Jack's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 22 Apr 2025 03:51:53 -0700 60 Jack's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 1984 61439040
Alternate cover edition can be found here.]]> 368 George Orwell 0452284236 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.21 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Jack
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Between Us 62397519 International bestseller Mhairi McFarlane delivers a witty, clever, emotional new novel about a woman whose life unravels spectacularly after her screenwriter boyfriend uses their relationship as inspiration for his new television show.

When Roisin and Joe join their friends for a weekend at a country house, it's a triple celebration--a birthday, an engagement, and the launch of Joe's shiny new TV show. But as the weekend unfolds, tensions come to light in the group and Roisin begins to question her own relationship. And as they watch the first episode of Joe's drama, she realizes that the private things she told him--which should have stayed between them--are right there on the screen.

With her friend group in chaos and her messy love life on display for the whole world to see, Roisin returns home to avoid the unwanted attention and help run her family's pub. But drama still follows, in the form of her dysfunctional family and the looming question: what other parts of her now-ex's show are inspired by real events? Lies? Infidelity? Every week, as a new episode airs, she wonders what other secrets will be revealed.

Yet the most unexpected twist of all is an old friend, who is suddenly there for Roisin in ways she never knew she needed...]]> 448 Mhairi McFarlane 0008412499 Jack 5 3.73 2023 Between Us
author: Mhairi McFarlane
name: Jack
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
review:
Consider me emotionally that Superman rollercoaster at Dreamworld that killed people I think?-ed. This was absolutely fantastic. My heart was fucken RACING, and I said, multiple times, “oh no, don’t do that� out loud. YET, there was plenty of actual mature communication and things not being left unsaid. Fantastic. This was absolutely fantastic, I just loved this.
]]> The Panic in Needle Park 971702 Kirkus

James Mills, a reporter for Life magazine, drew upon his firsthand experience of New York City's junkie underworld to create this harrowing, fictionalized account of the tragic love affair between two junkies. Mills spent months with Bobby, a small-time street hustler, and Helen, a middle-class Midwesterner reduced to prostitution. Mills's observations of their desperate struggle to score heroin during a shortage provide an extraordinarily intimate view of drug addiction. The acclaimed film adaptation, written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, starred Al Pacino in his first leadrole.

"One of the ten best novels of the year." —�ThePhiladelphia Inquirer]]> 158 James Mills Jack 0 to-read 3.69 1966 The Panic in Needle Park
author: James Mills
name: Jack
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Model Home 205363963
The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.

As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural� death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?

Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.]]> 304 Rivers Solomon 0374607133 Jack 1 3.72 2024 Model Home
author: Rivers Solomon
name: Jack
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
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It’s a cop out to call any piece of media “boring�. It’s reductive and, frankly, lazy. Which is a shame, really, because this book was boring as fuck.
]]> Animal Farm 170448 Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.]]> 141 George Orwell 0451526341 Jack 0 to-read 4.07 1945 Animal Farm
author: George Orwell
name: Jack
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1945
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women ’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Jack 5 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Jack
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
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review:
Bravo, bravo. This was sublime. Loved it.
]]> The Graveyard Book 2213661
There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.

A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean.]]> 312 Neil Gaiman 0060530928 Jack 0 to-read 4.15 2008 The Graveyard Book
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Jack
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

Verse Translation by Anthony Esolen
Illustrations by Gustave Doré]]> 490 Dante Alighieri 0812970063 Jack 0 to-read 4.02 1320 Inferno
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Jack
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1320
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Venue 52615193 "Rollicking dark, twisted fun!"

Welcome to THE VENUE
Where the super rich can get away from it all.
...and get away with anything they want.

You're invited to Caleb Hunt's wedding!

Sure, you haven't spoken since you two had a falling out in high school, but Caleb has gotten over that. He's a forgiving person. It was all a misunderstanding. He credits you with turning him into the man he is today.

He wants to repay you and everyone else from his life with an invitation to his destination wedding.

An all-expense paid trip to a luxurious resort.
High up in the Alps.
Secluded and private.

Please RSVP.
It's sure to be a killer party.

