Lisa's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 07:32:58 -0700 60 Lisa's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Tremor 75670841 A powerful, intimate novel that masterfully explores what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world—from the award-winning author of Open City

Life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling.

A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speaks out from a pulsing metropolis.

We’re invited to experience these events and others through the eyes and ears of Tunde, a West African man working as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, a traveler, drawn to many different kinds of stories from history and epic; stories of friends, family, and strangers; stories found in books and films. Together these stories make up his days. In aggregate these days comprise a life.

Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that engages brilliantly with literature, music, race, and history as it examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amidst “history’s own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles,� but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. As he did in his magnificent debut Open City, Teju Cole once again offers narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature.]]> 229 Teju Cole 0812997123 Lisa 0 to-read, nigeria 3.66 2023 Tremor
author: Teju Cole
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read, nigeria
review:

]]> Happiness, Like Water 15814530 Happiness, Like Water introduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.]]> 196 Chinelo Okparanta 0544003454 Lisa 0 4.03 2012 Happiness, Like Water
author: Chinelo Okparanta
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: africa, nigeria, short-story, 2015-women, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Burning Plain and Other Stories]]> 38788 175 Juan Rulfo 0292701322 Lisa 2 4.07 1953 The Burning Plain and Other Stories
author: Juan Rulfo
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1953
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: latin-america, central-america-caribbean, short-story
review:

]]> The Book of Lamentations 536848 The Book of Lamentations tells of a fictionalized Mayan uprising that resembles many of the rebellions that have taken place since the indigenous people of the area were first conquered by European invaders five hundred years ago. With the panoramic sweep of a Diego Rivera mural, the novel weaves together dozens of plot lines, perspectives, and characters. Blending a wealth of historical information and local detail with a profound understanding of the complex relationship between victim and tormentor, Castellanos captures the ambiguities that underlie all struggles for power.

A masterpiece of contemporary Latin American fiction from Mexico's greatest twentieth-century woman writer, The Book of Lamentations was translated with an afterword by Ester Allen and introduction by Alma Guillermoprieto.]]> 400 Rosario Castellanos Lisa 0 4.04 1962 The Book of Lamentations
author: Rosario Castellanos
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: central-america-caribbean, latin-america, currently-reading
review:

]]> My Phantoms 61258974 First Love.

Helen Grant is a mystery to her daughter. An extrovert with few friends who has sought intimacy in the wrong places; a twice-divorced mother of two now living alone surrounded by her memories, Helen (known to her acquaintances as ‘Hen�) has always haunted Bridget.

Now, Bridget is an academic in her forties. She sees Helen once a year, and considers the problem to be contained. As she looks back on their tumultuous relationship—the performances and small deceptions—she tries to reckon with the cruelties inflicted on both sides. But when Helen makes it clear that she wants more, it seems an old struggle will have to be replayed.

From the prize-winning author of First Love, My Phantoms is a bold, heart-stopping portrayal of a failed familial bond, which brings humour, subtlety, and new life to the difficult terrain of mothers and daughters.]]> 208 Gwendoline Riley 1681376814 Lisa 3 3.94 2021 My Phantoms
author: Gwendoline Riley
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
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]]> An Ideal Husband 5296 Sooner or later, Wilde notes, we shall all have to pay for what we do. But he adds that, No one should be entirely judged by their past.Together with The Importance of Being Earnest, it is often considered Wilde's dramatic masterpiece. After Earnest, it is his most popularly produced play"]]> 78 Oscar Wilde 048641423X Lisa 3 drama, long-overdue 4.01 1893 An Ideal Husband
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1893
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: drama, long-overdue
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life]]> 31581286
Extreme Measures charts Zitter's journey from wanting to be one kind of hero to becoming another--a doctor who prioritizes the patient's values and preferences in an environment where the default choice is the extreme use of technology. In our current medical culture, the old and the ill are put on what she terms the End-of-Life Conveyor belt. They are intubated, catheterized, and even shelved away in care facilities to suffer their final days alone, confused, and often in pain. In her work Zitter has learned what patients fear more than death itself: the prospect of dying badly. She builds bridges between patients and caregivers, formulates plans to allay patients' pain and anxiety, and enlists the support of loved ones so that life can end well, even beautifully.]]> 352 Jessica Nutik Zitter 1101982551 Lisa 0 4.36 2017 Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life
author: Jessica Nutik Zitter
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: non-fiction, science-nature, currently-reading
review:

]]> Bread Givers: A Novel 9736892 368 Anzia Yezierska 0892553723 Lisa 3 3.76 1925 Bread Givers: A Novel
author: Anzia Yezierska
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1925
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:

]]> V. 5809 640 Thomas Pynchon 2020418770 Lisa 0 3.97 1963 V.
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: to-read, feeling-ambitious, long-overdue, elusive-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism]]> 16113737
Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. Questions such as: “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?� “Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?� “Why don’t you make eye contact when you’re talking?� and “What’s the reason you jump?� (Naoki’s answer: “When I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky.�) With disarming honesty and a generous heart, Naoki shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself. His insights—into the mystery of words, the wonders of laughter, and the elusiveness of memory—are so startling, so strange, and so powerful that you will never look at the world the same way again.]]> 135 Naoki Higashida 0812994868 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 3.84 2005 The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
author: Naoki Higashida
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> These Precious Days: Essays 55742929 The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays.

“Any story that starts will also end.� As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart.

At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a suprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.� When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks� short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both.

A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be.

From the enchantments of Kate di Camilo’s children’s books to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.]]> 320 Ann Patchett 0063092808 Lisa 0 to-read, essays 4.52 2021 These Precious Days: Essays
author: Ann Patchett
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read, essays
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future]]> 34381078 192 Benjamin Vogt 0865718555 Lisa 0 4.06 A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future
author: Benjamin Vogt
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature, elusive-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mapping Nature across the Americas]]> 51941540 384 Kathleen A. Brosnan 022669643X Lisa 0 to-read, science-nature 4.50 Mapping Nature across the Americas
author: Kathleen A. Brosnan
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read, science-nature
review:

]]> Oaxaca Journal 535169 159 Oliver Sacks 0792265211 Lisa 4 3.96 2002 Oaxaca Journal
author: Oliver Sacks
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:

]]> The Antidote 214537790 FromPulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestsellingauthor of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples� memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.]]> 432 Karen Russell 059380225X Lisa 0 to-read 4.03 2025 The Antidote
author: Karen Russell
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Lisa 0 to-read 4.28 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Colored Television 201102398 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593544372

A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,� she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse content� for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.� She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.]]> 277 Danzy Senna Lisa 3 3.53 2024 Colored Television
author: Danzy Senna
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds]]> 63024269
From the author of The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way, a brilliant scientific investigation into owls—the most elusive of birds—and why they exert such a hold on human imagination

For millennia, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than thirty thousand years ago in the Chauvet Cave paintings in southern France. With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Though our fascination goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to understand in deep detail the complex nature of these extraordinary birds. Some two hundred sixty species of owls exist today, and they reside on every continent except Antarctica, but they are far more difficult to find and study than other birds because they are cryptic, camouflaged, and mostly active in the dark of night.

Jennifer Ackerman illuminates the rich biology and natural history of these birds and reveals remarkable new scientific discoveries about their brains and behavior. She joins scientists in the field and explores how researchers are using modern technology and tools to learn how owls communicate, hunt, court, mate, raise their young, and move about from season to season. We now know that the hoots, squawks, and chitters of owls follow sophisticated and complex rules, allowing them to express not just their needs and desires but their individuality and identity. Owls duet. They migrate. They hoard their prey. Some live in underground burrows; some roost in large groups; some dine on black widows and scorpions.

Ackerman brings this research alive with her own personal field observations about owls and dives deep into why these birds beguile us. What an Owl Knows is an awe-inspiring exploration of owls across the globe and through human history, and a spellbinding account of their astonishing hunting skills, communication, and sensory prowess. By providing extraordinary new insights into the science of owls, What an Owl Knows pulls back the curtain on the nature of the world’s most enigmatic group of birds.]]> 333 Jennifer Ackerman 0593298888 Lisa 4 non-fiction, science-nature 4.15 2023 What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds
author: Jennifer Ackerman
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> Independent People 77287 Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is simply a masterpiece]]> 482 Halldór Laxness 0679767924 Lisa 4 modern-classics, nordic 4.13 1934 Independent People
author: Halldór Laxness
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: modern-classics, nordic
review:

]]> Mink River 9250050 In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime committed, and there's an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it's thinking. . .

It's the tale of a town, written in a distinct and lyrical voice, and readers will close the book more than a little sad to leave the village of Neawanaka, on the wet coast of Oregon, beneath the hills that used to boast the biggest trees in the history of the world.

]]> 319 Brian Doyle 0870715852 Lisa 0 to-read 4.17 2010 Mink River
author: Brian Doyle
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder]]> 45031831
When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty-first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.

At a moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that life affords, is a balm. His essays manage to find, again and again, exquisite beauty in the quotidian, whether it's the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, or a husband's whiskers that a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every morning. Through Doyle's eyes, nothing is dull.

