cared for by a nanny pig. Yes, a pig--a fabulously sassy and impeccably dressed pig, as a matter of fact! With her insatiable urge to eat chocolate (and feed chocolate to everyone she loves), her high-flying spirit, and her unending sense of fun, Nanny Piggins takes Derrick, Samantha, and Michael on a year of surprises, yummy treats, and adventures they'll never forget.

It's no surprise that Booklist proclaimed, "Mary Poppins, move over--or get shoved out of the way." Nanny Piggins is a refreshing and dynamic addition to favorite classic Amelia Bedelia, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and, of course, Mary Poppins.

Read more books in the Nanny Piggins and the Wicked Plan and Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion .]]> 256 R.A. Spratt 0316068195 Emilia 4 4.11 2009 The Adventures of Nanny Piggins (Nanny Piggins, #1)
author: R.A. Spratt
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/06
date added: 2022/04/06
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lemonade War (The Lemonade War, #1)]]> 1258121 For a full hour, he poured lemonade. The world is a thirsty place, he thought as he nearly emptied his fourth pitcher of the day. And I am the Lemonade King.

Fourth-grader Evan Treski is people-smart. He’s good at talking with people, even grownups. His younger sister, Jessie, on the other hand, is math-smart, but not especially good with people. So when the siblings� lemonade stand war begins, there really is no telling who will win—or even if their fight will ever end. Brimming with savvy marketing tips for making money at any business, definitions of business terms, charts, diagrams, and even math problems, this fresh, funny, emotionally charged novel subtly explores how arguments can escalate beyond anyone’s intent.

Awards: 2009 Rhode Island Children's Book Award, 2007 New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, North Carolina Children’s Book Award 2011, 2011 Nutmeg Award (Connecticut)

Check out for more information on The Lemonade War Series, including sequels The Lemonade Crime, The Bell Bandit, and The Candy Smash.]]> 177 Jacqueline Davies 0618750436 Emilia 4 3.87 2007 The Lemonade War (The Lemonade War, #1)
author: Jacqueline Davies
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2022/03/19
date added: 2022/03/19
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]]> Clementine (Clementine, #1) 517344 چاپ ۱۳۹۰
9789642220878]]> 144 Sara Pennypacker 0786838825 Emilia 4 3.94 2006 Clementine (Clementine, #1)
author: Sara Pennypacker
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/03/18
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]]> Chemistry 31684925 Lab Girl and Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, a luminous coming-of-age novel about a young female scientist who must recalibrate her life when her academic career goes off track.

Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. She's tormented by her failed research--and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence from her throughout her life. But there's another, nonscientific question the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can't make a life before finding success on her own.

Eventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and herself, behind. And for the first time, she's confronted with a question she won't find the answer to in a What do I really want? Over the next two years, this winningly flawed, disarmingly insightful heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry--one in which the reactions can't be quantified, measured, and analyzed; one that can be studied only in the mysterious language of the heart. Taking us deep inside her scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love and family.]]> 224 Weike Wang 1524731757 Emilia 3 3.74 2017 Chemistry
author: Weike Wang
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/27
date added: 2022/02/27
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]]> The Last Cuentista 56817365
But Petra's world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children � among them Petra and her family � have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race.

Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet � and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard � or purged them altogether.

Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?]]> 320 Donna Barba Higuera 1646140893 Emilia 0 to-read 4.05 2021 The Last Cuentista
author: Donna Barba Higuera
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> Patron Saints of Nothing 41941681 A coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin's murder.

Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story.

Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth -- and the part he played in it.]]> 323 Randy Ribay 0525554912 Emilia 5
Jay Reguero is a Filipino-American high school senior who grapples with his identity. He finds out that his cousin Jun has been killed in the Philippines and because none of his immediate family have details or even want to talk to him about it, he decides to go over there and get some answers. Jay and Jun became close while they were kids when Jay's family visited the Philippines. The reader learns a lot about Jun and how he makes sense of life through his letters. Reading these letters is absolutely heartbreaking, as Jun consistently asks Jay questions about his life without getting any answers because Jay stops writing back without good reason. Making the trek to the Philippines seems like the only way Jay can redeem himself and bring justice for Jun's murder.

I won't write much more about the story as it deserves to be read and discussed with others. However, the way Ribay celebrates Filipino culture and family while also highlighting the war on drugs by President Duterte is so poignant and brave. Maraming salamat, Randy, for going there and for sharing our story.]]> 4.21 2019 Patron Saints of Nothing
author: Randy Ribay
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/11
date added: 2022/02/14
shelves:
review:
Randy Ribay's Patron Saints of Nothing is a tour de force. It is so unapologetically Filipino and I felt seen because so much of the story is comfortably, and at times uncomfortably, familiar.

Jay Reguero is a Filipino-American high school senior who grapples with his identity. He finds out that his cousin Jun has been killed in the Philippines and because none of his immediate family have details or even want to talk to him about it, he decides to go over there and get some answers. Jay and Jun became close while they were kids when Jay's family visited the Philippines. The reader learns a lot about Jun and how he makes sense of life through his letters. Reading these letters is absolutely heartbreaking, as Jun consistently asks Jay questions about his life without getting any answers because Jay stops writing back without good reason. Making the trek to the Philippines seems like the only way Jay can redeem himself and bring justice for Jun's murder.