The newest gleefully violent release from the writer of INTERCEPTS and IN MY FATHER'S BASEMENT.]]> 296 T.J. Payne Jack 2 3.85 2020 The Venue
author: T.J. Payne
name: Jack
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves:
review:
This was absolutely pants on head, mate
]]> Retreat 215217614 A beautiful con artist insinuates herself into a wealthy socialite’s life . . . with deadly consequences, in this serpentine thriller about identity and obsession, from actress, director and bestselling author Krysten Ritter.

Liz Dawson weaves through a crowd with the ease of a tropical breeze, moving seamlessly through elite circles, sparking instant connections and making every new acquaintance feel like an intimate friend. She’s clever, smooth, and confident—qualities that make her a brilliant serial con artist.

Isabelle Beresford is strikingly beautiful, obscenely wealthy, and the new owner of Casa Esmerelda, a fabulous villa on the Mexican coast—attributes that make her the perfect mark. When she offers Liz a job handling the installation of a piece of art in her otherwise vacant home, Liz ’t resist the allure of a beach retreat. She longs for a reset, a chance to finally shed the grip of her addiction to the conning game.

But when Liz, with her lush dark hair and intense green eyes, is mistaken for Isabelle herself, Liz ’t help effortlessly slipping into the socialite’s identity. The transition is so easeful, it almost feels like fate. But just who is Isabelle Beresford really, and why does she seem to have abandoned this stunning life of hers?

As Liz insinuates herself deeper into the dazzling—and deceptive—world of the Punta Mita resort community, she draws closer to the dangers surrounding the real Isabelle. Dangers that may have already ensnared Liz, too. This might not be the con of her life—but the con that ends it.]]> 272 Krysten Ritter 0063334607 Jack 2 3.77 2025 Retreat
author: Krysten Ritter
name: Jack
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves:
review:
I didn’t really like this but I do really like season one of Jessica Jones
]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 489732 'The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty'

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.

This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novel's immorality, and the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd.]]> 253 Oscar Wilde 0141439572 Jack 5 4.21 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Jack
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1890
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:
My mans is a WRITER. Such a gorgeous way with words, transforming the most mundane sentences into a gorgeous bouquet of colour. This was fantastic.
]]> Credence 49084724
And when they suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But has anything really changed? She’s always been alone, hasn’t she?

Jake Van der Berg, her father’s stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan who is still two months shy of eighteen. Sent to live with him and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, in the mountains of Colorado, Tiernan soon learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore. As the three of them take her under their wing, teach her to work and survive in the remote woods far away from the rest of the world, she slowly finds her place among them.

And as a part of them.

She also realizes that lines blur and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.

One of them has her.

The other one wants her.

But he�

He’s going to keep her.

*Credence is a new adult standalone novel suitable for readers 18+.]]> 470 Penelope Douglas 1660089050 Jack 0 to-read 3.58 2020 Credence
author: Penelope Douglas
name: Jack
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)]]> 213243908 A hopeless romantic meets a jaded radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.

Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life-or lack thereof—she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.]]> 448 B.K. Borison 0593641191 Jack 4 One for us “touch� love language-ers of the world. ]]> 4.06 2025 First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)
author: B.K. Borison
name: Jack
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
review:
That was VERY NICE and I’m VERY happy for them.
One for us “touch� love language-ers of the world.
]]> Morsels 213066340 Meeting the family is scary. Surviving them is a nightmare.

Connie ’t deny she’s nervous about meeting her boyfriend’s family. Spending the weekend at their ritzy woodland summer home, Evan’s already given her fair warning: that his parents are cold, snobbish, and especially unpleasant toward those outside their usual social circles.

So when Evan’s mother warmly greets them with open arms, Connie is as confused as he is. Evan’s parents are nothing like he described. They’re so friendly, in fact, Evan himself can hardly believe they’re real.

Then, while helping Evan’s mother with dinner preparations, Connie overhears strange noises coming from the basement—what almost sounds like voices calling out for help.

Connie doesn't realize that once the door is opened, it ’t be closed. Or that once she descends those rickety steps into the darkness below... she may never see the light of day again.