David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to quiet glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size, renown, or commercial value, and he brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." A life's work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary.]]> 250 Brian Doyle 0316492892 Lisa 0 to-read, essays, non-fiction 4.63 2019 One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder
author: Brian Doyle
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read, essays, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World's Most Misunderstood Bird]]> 56271339
Pigeons are amazing, and until recently, humans adored them. We've kept them as pets, held pigeon beauty contests, raced them, used them to carry messages over battlefields, harvested their poop to fertilize our crops—and cooked them in gourmet dishes. Now, with A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, listeners can rediscover the wonder. Equal parts field guide and quirky history, it covers Why they coo; how they flock; how they preen, kiss, and mate (monogamously); and how they raise their young (on chunky pigeon milk). Anatomy and identification, from Birmingham Roller to the American Giant Runt to the Scandaroon. Birder issues, like what to do if you find a baby pigeon stranded in the park. And our lively shared story together, including all the things we've taught them—Ping-Pong, for example. "Rats with wings?" Think again.

Pigeons coo, peck and nest all over the world, yet most of us treat them with indifference or disdain. So Rosemary Mosco, a bird-lover, science communicator, writer, and cartoonist, is here to give the pigeon's image a makeover, and to help every town- and city-dweller get closer to nature by discovering the joys of birding through pigeon-watching.]]> 240 Rosemary Mosco 1523511346 Lisa 0 4.43 2021 A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World's Most Misunderstood Bird
author: Rosemary Mosco
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> Martin Marten 21853663
And Dave is not the only one approaching adulthood and its freedoms on Wy'east that summer. Martin, a pine marten (a small animal of the deep woods, of the otter/mink family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on his own as well. As Martin and Dave's paths cross on forest trails and rocky mountaintops, they—and we—witness the full, unknowable breadth and vast sweep of life, and the awe-inspiring interconnectedness of the world and its many inhabitants, human and otherwise.

Martin Marten is a coming-of-age tale like no other, told in Brian Doyle's joyous, rollicking style.]]> 309 Brian Doyle 1250045207 Lisa 4 4.31 2015 Martin Marten
author: Brian Doyle
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays]]> 214458091 “Sensitive, searingly intelligent, and beautifully written.� —Claire Dederer, author of A Fan’s Dilemma



“This is—for real—a masterwork, one I will return to over and over."—JoannaRakoff, author ofMy Salinger Year



In this intimate and riveting memoir, Best American Essayist Nicole Graev Lipson breaks through the ready-made stories of womanhood, rescuing truth from the fiction that infiltrates our lives.

What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a motherin a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters.Whether she’s testing the fragile borders of fidelity, embracing the taboo power of female friendship, escaping her family for the solitude of the mountains, grappling with what to do with her frozen embryos, or letting go of the children she imagined for the ones she’s raising, Lipson pushes beyond the easy, surface stories we tell about ourselves to brave less certain territory.



As Lipson journeys through this thorny terrain, literature becomes her lodestar. Kate Chopin’s erotic story “The Storm� helps her reckon with the longings stirring below the surface of her marriage. Watching her son absorb the stifling codes of manhood, she finds unlikely parenting inspiration in Philip Roth’s most cartoonish overbearing mother. Summoning Gwendolyn Brooks, she asks, Can destroying one’s frozen embryos be understood as a maternal act? And accompanied by Shakespeare’s gender-bending heroine Rosalind, she seizes on the truest meaning of loving her oldest child.



Risky and revealing, nourishing and affirming, rigorous and sexy,Mothers and Other Fictional Charactersis a shimmering love letter to our forgotten selves—and the ones we’re still becoming.]]> 248 Nicole Graev Lipson 1797228560 Lisa 0 4.66 2025 Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays
author: Nicole Graev Lipson
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit, essays, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal]]> 2072325 A new beginning for the environment must start with a new spiritual outlook. In this book, author Joanna Macy offers concrete suggestions for just that, showing how each of us can change the attitudes that continue to threaten our environment. Using the Buddha's teachings on Paticca Samuppada, which stresses the interconnectedness of all things in the world and suggests that any one action affects all things, Macy describes how decades of ignoring this principle has resulted in a self-centeredness that has devastated the environment. Humans, Macy implores, must acknowledge and understand their connectedness to their world and begin to move toward a more focused effort to save it.

]]> 208 Joanna Macy 188837571X Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.24 1991 World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal
author: Joanna Macy
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Vanished Ocean: How Tethys Reshaped the World]]> 8512312 288 Dorrik Stow 0191550310 Lisa 0 3.65 2010 Vanished Ocean: How Tethys Reshaped the World
author: Dorrik Stow
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> Jellyfish: A Natural History 26240418
Jellyfish presents these aquarium favorites in all their extraordinary and captivating beauty. Fifty unique species, from stalked jellyfish to black sea nettles, are presented in stunning color photographs along with the most current scientific information on their anatomy, history, distribution, position in the water, and environmental status. Foremost jellyfish expert Lisa-ann Gershwin provides an insightful look at the natural history and biology of each of these spellbinding creatures, while offering a timely take on their place in the rapidly changing and deteriorating condition of the oceans. Readers will learn about immortal jellyfish who live and die and live again as well as those who camouflage themselves amid sea grasses and shells, hiding in plain sight.

Approachably written and based in the latest science and ecology, this colorful book provides an authoritative guide to these ethereal marine wonders.]]> 224 Lisa-Ann Gershwin 022628767X Lisa 0 4.41 2016 Jellyfish: A Natural History
author: Lisa-Ann Gershwin
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Understanding Imperiled Earth: How Archaeology and Human History Can Inform a Sustainable Future]]> 173476211
An essential and hopeful book for climate-conscious readers

The world faces an uncertain future with the rise of climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, overfishing, and other threats. Understanding Imperiled Earth meets this uncertainty head-on, presenting archaeology and history as critical guides to addressing the modern environmental crisis.

Anthropologist Todd J. Braje draws connections between deep history and today's hot-button environmental news stories to reveal how the study of the ancient past can help build a more sustainable future. The book covers a diverse array of interconnected issues,


Braje examines how historical roots offer a necessary baseline for a healthier Earth, because understanding how the the planet used to be is fundamental to creating effective restoration efforts moving forward through urban forests, sustainable food webs, and more. Understanding Imperiled Earth offers an illuminating, hopeful, and actionable approach to some of the world's most urgent problems.]]> 208 Todd J. Braje 1588347591 Lisa 0 4.17 Understanding Imperiled Earth: How Archaeology and Human History Can Inform a Sustainable Future
author: Todd J. Braje
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sustainability Class: How to Take Back Our Future from Lifestyle Environmentalists]]> 122135912
With more urban residents interested in living sustainably, we have seen the emergence of a green-tech service economy premised around a kind of “lifestyle environmentalism.� Concerns over sustainability have been co-opted to sell a high-tech urban lifestyle, causing cities to become more unequal and unsustainable, cementing the elite’s status, and excluding the working class, racial minorities, and women. Focusing on what they term the “sustainability class”—a woke and wealthy set of urbanites convinced that sustainability can be achieved through individual actions, green and “smart� development, and technological efficiency—authors Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan challenge many of the popular ideas about saving the planet. It is actually the approach of the sustainability class itself, the authors argue, that is unsustainable; improving eco-efficiency within a capitalist, growth-oriented system will neither save us nor lead to true sustainability. Vivid and conversational but also challenging, The Sustainability Class explores how, from Los Angeles to Hanoi, and from Google’s “smart city� in Toronto to Abu Dhabi, investors all over the world are rushing to capitalize on going green. By contrast, using real-world examples of housing and energy strategies, food production, transport, tourism, and waste management, they show how ordinary people around the world are truly building a more ecological future through collective organization in their everyday lives. In doing so, they reclaim ecology and true sustainability for everyone, so it is no longer just the domain of an elite who seek to devise more sophisticated ways to shift the costs of their “greener than thou� lifestyles onto the rest of us.]]> 240 Vijay Kolinjivadi 1620977435 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.38 The Sustainability Class: How to Take Back Our Future from Lifestyle Environmentalists
author: Vijay Kolinjivadi
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> A Loving, Faithful Animal 33510042
It is New Year’s Eve 1990, in a small town in southeast Australia. Ru’s father, Jack, one of thousands of Australians once conscripted to serve in the Vietnam War, has disappeared. This time Ru thinks he might be gone for good. As rumors spread of a huge black cat stalking the landscape beyond their door, the rest of the family is barely holding on. Ru’s sister, Lani, is throwing herself into sex, drugs, and dangerous company. Their mother, Evelyn, is escaping into memories of a more vibrant youth. And meanwhile there is Les, Jack’s inscrutable brother, who seems to move through their lives like a ghost, earning both trust and suspicion.

A Loving, Faithful Animal is an incandescent portrait of one family searching for what may yet be redeemable from the ruins of war. Tender, brutal, and heart–stopping in its beauty, this novel marks the arrival in the United States of Josephine Rowe, the winner of the 2016 Elizabeth Jolley Prize and one of Australia’s most extraordinary young writers.]]> 160 Josephine Rowe 1936787571 Lisa 3 australia-nz 3.62 2016 A Loving, Faithful Animal
author: Josephine Rowe
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: australia-nz
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada]]> 62033667
Ungrateful, opportunistic, moochers, dangerous, incompatible with our values and our way of life...Every immigrant demographic has heard these descriptors at some point in their migration history. WE, THE OTHERS takes a contemporary look at the xenophobia, ethnonationalism, and fear of the other that leads to discrimination and the belief that immigration is a polluting force.