I won't write much more about the story as it deserves to be read and discussed with others. However, the way Ribay celebrates Filipino culture and family while also highlighting the war on drugs by President Duterte is so poignant and brave. Maraming salamat, Randy, for going there and for sharing our story.
]]> We Are Not Like Them 56898303 Told from alternating perspectives, this novel follows two women, one Black and one white, whose friendship is indelibly altered by a tragic event.

Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young, and after years of trying, is finally pregnant. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia.

But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. Six months pregnant, Jen is in freefall as her future, her husband’s freedom, and her friendship with Riley are thrown into uncertainty. Covering this career-making story, Riley wrestles with the implications of this tragic incident for her Black community, her ambitions, and her relationship with her lifelong friend.

We Are Not Like Them is both a powerful conversation starter and a celebration of the enduring power of friendship.]]> 336 Christine Pride 1982181036 Emilia 0 to-read 4.02 2021 We Are Not Like Them
author: Christine Pride
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law]]> 56769577
Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem—and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.]]> 308 Mary Roach 1324001933 Emilia 0 to-read 3.81 2021 Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
author: Mary Roach
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things (Alvin Ho, #1)]]> 2591769
From the author of the ALA Notable Ruby Lu series comes a funny and touching chapter book—perfect for both beginning and reluctant readers� that introduces a truly unforgettable character.]]> 172 Lenore Look 0375839143 Emilia 5 3.80 2008 Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things (Alvin Ho, #1)
author: Lenore Look
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/29
date added: 2022/01/29
shelves:
review:
Alvin Ho is an excellent character study for my Second Grade book club. Author Lenore Look's writing is honest and hilarious. My student readers are hooked!
]]> Ain't Burned All the Bright 58437699 Prepare yourself for something unlike anything: A smash-up of art and text for teens that viscerally captures what it is to be Black. In America. Right Now. Written by #1 New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds.

Jason Reynolds and his best bud, Jason Griffin had a mind-meld. And they decided to tackle it, in one fell swoop, in about ten sentences, and 300 pages of art, this piece, this contemplation-manifesto-fierce-vulnerable-gorgeous-terrifying-WhatIsWrongWithHumans-hope-filled-hopeful-searing-Eye-Poppingly-Illustrated-tender-heartbreaking-how-The-HECK-did-They-Come-UP-with-This project about oxygen. And all of the symbolism attached to that word, especially NOW.

And so for anyone who didn’t really know what it means to not be able to breathe, REALLY breathe, for generations, now you know. And those who already do, you’ll be nodding yep yep, that is exactly how it is.]]> 384 Jason Reynolds 1534439463 Emilia 5 4.42 2022 Ain't Burned All the Bright
author: Jason Reynolds
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/18
date added: 2022/01/18
shelves:
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This one's an absolute stunner. It's also the first book I received and finished reading in a matters of hours. Read it and take it all in!
]]> Ruby Lu, Brave and True 479229
And then there are the days when it's very hard to be Ruby. Like when her mom suggests Chinese school on Saturdays. Or when her little brother, Oscar, spills all of Ruby's best magician secrets. Or when her parents don't think she's old enough to drive!

Join Ruby Lu on her first adventure and discover your own best things about her!]]> 112 Lenore Look 1416913890 Emilia 4 3.92 2004 Ruby Lu, Brave and True
author: Lenore Look
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/18
date added: 2022/01/18
shelves:
review:
Ruby Lu is a great subject for my character studies unit. Being Asian-American, it is wonderful to see representation in a main character who is so independent and vivacious. I just need to remember to discuss Ruby's initial negative feelings toward her cousin who is about to immigrate from China. While Ruby's feelings are valid (and I know because I had similar feelings growing up about Filipino relatives coming to live with me), my students could easily misunderstand Rubiy's thoughts.
]]> <![CDATA[Frantastic Voyage (Franny K. Stein, Mad Scientist, #5)]]> 47820 Franny's faithful lab assistant, Igor, has swallowed a doomsday device that is ready to go off at any moment! For any regular scientist, there is only one way to get the device out -- um...make that two ways.

But Franny K. Stein is no ordinary scientist, so she concocts her own way to get the device back and save her friend. With her miniaturization machine, Franny shrinks herself to the size of a pin and goes on a field trip like no other...through the body of a ticking time-dog! Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

]]> 112 Jim Benton 1416902309 Emilia 3 4.19 2005 Frantastic Voyage (Franny K. Stein, Mad Scientist, #5)
author: Jim Benton
name: Emilia
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/16
date added: 2022/01/16
shelves:
review:
My second graders are doing a character study unit in book clubs and Franny K. Stein will be an excellent main character for discussion!
]]> Olga Dies Dreaming 57693171
Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets...

Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.

Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream--all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.]]> 369 Xóchitl González 1250786177 Emilia 0 to-read 3.95 2022 Olga Dies Dreaming
author: Xóchitl González
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> Joan Is Okay 55333768
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations.

Once Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.

Deceptively spare yet quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on matters that feel deeply resonant: being Chinese-American right now; working in medicine at a high-stakes time; finding one’s voice within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it’s a portrait of one remarkable woman so surprising that you can’t get her out of your head.]]> 224 Weike Wang 0525654836 Emilia 0 to-read 3.65 2022 Joan Is Okay
author: Weike Wang
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> To Paradise 57739876 From the author of the classic A Little Life, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.

In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.

These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.

To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvellous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love � partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens � and the pain that ensues when we cannot.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385547935 Emilia 0 to-read 3.74 2022 To Paradise
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Emilia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>