From horror author Abe Moss comes a relentlessly fast-paced supernatural nightmare that will leave you gripping the pages long into the night, and afraid to turn out the lights long after you're done. ]]> 305 Abe Moss Jack 3 3.70 2024 Morsels
author: Abe Moss
name: Jack
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves:
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]]> Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend 200174139 White Lotus meets Kevin Wilson in this whip-smart social satire about a man who finds himself trapped on an island resort after the sun literally explodes, and suddenly must choose whether to save himself from the chaos, or help fellow guests make it off the island alive�

Vacation Checklist:
Pack swim trunks.
Apply sunscreen.
Survive the apocalypse?

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he’s never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up.

Then the sun explodes.

With the island resort suddenly plunged into darkness (he really should’ve sprung for the travel insurance), Dan’s holiday goes from bad to worse when elite guests stage a coup and commandeer supplies. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, revolution begins to brew on the island, and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But when one six-person plane is discovered that could get them back to the mainland, Dan realizes he has a choice to make.

Does he escape the island with Mara? Or does he stay and fight to become the most unlikely hero of the end of the world?

]]> 384 M.J. Wassmer 1464218021 Jack 5 3.69 2024 Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend
author: M.J. Wassmer
name: Jack
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:
And it stuck the landing! This was absolutely fantastic. Catastrophically funny with so much heart and brilliant characters you actually care about like they’re your mates. God, this was great.
]]> The Mist 813214
The mist is alive, seething with unearthly sounds and movements. What unleashed this terror? Was it the Arrowhead Project—the top secret government operation that everyone has noticed but no one quite understands?

And what happens when the provisions have run out and you're forced to make your escape, edging blindly through the dim light?]]> 176 Stephen King Jack 4 3.95 1980 The Mist
author: Stephen King
name: Jack
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:
The unbelievably fucked movie ending is so much better, but still loved this
]]> Burn the Negative 62858184 In this incendiary mash-up of horror and suspense, a notorious slasher film is remade…and the curse that haunted it is reawakened.

Arriving in L.A. to visit the set of a new streaming horror series, journalist Laura Warren witnesses a man jumping from a bridge, landing right behind her car. Here we go, she thinks. It’s started. Because the series she’s reporting on is a remake of a �90s horror flick. A cursed �90s horror flick, which she starred in as a child—and has been running from her whole life.

In The Guesthouse, Laura played the little girl with the terrifying gift to tell people how the Needle Man would kill them. When eight of the cast and crew died in ways that eerily mirrored the movie’s on-screen deaths, the film became a cult classic—and ruined her life. Leaving it behind, Laura changed her name and her accent, dyed her hair, and moved across the Atlantic. But some scripts don’t want to stay buried.

Now, as the body count rises again, Laura finds herself on the run with her aspiring actress sister and a jaded psychic, hoping to end the curse once and for all—and to stay out of the Needle Man’s lethal reach.]]> 354 Josh Winning 0593544668 Jack 2 3.35 2023 Burn the Negative
author: Josh Winning
name: Jack
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves:
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]]> Leaving Las Vegas 824078 Leaving Las Vegas, the first novel by John O’Brien, is a disturbing and emotionally wrenching story of a woman who embraces life and a man who rejects it. Sera, a prostitute, and Ben, an alcoholic, stumble together and discover in each other a respite from their unforgiving lives. A testimony to the raw talent of its young author, Leaving Las Vegas is a compelling story of unconditional love between two disenfranchised and lost souls—an overlooked American classic.]]> 200 John O'Brien 0802134459 Jack 5 4.00 1990 Leaving Las Vegas
author: John O'Brien
name: Jack
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves:
review:
ŷ, I NEED you to add a feature where we can give something 62 billion stars. I know you see only 5 stars but please know that this gets 62 billion stars, from me. I loved this more than I can possibly say.
]]> Chain-Gang All-Stars 61190770
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.]]> 367 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 0593317335 Jack 1 4.13 2023 Chain-Gang All-Stars
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Jack
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:
I feel absolutely insane reading all these 5 star reviews, maybe my kindle glitched and I read the wrong thing?
]]> The Odyssey 1381 Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey.