Rooted in the author's personal family history as the secondgeneration daughter of Greek immigrants, and from her research as a journalist and columnist covering identity politics and social issues in Quebec and Canada for the past 20 years, Drimonis courageously tackles this country's history and practices, divisive legislation like Bill 21, and various nationalist movements that have influenced policy. WE, THE OTHERS is a poignant look at intergenerational struggles, conflicting loyalties and heartfelt questions of belonging.

"WE, THE OTHERS makes a strong case in favour of immigration and tells us how newcomers make us richer in every way. Thanks to immigrants, we discover new ideas, languages, foods, and cultures without going much further than the local dépanneur. As Drimonis notes, every new wave changes us imperceptibly until, over time, the others are now simply us, and we are all the better for it."--Michael Fukushima. Canadian filmmaker, NFB film producer

Canadian Politics. Sociology.]]> 223 Toula Drimonis 1773901214 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.46 We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada
author: Toula Drimonis
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.46
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-Determination, Land, and a World in Common]]> 91522905 Frontline voices from the worldwide movement to decolonize climate change and revitalize a dying planet.

With a deep, anticolonial and antiracist critique and analysis of what “conservation� currently is, Decolonize Conservation presents an alternative vision–one already working–of the most effective and just way to fight against biodiversity loss and climate change. Through the voices of largely silenced or invisibilized Indigenous Peoples and local communities, the devastating consequences of making 30 percent of the globe “Protected Areas,� and other so-called “Nature-Based Solutions� are made clear.


Evidence proves indigenous people understand and manage their environment better than anyone else. Eighty percent of the Earth’s biodiversity is in tribal territories and when indigenous peoples have secure rights over their land, they achieve at least equal if not better conservation results at a fraction of the cost of conventional conservation programs. But in Africa and Asia, governments and NGOs are stealing vast areas of land from tribal peoples and local communities under the false claim that this is necessary for conservation.


As the editors write, “This is colonialism pure and powerful global interests are shamelessly taking land and resources from vulnerable people while claiming they are doing it for the good of humanity.�

The powerful collection of voices from the groundbreaking “Our Land, Our Nature� congress takes us to the heart of the climate justice movement and the struggle for life and land across the globe. With Indigenous Peoples and their rights at its center, the book exposes the brutal and deadly reality of colonial and racist conservation for people around the world, while revealing the problems of current climate policy approaches that do nothing to tackle the real causes of environmental destruction.



]]> 183 Ashley Dawson 1942173911 Lisa 0 4.38 Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-Determination, Land, and a World in Common
author: Ashley Dawson
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers]]> 42292120
Shapes of Native Nonfiction features a dynamic combination of established and emerging Native writers, including Stephen Graham Jones, Deborah Miranda, Terese Marie Mailhot, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories. Considered together, they offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that continue to animate the study and practice of distinct Native literary traditions in North America.]]> Elissa Washuta Lisa 3 4.53 2019 Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers
author: Elissa Washuta
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: essays, non-fiction, native-america
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Autobiography of My Mother]]> 69721 228 Jamaica Kincaid 0452274664 Lisa 0 3.80 1996 The Autobiography of My Mother
author: Jamaica Kincaid
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read, central-america-caribbean
review:

]]> Lion 212808262 An engrossing work of autobiographical fiction about the relationship between an actress daughter and her larger-than-life father—the astonishingly assured debut novel of Sonya Walger, actress on Lost, For All Mankind, and more.

Lion, as his friends call him, is an unlikely parent, more legend than presence in his daughter’s life. He is a charismatic, dashing bon-vivant, a polo player, race car driver, cocaine addict, ex-con, pilot, and sky-diver. Born in the aftershocks of Argentina’s greatest earthquake,Lionis like a minor god who comes down to earth in a grand manner, falling in all the ways there are to fall.

“It is hard to compete with adrenalin when you are a child,� his daughter writes, now a mother herself to young children whose settled upbringing prompts her to consider her unconventional youth and the source of its chaos, her, by turns, loving, maddening, and magnetic father.

Lion is a double portrait told in a perpetual present tense that moves back and forth between present-day Los Angeles, where the narrator lives with her family and works as an actress, and the past of her peripatetic childhood, spent shuttling between her mother in England, boarding school, and her father and his successive wives in Buenos Aires and Lima.

Sonya Walger’s stunning autobiographical debut is an emotionally acute palimpsest of a novel about a father and daughter, in which the drama and incident, love and tragedy that make up his life make up hers as well. The legend of his life and her distinctive and imaginatively charged telling of it make for an engrossing and unforgettable family saga.]]> 176 Sonya Walger 1681379031 Lisa 0 to-read, elusive-lit 4.44 2025 Lion
author: Sonya Walger
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit
review:

]]> The Anthropologists 195391751
As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, spends her days gathering footage from the neighborhood park like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,� chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.� Life back in Asya and Manu's respective home countries continues-parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly beyond their reach. But the world they're making in their new city is growing, too, they hope, into something that will be distinctly theirs. As they open up the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?

Hailed by Lauren Groff and Marina Abramovic, Savas's fine, precise craft turns The Anthropologist's simple apartment search into a soulful, often funny, examination of modern coupledom, home-building, and expat life in the universal modern city.]]> 192 Aysegül Savas 163973306X Lisa 2 3.88 2024 The Anthropologists
author: Aysegül Savas
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Earth of Mankind (Buru #1)]]> 301304 367 Pramoedya Ananta Toer 0140256350 Lisa 0 to-read, asia 4.14 1980 This Earth of Mankind (Buru #1)
author: Pramoedya Ananta Toer
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read, asia
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions]]> 33608721 Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction of the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants with the reality of racism and fear both here and back home."]]> 128 Valeria Luiselli 1566894956 Lisa 4 4.41 2016 Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions
author: Valeria Luiselli
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: latin-america, non-fiction, essays
review:

]]> Orbital 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Lisa 3 3.56 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend]]> 214152206 From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure that introduces readers to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves.

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more.

But Austen wasn’t a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers—and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen’s work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn’t a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes such a stir in Mansfield Park is a real one by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. In fact, the phrase “pride and prejudice� came from Frances Burney’s second novel Cecilia. The women that populated Jane Austen’s bookshelf profoundly influenced her work; Austen looked up to them, passionately discussed their books with her friends, and used an appreciation of their books as a litmus test for whether someone had good taste. So where had these women gone? Why hadn’t Romney—despite her training—ever read them? Or, in some cases, even heard of them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon?

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf investigates the disappearance of Austen’s heroes—women writers who were erased from the Western canon—to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer including Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth—and recounts Romney’s experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen’s. Romney collects the once-famed works of these forgotten writers, physically recreating Austen’s bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels.]]> 464 Rebecca Romney 1982190248 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.41 2025 Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
author: Rebecca Romney
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> Disappoint Me 218153678 An electrifying story of love, betrayal, and the complicated allure of bougie domesticity.

“Dinan writes like some kind of demigod. Her fictions make thinkable new realities for how we live and what we might expect from each other.”� Torrey Peters, author of Detransition Baby

You can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time where you can’t deny the bones their flesh. A person is no fewer than two things.

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn’t these be the best years of her life? Why doesn’t it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?

Funny, sharp, and poignant, Disappoint Me is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, trans panic, race, millennial angst, and the relationships—familial and romantic—that make us who we are.]]> 320 Nicola Dinan 0593977874 Lisa 0 to-read, elusive-lit 4.17 2025 Disappoint Me
author: Nicola Dinan
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit
review:

]]> Lucy 1122368 176 Jamaica Kincaid 0452266777 Lisa 4 3.91 1990 Lucy
author: Jamaica Kincaid
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves:
review:

]]> Playing in the Light 423421 New York Times, “Wicomb deftly explores the ghastly soup of racism in all its unglory—denial, tradition, habit, stupidity, fear—and manages to do so without moralizing or becoming formulaic.�

Caught in the narrow world of private interests and self-advancement, Marion eschews national politics until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission throws up information that brings into question not only her family’s past but her identity and her rightful place in contemporary South African society. “Stylistically nuanced and psychologically astute� (Kirkus), Playing in the Light is as powerful in its depiction of Marion’s personal journey as it is in its depiction of South Africa’s bizarre, brutal history.


]]> 256 Zoë Wicomb 1595580476 Lisa 3 africa, south-africa 3.57 2006 Playing in the Light
author: Zoë Wicomb
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: africa, south-africa
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Our Ancient Lakes: A Natural History]]> 142402801
Most lakes are less than 10,000 years old and short-lived, but there is a much smaller number of ancient lakes, tectonic in origin and often millions of years old, that are scattered across every continent but Baikal, Tanganyika, Victoria, Titicaca, and Biwa, to name a few. Often these lakes are filled with a diversity of fish, crustaceans, snails, and other creatures found nowhere else in the world. In Our Ancient Lakes, Jeffrey McKinnon introduces the remarkable living diversity of these aquatic bodies to the general reader and explains the surprising, often controversial, findings that the study of their faunas is yielding about the formation and persistence of species.

The first single-authored volume to synthesize studies of ancient lakes, Our Ancient Lakes provides an overview of the lakes and their distinctive geological origins; accounts of the evolutionary processes that have generated the incredible diversity found in the lakes and produced some of the fastest speciation rates known for vertebrates; the surprisingly important role of interspecies mating in the most rapid diversifications; the uniquely complete records of the creatures that inhabited the lakes, which are being extracted from deep lake sediments; the prospects for the lakes as we tumble into the Anthropocene; and much more.

Shining a light on a class of biodiversity hotspot that is equivalent to coral reefs in the ocean or tropical rainforests on land, Our Ancient Lakes chronicles in a refreshingly personal and accessible way the often singular wonders of these venerable waterbodies.

The MIT Press gratefully acknowledges a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.]]> 336 Jeffrey McKinnon 0262047853 Lisa 0 4.25 Our Ancient Lakes: A Natural History
author: Jeffrey McKinnon
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rainforest Medicine: Preserving Indigenous Science and Biodiversity in the Upper Amazon]]> 17412705 635 Jonathon Miller Weisberger 1583946233 Lisa 0 4.24 2013 Rainforest Medicine: Preserving Indigenous Science and Biodiversity in the Upper Amazon
author: Jonathon Miller Weisberger
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read, native-america, non-fiction, science-nature, south-america, anthropology
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tigers and the Internet: Story, Shamans, History]]> 59491356 184 Kira Van Deusen 0228011140 Lisa 0 5.00 Tigers and the Internet: Story, Shamans, History
author: Kira Van Deusen
name: Lisa
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read, anthropology, non-fiction, nordic, russia
review:

]]> The Mirror of the Sea 441880 175 Joseph Conrad 0910395349 Lisa 0 3.83 1906 The Mirror of the Sea
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1906
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read, essays, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> Bibliophobia: A Memoir 212806663 “A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.”—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

“A must for the obsessive reader.”—Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners�.

Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?

Bibliophobia is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.]]> 240 Sarah Chihaya 059359472X Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 3.74 2025 Bibliophobia: A Memoir
author: Sarah Chihaya
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Lisa 3 4.39 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: native-america, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> Jerusalem 1056153 224 Selma Lagerlöf 1426489226 Lisa 0 to-read, elusive-lit, nordic 4.02 Jerusalem
author: Selma Lagerlöf
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit, nordic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together]]> 212924187 From celebrated trans activist and author of Mutual Aid Dean Spade comes a practical manifesto for how to live out your radical political values in your intimate relationships

Around the globe, people are faced with a spiraling succession of crises, from the pandemic and climate change-induced disasters to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. Many of us feel mobilized to organize and collectively combat these issues on both a personal and political level, often dedicating our lives to the forwarding of progressive ideas and the daunting goal of trying to bend the world toward justice.

But too often we think of our political values as outward-facing positions again dominant systems of power. Rarely, if ever, do we pursue the same kind of justice close to home, in our relationships to ourselves and to those closest to us. No matter how ardently we want to see the world change, our lives and connections will continue to stagnate unless we liberate ourselves from the cultural scripts that too often dictate our behavior toward others.

How do we become intentional about our levels of connection? How do we separate our expectations of love from the baggage left to us by our parents? How do we divest from the idea that one romantic partner will be the solution to all our problems? This book offers a roadmap for how to bring our best thinking about freedom and justice into step with our desires for healing and connection.

Lifelong activist and educator Dean Spade dares us to decide that our interpersonal actions are not separate from our politics of liberation and resistance. Love in a F*cked-Up Worldis a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, preparing us for the work of changing the world.
]]> 352 Dean Spade 164375646X Lisa 0 4.38 Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together
author: Dean Spade
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit, non-fiction
review:

]]> Forty Rooms 25716695 The internationally acclaimed author of The Dream Life of Sukhanov now returns to gift us with Forty Rooms, which outshines even that prizewinning novel.

Totally original in conception and magnificently executed, Forty Rooms is mysterious, withholding, and ultimately emotionally devastating. Olga Grushin is dealing with issues of women’s identity, of women’s choices, that no modern novel has explored so deeply.

“Forty rooms� is a conceit: it proposes that a modern woman will inhabit forty rooms in her lifetime. They form her biography, from childhood to death. For our protagonist, the much-loved child of a late marriage, the first rooms she is aware of as she nears the age of five are those that make up her family’s Moscow apartment. We follow this child as she reaches adolescence, leaves home to study in America, and slowly discovers sexual happiness and love. But her hunger for adventure and her longing to be a great poet conspire to kill the affair. She seems to have made her choice.

But one day she runs into a college classmate. He is sure of his path through life, and he is protective of her. (He is also a great cook.) They drift into an affair and marriage. What follows are the decades of births and deaths, the celebrations, material accumulations, and home comforts—until one day, her children grown and gone, her husband absent, she finds herself alone except for the ghosts of her youth, who have come back to haunt and even taunt her.

Compelling and complex, Forty Rooms is also profoundly affecting, its ending shattering but true. We know that Mrs. Caldwell (for that is the only name by which we know her) has died. Was it a life well lived? Quite likely. Was it a life complete? Does such a life ever really exist? Life is, after all, full of trade-offs and choices. Who is to say her path was not well taken? It is this ambiguity that is at the heart of this provocative novel.]]> 335 Olga Grushin 1101982330 Lisa 4 russia, short-story 3.88 2016 Forty Rooms
author: Olga Grushin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: russia, short-story
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Plant-Hunter's Atlas: A World Tour of Botanical Adventures, Chance Discoveries and Strange Specimens]]> 56058125 RHS Staff Pick of the Year 2021 Spectator Gardening Book of the year 2021 'A refreshingly insightful history of plant introductions.' - Roy Lancaster Travel the world with extraordinary tales of the botanical discoveries that have shaped empires, built (and destroyed) economies, revolutionised medicine and advanced our understanding of science.Circling the globe from Australia's Botany Bay to the Tibetan plateau, from the deserts of Southern Africa to the jungles of Brazil, this book presents an incredible cast of characters - dedicated researchers and reckless adventurers, physicians, lovers and thieves. Meet dauntless Scots explorer David Douglas and visionary Prussian thinker Alexander von Humboldt, the 'Green Samurai' Mikinori Ogisu and the intrepid 17th century entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian - the first woman known to have made a living from science.Beautifully illustrated with over 100 botanical artworks from the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this absorbing book tells the stories of how plants have travelled across the world - from the missions of the Pharaohs right up to 21st century seed-banks and the many new and endangered species being named every year.***THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW is a world-famous research organisation and a major international visitor attraction. It harnesses the power of its science, the rich diversity of its gardens and collections to unearth why plants and fungi matter to everyone. Its aspiration is to end the extinction crisis and help create a world where nature and biodiversity are protected, valued and managed sustainably.]]> 432 Kew Royal Botanic Gardens Lisa 0 4.07 The Plant-Hunter's Atlas: A World Tour of Botanical Adventures, Chance Discoveries and Strange Specimens
author: Kew Royal Botanic Gardens
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> We're Alone: Essays 205363944 192 Edwidge Danticat 1644453029 Lisa 3 4.10 We're Alone: Essays
author: Edwidge Danticat
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: black-america, central-america-caribbean, essays, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories]]> 22929586 A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians. Readers will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they'd ever overlooked her in the first place.]]> 406 Lucia Berlin 0374202397 Lisa 3 short-story 4.22 2015 A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
author: Lucia Berlin
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: short-story
review:

]]> The Kiss 1204903 Kathryn Harrison was twenty years old.
Exquisitely and hypnotically written, like a terrifying dream, The Kiss will literally take your breath away, for the power and beauty of its creation, and for the shocking truth it reveals, a story both of taboo and of family complicity in breaking taboo.
Kathryn Harrison was six months old when her father left the family, yet in his absence, this lost father haunted her youth. When Kathryn is in college, her father comes back for a bizarre family reunion - and an affair begins with a kiss, a descent into a maelstrom, during which Kathryn Harrison nearly loses her sanity and her life.]]> 207 Kathryn Harrison 067944999X Lisa 4 3.52 1996 The Kiss
author: Kathryn Harrison
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel]]> 205363940 A legendary editor's reckoning with the twentieth-century novel and the urgent messages it sends. For more than two decades, Edwin Frank has introduced readers to forgotten or overlooked texts as the director of the acclaimed publisher New York Review Books. In Stranger Than Fiction, he offers a survey of the key works that defined the twentieth-century novel. Starting with Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground of 1864, Frank shows how its twitchy, self-undermining narrator established a voice that would echo through the coming century. He illuminates Gertrude Stein's and Ernest Hemingway’s reinvention of the American sentence, Colette's and André Gide’s subversions of traditional gender roles, and the monumental ambitions of works such as Mrs. Dalloway, The Magic Mountain, and The Man Without Qualities to encompass their times. Frank also shows how Japan’s Soseki and Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe adapted European models to their own ends—and how Vasily Grossman, Hans Erich Nossack, and Elsa Morante did the same as they attempted to reckon with the traumas of World War II. Later chapters range from Ralph Ellison and Marguerite Yourcenar to Gabriel García Márquez and W. G. Sebald. In the manner of Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise, Frank makes sense of the century by mixing biographical portraiture, cultural history, and close encounters with great works of art. In so doing, he renews our appreciation of the paradigmatic art form of our times.]]> 480 Edwin Frank 0374270961 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.17 2024 Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel
author: Edwin Frank
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> Praisesong for the Widow 220340 Praise Song for the Widow was a recipient of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award.