If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation.

This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.

--

Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning new modern-verse translation.]]> 541 Homer 0143039954 Jack 0 to-read 3.79 -700 The Odyssey
author: Homer
name: Jack
average rating: 3.79
book published: -700
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream]]> 7745 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.]]> 204 Hunter S. Thompson 0679785892 Jack 0 to-read 4.08 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Jack
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Rum Diary 18864 The Rum Diary is a tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. The narrator, freelance journalist Paul Kemp, irresistibly drawn to a sexy, mysterious woman, is soon thrust into a world where corruption and get-rich-quick schemes rule and anything (including murder) is permissible.]]> 224 Hunter S. Thompson 0684856476 Jack 0 to-read 3.86 1998 The Rum Diary
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Jack
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> It Rides a Pale Horse 60382762
� If you like Grady Hendrix’s novels, Clive Barker, or just a dash of Lovecraftian horror, you’re going to love this one.� � San Francisco Book Review

Peter Larkin � Lark to his friends—is a local hero in the small town of Wofford Falls. The one who went to the big city, found fame in the art world, then returned home to settle down. He's the kind of guy who becomes fast friends with almost anyone. His sister, Betsy, is talented as well. And eccentric. Unlike Lark, she keeps to herself.

When Lark meets with a fabulously rich client, it seems like a regular transaction. Even being met at the gate of the sprawling, secluded estate by an intimidating security guard seems normal. Until the guard plays him a live Betsy being abducted in real time.

Lark is informed that she's safe for now, but her well-being is entirely in his hands. He's given a book. Do what the book says, and betsy will go free.

"Marino draws readers in quickly, creating sympathy for the characters, unveiling the necessary details to immerse them in a world of art, siblings, deadly intrigue, and a centuries-long nefarious quest. Dread is present from the start, but it quickly escalates into a disorienting cosmic terror that touches everyone."—� Booklist

"Marino offers horrors both existential and visceral." � M. R. Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts, on The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess

"Dark and fascinating . . . Not quite like anything I've ever read before. A strange, compelling, late-night page-turner. It kept me reading way past my bedtime." —T. Kingfisher, author of The Hollow Places �,on The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess

Also by Andy
The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess
]]> 368 Andy Marino 0316629529 Jack 0 to-read 3.36 2022 It Rides a Pale Horse
author: Andy Marino
name: Jack
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
“[An] enormously entertaining and lovable book.� —Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she ’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.

“A wholly original novel. . . . Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.� —The Associated Press]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 Jack 4 3.87 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Jack
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
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review:
Still bothered by the romance plot, even though it did end up having a point, but this was very very good.
]]> Milk Fed 54304105 The Pisces and So Sad Today.

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting—until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.

Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam—by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family—and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche—both sacred and profane.]]> 304 Melissa Broder 1982142499 Jack 4 3.56 2021 Milk Fed
author: Melissa Broder
name: Jack
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Based on a True Story: A Memoir]]> 28686959 256 Norm Macdonald 0812993624 Jack 0 to-read 4.03 2016 Based on a True Story: A Memoir
author: Norm Macdonald
name: Jack
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> Pizza Girl 44088751 In the tradition of audacious and wryly funny novels like The Idiot and Convenience Store Woman comes the wildly original coming-of-age story of a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers.

Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She's grieving the death of her father (who she has more in common with than she'd like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.

Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other towards middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.

Bold, tender, propulsive, and unexpected in countless ways, Jean Kyoung Frazier's Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world.]]> 208 Jean Kyoung Frazier 038554572X Jack 5 3.35 2020 Pizza Girl
author: Jean Kyoung Frazier
name: Jack
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves:
review:
Profound. Absolutely beautiful. Barely a 2 hour read, but got me a bloody beauty.
]]> Waiting for Ted 62038229 “After all these years, I was surprised to find that we were still in the process of trying to assemble two fully self-sustaining parts into one.�

Waiting for Ted charts the destruction of Rosalind and Ted’s relationship at the hands of an expensive chaise longue. Rosie comes from a wealthy, upperclass background. She dreams of being a traditional housewife to her big strong working man, cooking, tending the house and instagramming her perfect life. But she also needs to fill her house with things that she can Instagram, so when Ted bans her from spending any more of her father’s money on her ‘work� as an interior design influencer until she’s actually earning, she begins to scheme � only to watch her schemes unravel, and the rest of her life with them.