"Astonishingly moving."
 --Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review]]> 256 Paule Marshall 0452267110 Lisa 0 3.81 1983 Praisesong for the Widow
author: Paule Marshall
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read, central-america-caribbean
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures]]> 55829275 Beloved storyteller Ivan Coyote returns with their most intimate and moving book yet.


Writer and performer Ivan Coyote has spent decades on the road, telling stories around the world. For years, Ivan has kept a file of the most special communications received from readers and audience members--letters, Facebook messages, emails, soggy handwritten notes tucked under the windshield wiper of their truck after a gig. Then came Spring, 2020, and, like artists everywhere, Coyote was grounded by the pandemic, all their planned events cancelled. The energy of a live audience, a performer's lifeblood, was suddenly gone. But with this loss came an opportunity for a different kind of connection. Those letters that had long piled up could finally begin to be answered.

Care Of combines the most powerful of these letters with Ivan's responses, creating a body of correspondence of startling intimacy, breathtaking beauty, and heartbreaking honesty and openness. Taken together, they become an affirming and joyous reflection on many of the themes central to Coyote's celebrated work--compassion and empathy, family fragility, non-binary and Trans identity, and the unending beauty of simply being alive, a giant love letter to the idea of human connection, and the power of truly listening to each other.
]]> 256 Ivan E. Coyote 0771051727 Lisa 4 non-fiction 4.63 2021 Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures
author: Ivan E. Coyote
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America]]> 60343782
“This book is too important to miss. It is a vast, sprawling look at who we are as Indigenous people in these United States.”—Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho), author of There There

In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations. Over the next decade, she traveled six hundred thousand miles across fifty states—from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)—to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people. The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country.

The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, Project 562 is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people—all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. Their narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more.

A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, Project 562 inspires, educates, and truly changes the way we see Native America.]]> 416 Matika Wilbur 1984859528 Lisa 0 4.72 Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America
author: Matika Wilbur
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.72
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read, native-america, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS]]> 2477943 128 Sarah Orne Jewett 0684819090 Lisa 0 to-read 3.79 1896 The COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS
author: Sarah Orne Jewett
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1896
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider's Guide to Changing the World]]> 55332386 At turns surprising, funny, and gut-wrenching, this is the hopeful story of the ordinary yet extraordinary people who have figured out how to build lasting peace in their communities

The word "peacebuilding" evokes a story we've all heard over and over: violence breaks out, foreign nations are scandalized, peacekeepers and million-dollar donors come rushing in, warring parties sign a peace agreement and, sadly, within months the situation is back to where it started--sometimes worse. But what strategies have worked to build lasting peace in conflict zones, particularly for ordinary citizens on the ground? And why should other ordinary citizens, thousands of miles away, care?

In The Frontlines of Peace, Severine Autesserre, award-winning researcher and peacebuilder, examines the well-intentioned but inherently flawed peace industry. With examples drawn from across the globe, she reveals that peace can grow in the most unlikely circumstances. Contrary to what most politicians preach, building peace doesn't require billions in aid or massive international interventions. Real, lasting peace requires giving power to local citizens.

The Frontlines of Peace tells the stories of the ordinary yet extraordinary individuals and organizations that are confronting violence in their communities effectively. One thing is clear: successful examples of peacebuilding around the world, in countries at war or at peace, have involved innovative grassroots initiatives led by local people, at times supported by foreigners, often employing methods shunned by the international elite. By narrating success stories of this kind, Autesserre shows the radical changes we must take in our approach if we hope to build lasting peace around us--whether we live in Congo, the United States, or elsewhere.
]]> 240 Severine Autesserre 0197530354 Lisa 2 4.22 2021 The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider's Guide to Changing the World
author: Severine Autesserre
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> The Mill on the Floss 20564 'If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie?'

Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother, a close friend who is also the son of her family's worst enemy, and a charismatic but dangerous suitor. With its poignant portrayal of sibling relationships, The Mill on the Floss is considered George Eliot's most autobiographical novel; it is also one of her most powerful and moving.

In this edition writer and critic A.S. Byatt provides full explanatory notes and an introduction relating Mill on the Floss to George Eliot's own life and times.

Edited with an introduction and notes by A.S. BYATT]]> 579 George Eliot 0141439629 Lisa 0 to-read 3.82 1860 The Mill on the Floss
author: George Eliot
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1860
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Problems 27130506 Problems introduces us to Maya, a young woman with a smart mouth, time to kill, and a heroin hobby that isn't much fun anymore. Maya's been able to get by in New York on her wits and a dead-end bookstore job for years, but when her husband leaves her and her favorite professor ends their affair, her barely-calibrated life descends into chaos, and she has to make some choices.

Maya's struggle to be alone, to be a woman, and to be thoughtful and imperfect and alive in a world that doesn't really care what happens to her is rendered with dead-eyed clarity and unnerving charm. This book takes every tired trope about addiction and recovery, "likeable" characters, and redemption narratives, and blows them to pieces.

Emily Books is a publishing project and ebook subscription service whose focus is on transgressive writers of the past, present and future, with an emphasis on the writing of women, trans and queer people, writing that blurs genre distinctions and is funny, challenging, and provocative.

Jade Sharma is a writer living in New York. She has an MFA from the New School.]]> 180 Jade Sharma 1566894425 Lisa 0 to-read 3.70 2016 Problems
author: Jade Sharma
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hungry Ghosts 61109596 From an unforgettable new voice in Caribbean literature, a sweeping story of two families colliding in 1940s Trinidad--and a chilling mystery that shows how interconnected their lives truly are

Trinidad in the 1940s, nearing the end of American occupation and British colonialism. On a hill overlooking Bell Village sits the Changoor farm, where Dalton and Marlee Changoor live in luxury unrecognizable to those who reside in the farm's shadow. Down below is the Barrack, a ramshackle building of wood and tin, divided into rooms occupied by whole families. Among these families are the Saroops--Hans, Shweta, and their son, Krishna, all three born of the barracks. Theirs are hard lives of backbreaking work, grinding poverty, devotion to faith, and a battle against nature and a social structure designed to keep them where they are.

But when Dalton goes missing and Marlee's safety is compromised, farmhand Hans is lured by the promise of a handsome stipend to move to the farm as a watchman. As the mystery of Dalton's disappearance unfolds, the lives of the wealthy couple and those who live in the barracks below become insidiously entwined, their community changed forever and in shocking ways.

A searing and singular novel of religion, class, family, and historical violence, and rooted in Trinidad's wild pastoral landscape and inspired by oral storytelling traditions, Hungry Ghosts is deeply resonant of its time and place while evoking the roots and ripple effects of generational trauma and linked histories; the lingering resentments, sacrifices, and longings that alter destinies; and the consequences of powerlessness. Lyrically told and rendered with harrowing beauty, Hungry Ghosts is a stunning piece of storytelling and an affecting mystery, from a blazingly talented writer.]]> 336 Kevin Jared Hosein 0063213389 Lisa 0 3.79 2023 Hungry Ghosts
author: Kevin Jared Hosein
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read, central-america-caribbean
review:

]]> Road Leading Somewhere 127589531 171 Ursula Parrott Lisa 0 to-read 5.00 Road Leading Somewhere
author: Ursula Parrott
name: Lisa
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life]]> 17465707 230 Dani Shapiro 0802121403 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.19 2013 Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
author: Dani Shapiro
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kingdom of Ants: José Celestino Mutis and the Dawn of Natural History in the New World]]> 8258394 120 Edward O. Wilson 0801897858 Lisa 0 4.36 2010 Kingdom of Ants: José Celestino Mutis and the Dawn of Natural History in the New World
author: Edward O. Wilson
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology]]> 123012858
Biology is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Several aspects of the standard picture of how life works—the idea of the genome as a blueprint, of genes as instructions for building an organism, of proteins as precisely tailored molecular machines, of cells as entities with fixed identities, and more—have been exposed as incomplete, misleading, or wrong.

In How Life Works , Philip Ball explores the new biology, revealing life to be a far richer, more ingenious affair than we had guessed. Ball explains that there is no unique place to look for an answer to this life is a system of many levels—genes, proteins, cells, tissues, and body modules such as the immune system and the nervous system—each with its own rules and principles. How Life Works explains how these levels operate, interface, and work together (most of the time).

With this knowledge come new possibilities. Today we can redesign and reconfigure living systems, tissues, and organisms. We can reprogram cells, for instance, to carry out new tasks and grow into structures not seen in the natural world. As we discover the conditions that dictate the forms into which cells organize themselves, our ability to guide and select the outcomes becomes ever more extraordinary. Some researchers believe that ultimately we will be able to regenerate limbs and organs, and perhaps even create new life forms that evolution has never imagined.

Incorporating the latest research and insights, How Life Works is a sweeping journey into this new frontier of the life sciences, a realm that will reshape our understanding of life as we know it.]]> 552 Philip Ball 0226826686 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.24 2023 How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology
author: Philip Ball
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood]]> 17383921 Thousands of books have examined the effects of parents on their children. Award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior now asks: what are the effects of children on their parents?

"All Joy and No Fun is an indispensable map for a journey that most of us take without one. Brilliant, funny, and brimming with insight, this is an important book that every parent should read, and then read again. Jennifer Senior is surely one of the best writers on the planet."-Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness

In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior isolates and analyzes the many ways in which children reshape their parents' lives, whether it's their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today's mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear. Recruiting from a wide variety of sources-in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology-she dissects both the timeless strains of parenting and the ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the homes of ordinary parents around the country. The result is an unforgettable series of family portraits, starting with parents of young children and progressing to parents of teens. Through lively and accessible storytelling, Senior follows these mothers and fathers as they wrestle with some of parenthood's deepest vexations-and luxuriate in some of its finest rewards.

Meticulously researched yet imbued with emotional intelligence, All Joy and No Fun makes us reconsider some of our culture's most basic beliefs about parenthood, all while illuminating the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to our lives. By focusing on parenthood, rather than parenting, the book is original and essential reading for mothers and fathers of today-and tomorrow.]]> 320 Jennifer Senior 0062072226 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 3.88 2014 All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
author: Jennifer Senior
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Grandmother Begins the Story]]> 123204565
Written like a crooked Métis jig, A Grandmother Begins the Story follows five generations of women and bison as they reach for the stories that could remake their worlds and rebuild their futures.

Carter is a young mother, recently separated. She is curious, angry, and on a quest to find out what the heritage she only learned of in her teens truly means.
Allie, Carter's mother, is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born, and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother. Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her join her ancestors in the Afterlife. And Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons before the fire inside burns her up, with the help of the sister she lost but has never been without. Meanwhile, Mamé, in the Afterlife, knows that all their stories began with her; she must find a way to cut herself from the last threads that keep her tethered to the living, just as they must find their own paths forward.

This extraordinary novel, told by a chorus of vividly realized, funny, wise, confused, struggling characters—including descendants of the bison that once freely roamed the land—heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in literary fiction.]]> 336 Michelle Porter 1643755188 Lisa 0 to-read, native-america 3.85 2023 A Grandmother Begins the Story
author: Michelle Porter
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read, native-america
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care]]> 59362007
M. E. O’Brien uncovers the long history of struggles to go beyond the private family. She traces the changing family politics of racial capitalism in the industrial cities of Europe and the slavery plantations and settler frontier of North America, through the rise and fall of the housewife family. From Marx to Black and queer insurrection to today’s mass protest movements, O’Brien finds revolutionary movements seeking better ways of loving, caring, and living. Family Abolition takes us through the past and present of family politics into a speculative future of the commune, imagining how care could be organized in a free society.]]> 304 M.E. O'Brien 0745343821 Lisa 0 4.16 2023 Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care
author: M.E. O'Brien
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships]]> 828448 251 Michael P. Nichols 1572301317 Lisa 3 non-fiction 4.08 1994 The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships
author: Michael P. Nichols
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> Real Estate 55256089 WINNER of the 2021 Los Angeles Times-Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, comes the highly anticipated final installment in Deborah Levy's critically acclaimed living autobiography series.I began to wonder what myself and all unwritten and unseen women would possess in their property portfolios at the end of their lives. Literally, her physical property and possessions, and then everything else she valued, though it might not be valued by society. What might she claim, own, discard and bequeath? Or is she the real estate, owned by patriarchy? In this sense, Real Estate is a tricky business. We rent it and buy it, sell and inherit it--but we must also knock it down.Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy's living autobiography is an exhilarating, thought-provoking, and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it.]]> 304 Deborah Levy 073523647X Lisa 4 non-fiction 4.43 2021 Real Estate
author: Deborah Levy
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What I Remember, What I Know: The Life of a High Arctic Exile]]> 53202534
Larry tells of loss, illness, and his family’s struggle to survive, juxtaposed with excerpts from official reports that conveyed the relocatees� plight as a successful experiment. With refreshing candour and an unbreakable sense of humour, Larry leads the reader through his life as a High Arctic Exile—through broken promises, a decades-long fight to return home, and a life between two worlds as southern culture begins to encroach on Inuit traditions.]]> 300 Larry Audlaluk 177227237X Lisa 3 4.01 What I Remember, What I Know: The Life of a High Arctic Exile
author: Larry Audlaluk
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: native-america, non-fiction, nordic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Living in the Weather of the World: Stories]]> 31159248 From the prize-winning novelist and universally acclaimed short story writer ("Richard Bausch is a master of the short story" --"The New York Times Book Review"), thirteen unforgettable tales that showcase his electrifying artistry.
Bausch plumbs the depths of familial and marital estrangement, the violence of suicide and despair, the gulfs between friends and lovers, the complexities of divorce and infidelity, the fragility and impermanence of love. Wherever he casts his gaze, he illuminates the darkest corners of human experience with the bright light of wisdom and compassion, finding grace and redemption amidst sorrow and regret. Bausch's stories are simply extraordinary."]]> 256 Richard Bausch 0451494822 Lisa 0 to-read, short-story 3.83 2017 Living in the Weather of the World: Stories
author: Richard Bausch
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read, short-story
review:

]]> The Fortnight in September 56898313 The Fortnight in September embodies the kind of mundane normality the men in the dug-out longed for � domestic life at 22 Corunna Road in Dulwich, the train journey via Clapham Junction to the south coast, the two weeks living in lodgings and going to the beach every day. The family’s only regret is leaving their garden where, we can imagine, because it is September the dahlias are at their fiery best: as they flash past in the train they get a glimpse of their back garden, where ‘a shaft of sunlight fell through the side passage and lit up the clump of white asters by the apple tree.� This was what the First World War soldiers longed for; this, he imagined, was what he was fighting for and would return to (as in fact Sherriff did).

He had had the idea for his novel at Bognor Regis: watching the crowds go by, and wondering what their lives were like at home, he ‘began to feel the itch to take one of those families at random and build up an imaginary story of their annual holiday by the sea...I wanted to write about simple, uncomplicated people doing normal things.’]]> 304 R.C. Sherriff 1982184787 Lisa 0 to-read 3.92 1931 The Fortnight in September
author: R.C. Sherriff
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1931
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2024 on ŷ 195342176 2024 on ŷ should make an interesting and varied catalogue of books to inspire other readers in 2025.

For those of you who don't like to add titles you haven't actually 'read', you can place 2024 on ŷ on an 'exclusive' shelf. Exclusive shelves don't have to be listed under 'to read', 'currently reading' or 'read'. To create one, go to 'edit bookshelves' on your 'My Books' page, create a shelf name such as 'review-of-the year' and tick the 'exclusive' box. Your previous and future 'reviews of the year' can be collected together on this dedicated shelf.

Concept created by Fionnuala Lirsdottir.
Description: Fionnuala Lirsdottir
Cover art: Paul Cézanne, The House with the Cracked Walls, 1892-1894
Cover choice and graphics by Jayson]]> Various Lisa 0
Elephantoms: Tracking the Elephant by Lyall Watson - Some people are born writers. I could never have imagined this book would be so good. Underrated wizardry.
Meditations with Cows: What I've Learned from Daisy, the Dairy Cow Who Changed My Life by Shreve Stockton - She pushes me closer to my dream of one day moving to the country and adopting a cow.
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World by Lisa Wells - A book of essays that is not afraid to be messy and dip into the fringes.
After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort by Eric Dean Wilson - Yet another brilliant mind that I would love to meet. The history of refrigerants you never knew you needed to know.
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa - Read the caoineadh (keen) out loud. Listen to it in Irish. Connect with the past, thread it through to the present. Love hard.
The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works by Helen Czerski seamlessly brings together the physics of the ocean, the wonders of the creatures within, and mini cultural histories of humans engaging with the sea.
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles was my companion during a rainy day camping and I couldn't have asked for more entertaining company.

Am I allowed a peek at the past? I haven't always been disciplined enough for these year-end reviews... so here are a few from 2022 and 2023.

The most memorable novel of recent years is My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, an extraordinary labour of love that fleshes out every complicated feeling you may have about age-inappropriate relationships and/or your past.
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane is a brain-invigorating look at the question of how life on earth started. I trust him.
I have Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght to thank for my real-life trek to the northeastern tip of Hokkaido where my night vigil was rewarded with a visit by two enormous Blakiston's fish owls.
I read Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price hoping to fill in a blind spot in my professional practice. What a curveball to read it and realize Wow, I just might be autistic... and thus my understanding of myself-in-the-world is enriched.

Books are inseparable from my life, and I wouldn't have it any different. I feel blessed to have the time to read 83 books in a year (even the lacklustre ones) and a partner who is always eager to see which books I bring home from the library and dip into them with me. Wishing everyone in this lovely community a great year to come!]]> 4.15 2024 2024 on ŷ
author: Various
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:
Non-fiction is my jam these days. My boyfriend tells me 'women writing about their lives, preferably on rocky windswept coasts' is my signature genre. He exaggerates (of course), but there is a blend of environmental and personal writing that draws me. Here are some stand-out reads of the year:

Elephantoms: Tracking the Elephant by Lyall Watson - Some people are born writers. I could never have imagined this book would be so good. Underrated wizardry.
Meditations with Cows: What I've Learned from Daisy, the Dairy Cow Who Changed My Life by Shreve Stockton - She pushes me closer to my dream of one day moving to the country and adopting a cow.
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World by Lisa Wells - A book of essays that is not afraid to be messy and dip into the fringes.
After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort by Eric Dean Wilson - Yet another brilliant mind that I would love to meet. The history of refrigerants you never knew you needed to know.
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa - Read the caoineadh (keen) out loud. Listen to it in Irish. Connect with the past, thread it through to the present. Love hard.
The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works by Helen Czerski seamlessly brings together the physics of the ocean, the wonders of the creatures within, and mini cultural histories of humans engaging with the sea.
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles was my companion during a rainy day camping and I couldn't have asked for more entertaining company.

Am I allowed a peek at the past? I haven't always been disciplined enough for these year-end reviews... so here are a few from 2022 and 2023.

The most memorable novel of recent years is My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, an extraordinary labour of love that fleshes out every complicated feeling you may have about age-inappropriate relationships and/or your past.
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane is a brain-invigorating look at the question of how life on earth started. I trust him.
I have Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght to thank for my real-life trek to the northeastern tip of Hokkaido where my night vigil was rewarded with a visit by two enormous Blakiston's fish owls.
I read Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price hoping to fill in a blind spot in my professional practice. What a curveball to read it and realize Wow, I just might be autistic... and thus my understanding of myself-in-the-world is enriched.

Books are inseparable from my life, and I wouldn't have it any different. I feel blessed to have the time to read 83 books in a year (even the lacklustre ones) and a partner who is always eager to see which books I bring home from the library and dip into them with me. Wishing everyone in this lovely community a great year to come!
]]> <![CDATA[Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood]]> 62217096 A radical new examination of the transition into motherhood and how it affects the mind, brain and body

During pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood, women undergo a far-reaching physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis. Other than during adolescence, there is no other time in a human's life with such dramatic change, yet science, medicine, and philosophy have neglected this life-altering transition. Its seismic effects go largely unrepresented across literature and the arts. Speaking about motherhood as anything other than a pastel-hued dream remains, for the most part, taboo.

In this ground-breaking, deeply personal investigation, acclaimed journalist and author Lucy Jones brings to light the emerging concept of 'matrescence'. Drawing on new research across various fields—neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology—Jones shows how the changes in the maternal mind, brain, and body are far more profound, wild, and enduring than we have been led to believe. She reveals the dangerous consequences of our neglect of the maternal experience, and interrogates the patriarchal and capitalist systems that have created the untenable situation mothers face today.

Here is an urgent examination of the modern institution of motherhood that seeks to unshackle all parents from oppressive social norms. As it deepens our understanding of matrescence, it raises vital questions about motherhood and femininity; interdependence and individual identity; and our relationships with each other and the world.]]> 310 Lucy Jones 0241513480 Lisa 0 4.45 2023 Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood
author: Lucy Jones
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: non-fiction, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Deadline 77264985
A book to be read and kept for posterity, The Deadline is the art of the essay at its best. Few, if any, historians have brought such insight, wisdom, and empathy to public discourse as Jill Lepore. Arriving at The New Yorker in 2005, Lepore, with her panoptical range and razor-sharp style, brought a transporting freshness and a literary vivacity to everything from profiles of long-dead writers to urgent constitutional analysis to an unsparing scrutiny of the woeful affairs of the nation itself. The astonishing essays collected in The Deadline offer a prismatic portrait of Americans� techno-utopianism, frantic fractiousness, and unprecedented―but armed―aimlessness. From lockdowns and race commissions to Bratz dolls and bicycles, to the losses that haunt Lepore’s life, these essays again and again cross what she calls the deadline , the “river of time that divides the quick from the dead.� Echoing Gore Vidal’s United States in its massive intellectual erudition, The Deadline , with its remarkable juxtaposition of the political and the personal, challenges the very nature of the essay―and of history―itself. 12 images]]> 640 Jill Lepore 1631496123 Lisa 0 4.27 2023 The Deadline
author: Jill Lepore
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: essays, non-fiction, currently-reading
review:

]]> Home of the Floating Lily 55049149 Caught between cultures, immigrant women from a Bangladeshi neighbourhood in Scarborough struggle to navigate their home, relationships, and happiness.

Set in both Canada and Bangladesh, the eight stories in Home of the Floating Lily follow the lives of everyday people as they navigate the complexities of migration, displacement, love, friendship, and familial conflict. A young woman moves to Toronto after getting married but soon discovers her husband is not who she believes him to be. A mother reconciles her heartbreak when her sons defy her expectations and choose their own paths in life. A lonely international student returns to Bangladesh and forms an unexpected bond with her domestic helper. A working-class woman, caught between her love for Bangladesh and her determination to raise her daughter in Canada, makes a life-altering decision after a dark secret from the past is revealed.

In each of the stories, characters embark on difficult journeys in search of love, dignity, and a sense of belonging.]]> 216 Silmy Abdullah 1459748174 Lisa 3 asia, short-story 4.15 2021 Home of the Floating Lily
author: Silmy Abdullah
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: asia, short-story
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction, essays 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, essays
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth]]> 123207191 An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise.

In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents their voyage, offering the sublime—seeing an iceberg for the first time; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites—alongside the workaday moments of this groundbreaking expedition. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for and protecting human life in a place that is inhospitable to it. Along the way, she takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to bring a child into the world at this time of radical change?

What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting but with the collective and challenging work of imagining a better future. With understanding the language of a continent where humans have only been present for two centuries. With the contributions and concerns of women, who were largely excluded from voyages until the last few decades, and of crew members of color, whose labor has often gone unrecognized. The Quickening teems with their voices—with the colorful stories and personalities of Rush’s shipmates—in a thrilling chorus.

Urgent and brave, absorbing and vulnerable, The Quickening is another essential book from Elizabeth Rush.]]> 424 Elizabeth Rush 1571313966 Lisa 0 4.06 2023 The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth
author: Elizabeth Rush
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Special Topics in Being a Parent: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I’ve Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way]]> 187622796 328 S. Bear Bergman 1551529394 Lisa 0 4.85 Special Topics in Being a Parent: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I’ve Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way
author: S. Bear Bergman
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read, graphic-novel, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea]]> 6545608
October 1991. It was "the perfect storm"--a tempest that may happen only once in a century--a nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards its hellish center.]]> 233 Sebastian Junger 0393337014 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.19 1997 The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
author: Sebastian Junger
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life]]> 30231780
Our home here on Earth is messy, mutable, and full of humdrum things that we touch and modify without much thought every day. But these familiar surroundings are just the place to look if you’re interested in what makes the universe tick. In Storm in a Teacup, Helen Czerski provides the tools to alter the way we see everything around us by linking ordinary objects and occurrences, like popcorn popping, coffee stains, and fridge magnets, to big ideas like climate change, the energy crisis, or innovative medical testing. She guides us through the principles of gases (“Explosions in the kitchen are generally considered a bad idea. But just occasionally a small one can produce something delicious�); gravity (drop some raisins in a bottle of carbonated lemonade and watch the whoosh of bubbles and the dancing raisins at the bottom bumping into each other); size (Czerski explains the action of the water molecules that cause the crime-scene stain left by a puddle of dried coffee); and time (why it takes so long for ketchup to come out of a bottle).

Along the way, she provides answers to vexing questions: How does water travel from the roots of a redwood tree to its crown? How do ducks keep their feet warm when walking on ice? Why does milk, when added to tea, look like billowing storm clouds? In an engaging voice at once warm and witty, Czerski shares her stunning breadth of knowledge to lift the veil of familiarity from the ordinary. You may never look at your toaster the same way.]]> 275 Helen Czerski 0393248968 Lisa 0 3.92 2017 Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life
author: Helen Czerski
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works]]> 123979539 446 Helen Czerski 1324006714 Lisa 5 non-fiction, science-nature 4.17 2023 The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works
author: Helen Czerski
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: non-fiction, science-nature
review:

]]> <![CDATA["Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide]]> 909011 "Exterminate All the Brutes" is a searching examination of Europe's dark history in Africa and the origins of genocide. Using Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as his point of departure, Sven Lindqvist takes us on a haunting tour through the colonial past, interwoven with a modern-day travelogue. Retracing the steps of European explorers, missionaries, politicians, and historians in Africa from the late eighteenth century onward, the author exposes the roots of genocide in Africa via his own journey through the Saharan desert. As Lindqvist shows, fantasies not merely of white superiority but of actual extermination--"cleansing" the earth of the so-called lesser races--deeply informed European colonialism and racist ideology that ultimately culminated in Europe's own Holocaust.

Chosen as one of the Best Books of 1998 by the New Internationalist, which called it "a beautifully written integration of criticism, cultural history, and travel writing, underpinned by a passion for social justice," "Exterminate All the Brutes" is a powerful reckoning with the past and an indispensable contribution to the literature of colonial Africa and European genocide.

]]> 179 Sven Lindqvist 1565843592 Lisa 4 africa, non-fiction 4.23 1992 "Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide
author: Sven Lindqvist
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: africa, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hawaiki Rising: Hōkūle'a, Nainoa Thompson, and the Hawaiian Renaissance]]> 18375122
Nainoa Thompson searches the sky for clues his ancestors once used to find land across a trackless ocean...

Mau Piailug reaches out across barriers of culture and distance to pass on the seafaring art of his ancestors...

A crew bonds together with aloha on a voyage to Tahiti - the first Hawaiians to navigate the Pacific without charts or instruments in a thousand years...

Hawaiki Rising is the unpublished story of the Hokule'a and the men and women who sailed in the wake of their ancestors to discover pride in their culture and themselves.

"The vision of Hokule'a was conceived in 1973, so the publishing of this book marks the 40th anniversary of her creation. Sam Low, the author, has sailed with us on three voyages, written numerous articles and now, after ten years of work, has finished Hawaiki Rising. This book is an important part of our 'olelo, our history, and it contains the mana of all those who helped create and sail Hokule'a." Nainoa Thompson]]> 344 Sam Low 1617102008 Lisa 0 4.57 2013 Hawaiki Rising: Hōkūle'a, Nainoa Thompson, and the Hawaiian Renaissance
author: Sam Low
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit, non-fiction
review:

]]> Consent: A Memoir 200798634 Half a Life. She asks herself whether she told the whole truth back then. What did truth look like to her in the era of love-bead curtains, when no one asked who was served by the permissibility of May-December romance? With new understanding about the imbalance of power between an older man and a minor girl, Ciment re-explores the erotic wild ride and intellectual flowering that shaped an improbable but blissful marriage that lasted for forty-five years, until her husband’s death at age ninety-three.]]> 145 Jill Ciment 0593701062 Lisa 3 3.83 2024 Consent: A Memoir
author: Jill Ciment
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief]]> 55844056
For poet Victoria Chang, memory “isn’t something that blooms, but something that bleeds internally.� It is willed, summoned, and dragged to the surface. The remembrances in this collection of letters are founded in the fragments of stories her mother shared reluctantly, and the silences of her father, who first would not and then could not share more. They are whittled and sculpted from an archive of family relics: a marriage license, a letter, a visa petition, a photograph. And, just as often, they are built on the questions that can no longer be answered.

Dear Memory is not a transcription but a process of simultaneously shaping and being shaped, knowing that when a writer dips their pen into history, what emerges is poetry. In carefully crafted missives on trauma and loss, on being American and Chinese, Victoria Chang shows how grief can ignite a longing to know yourself.]]> 136 Victoria Chang 1571313923 Lisa 0 to-read, essays, non-fiction 4.48 2021 Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief
author: Victoria Chang
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read, essays, non-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation]]> 24693870 A beautifully written, deeply provocative inquiry into the intersection of animal and disability liberation—and the debut of an important new social critic

How much of what we understand of ourselves as “human� depends on our physical and mental abilities—how we move (or cannot move) in and interact with the world? And how much of our definition of “human� depends on its difference from “animal�?

Drawing on her own experiences as a disabled person, a disability activist, and an animal advocate, author Sunaura Taylor persuades us to think deeply, and sometimes uncomfortably, about what divides the human from the animal, the disabled from the nondisabled—and what it might mean to break down those divisions, to claim the animal and the vulnerable in ourselves, in a process she calls “cripping animal ethics.�

Beasts of Burden suggests that issues of disability and animal justice—which have heretofore primarily been presented in opposition—are in fact deeply entangled. Fusing philosophy, memoir, science, and the radical truths these disciplines can bring—whether about factory farming, disability oppression, or our assumptions of human superiority over animals—Taylor draws attention to new worlds of experience and empathy that can open up important avenues of solidarity across species and ability. Beasts of Burden is a wonderfully engaging and elegantly written work, both philosophical and personal, by a brilliant new voice.]]> 272 Sunaura Taylor 1620971283 Lisa 2 non-fiction 4.56 2015 Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation
author: Sunaura Taylor
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Lisa 5
...

A few days later and I am still mulling this over. I want to draw a line from Two Serious Ladies (Jane Bowles) to here - women getting carried into a stream of surprising events, making at times inscrutable decisions and non-decisions, except Miranda July offers a glimpse at the interiority that leads them (us) there (here).]]> 3.52 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves:
review:
I didn't think I would like this book, and I can't even properly explain how I started reading it, but I did and I did. I was surprised (and most pleased!) to discover that Miranda July's brain is an uncanny mirror of my own under the influence of THC. What a fun find. Time to take reading a little less seriously? Time to get stoned and become a writer?

...

A few days later and I am still mulling this over. I want to draw a line from Two Serious Ladies (Jane Bowles) to here - women getting carried into a stream of surprising events, making at times inscrutable decisions and non-decisions, except Miranda July offers a glimpse at the interiority that leads them (us) there (here).
]]> Sweet Days of Discipline 1440460 I beati anni del castigoin its Italian original won the 1990 Premio Bagutta and the 1990 Premio Speciale Rapallo. In Tim Parks� consummate translation (with its "spare, haunting quality of a prose poem"),Sweet Days of Disciplinewas selected as one of theLondon Times Literary Supplement’s Notable Books of 1992: "In a period when novels are generally overblown and scarcely portable, it is good to be able to recommend [one that is] miraculously short and beautifully written."]]> 101 Fleur Jaeggy 0811212351 Lisa 2 3.73 1989 Sweet Days of Discipline
author: Fleur Jaeggy
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1989
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Strangers I Know 62952116 Durastanti casts the universal drama of the family as the sieve through which the self--woman, artist, daughter--is filtered and known. --Ocean Vuong

A work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family and life.

Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia's mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldn't be more different; they can't even agree on how they met, much less who needed saving.

Into this unlikely yet somehow inevitable union, our narrator is born. She comes of age with her brother in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a small village in southern Italy and New York City. Without even sign language in common - their parents have not bothered to teach them - family communications are chaotic and rife with misinterpretations, by turns hilarious and devastating. An outsider in every way, she longs for a freedom she's not even sure exists. Only books and punk rock--and a tumultuous relationship--begin to show her the way to create her own mythology, to construct her own version of the story of her life.

Kinetic, formally dazzling, and spectacularly original, this book is a funny and profound portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.
]]> 304 Claudia Durastanti 059308795X Lisa 3 3.54 2019 Strangers I Know
author: Claudia Durastanti
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves:
review:

]]> The First Bad Man 21412400 No One Belongs Here More Than You, a spectacular debut novel that is so heartbreaking, so dirty, so tender, so funny � so Miranda July � readers will be blown away.

Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people's babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defense non-profit where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one.

When Cheryl's bosses ask if their twenty-one-year-old daughter Clee can move into her house for a little while, Cheryl's eccentrically-ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee � the selfish, cruel blond bombshell � who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, provides her the love of a lifetime.

Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual fantasies and fierce maternal love, Miranda July's first novel confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic and important voice today, and a writer for all time. The First Bad Man is dazzling, disorienting, and unforgettable.]]> 288 Miranda July 1439172560 Lisa 0 to-read 3.67 2015 The First Bad Man
author: Miranda July
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars]]> 209604194
Peter has spent his life missing his Zimbabwean childhood, a longing that does not diminish as he reflects on being a conscript in the Rhodesian army in the 1970s, writing about conflicts across the African continent and beyond or settling in New York with his English wife and transatlantic children. In his mother’s final months, he must come to terms with everything his family was � and wasn� the secrets they kept from one another, the stoicism that sometimes threatened to destroy them and the beauty of the wildly different places they called home.

In Exit Wounds, Peter Godwin considers the life of émigrés, exiles and refugees, and grieves the many losses that make life both magnificent and unbearable. With generations of history behind him, he brings us into the spaces which make us question, suffer and celebrate the lives we have among family and friends, and the healing of our own scars.]]> 270 Peter Godwin 1837261458 Lisa 0 4.31 Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars
author: Peter Godwin
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: to-read, elusive-lit, non-fiction, zimbabwe
review:

]]> The Odd Women 675037 The Odd Women reflects the major sexual and cultural issues of the late nineteenth century. Unlike the "New Woman" novels of the era which challenged the idea that the unmarried woman was superfluous, Gissing satirizes that image and portrays women as "odd" and marginal in relation to an ideal. Set in a grimy, fog-ridden London, Gissing's "odd" women range from the idealistic, financially self-sufficient Mary Barfoot to the Madden sisters who struggle to subsist in low paying jobs and little chance for joy. With narrative detachment, Gissing portrays contemporary society's blatant ambivalence towards its own period of transition. Judged by contemporary critics to be as provocative as Zola and Ibsen, Gissing produced an "intensely modern" work as the issues it raises remain the subject of contemporary debate.]]> 432 George Gissing 019283312X Lisa 0 to-read 3.81 1893 The Odd Women
author: George Gissing
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1893
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> Question 7 179455076
At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, literature, place and memory is about how reality is never made by realists and how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.]]> 280 Richard Flanagan 1761343467 Lisa 0 to-read, non-fiction 4.19 2023 Question 7
author: Richard Flanagan
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read, non-fiction
review:

]]> A Russian Gentleman 1388031 virtually illiterate. Into the family comes his son's new wife, a spirited, intelligent girl from the town. Her eyes see a different world--one tainted by grossness, cruelty, and squalor--and she suffers from the hostility of jealous sisters-in-law and the shortcomings of a husband whom she loves
but cannot respect. Her relationship with Stepan Mikhailovich is the heart of a story in which Aksakov celebrates the old feudal way of life without concealing its darker, repressive side.]]> 226 Sergei Aksakov 0192815733 Lisa 0 to-read, russia 3.70 1856 A Russian Gentleman
author: Sergei Aksakov
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1856
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read, russia
review:

]]>