Told in a series of reflections over the course of an evening spent waiting for Ted, Rosie charts her relationship’s downfall, how she drifted from her only friend (who she never really liked anyway), how she contributed to the breakdown in her parents� marriage, how she never really let Ted into her perfect world, how she drove them to their spectacular breakdown, and as she does it becomes increasingly clear to the reader that Ted may not be coming home at all.]]> 188 Marieke Bigg 1915368006 Jack 0 to-read 3.21 Waiting for Ted
author: Marieke Bigg
name: Jack
average rating: 3.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> His & Hers 45885495 There are two sides to every story: yours and mine, ours and theirs, His & Hers. Which means someone is always lying.

When a woman is murdered in Blackdown, a quintessentially British village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Detective Jack Harper is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation. Someone isn’t telling the truth, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.

His & Hers is a twisty, smart, psychological thriller. A gripping tale of suspense, told by expertly-drawn narrators that will keep readers guessing until the very end.]]> 304 Alice Feeney 1250266076 Jack 3 4.03 2020 His & Hers
author: Alice Feeney
name: Jack
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:
Fuck, I was soooooooooooo close to predicting it
]]> Intercepts 45868683 Joe works at a facility that performs human experimentation.
His work just followed him home.

The government wanted to unlock hidden abilities in the human mind.

They put subjects in extreme sensory deprivation.

All the test subjects went violently insane.

But the research continued.

Today it has been perfected.

Almost perfected.


From the author of In My Father's Basement comes another chilling novel that's a must-read for fans of horror. "Gruesome, gripping, and terrifyingly real!"]]> 327 T.J. Payne Jack 4 4.11 2019 Intercepts
author: T.J. Payne
name: Jack
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves:
review:
Love how absolutely berko this went in the last 40% or so, this was great.
]]> Everyone Here Is Lying 63139946 Welcome to Stanhope - a safe neighbourhood. A place for families.

William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter Avery unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper.

Hours later, Avery's family declare her missing.

Suddenly Stanhope doesn't feel so safe. And William isn't the only one on his street who's hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbours become increasingly unhinged.

Who took Avery Wooler?

Nothing will prepare you for the truth. ]]> 336 Shari Lapena 0593489934 Jack 3 3.75 2023 Everyone Here Is Lying
author: Shari Lapena
name: Jack
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
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review:
I think i would’ve dug this more if the reveal happened much earlier, and the story was more about what happens after it. It way too long and a couple of threads don’t get a satisfying (or any) conclusion, but still pretty neat.
]]> <![CDATA[Praise (Salacious Players Club, #1)]]> 60416566 His flawless pet.
His good girl.

Broken down and wounded by my emotionally neglectful ex, I wanted someone to tell me I was good enough.

Then, I stumbled into a new job with a boss who brings me to my knees—literally. He has me do things a real secretary would never do.

Emerson Grant tells me I’m more than just good enough.
I’m worthy of his praise.

There are a million reasons why I should stay away. The owner of the Salacious Players� Club is not just my new boss, he’s twice my age.

And my ex-boyfriend’s father.

With him, I am treasured. I am adored. I am his.

I’m a good girl, but I’m falling for the wrong man.

Emerson Grant knows what he wants�
And he wants me.

So how far will I go to hear his approval?]]> 341 Sara Cate Jack 0 to-read 4.04 2022 Praise (Salacious Players Club, #1)
author: Sara Cate
name: Jack
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> Early Morning Riser 53489729 A wise, bighearted, boundlessly joyful novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan’s old girlfriends everywhere–at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away.

While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world’s most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan’s apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it–never mind four. Five if you count Aggie’s eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices.

But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane’s life is permanently intertwined with Duncan’s, Aggie’s, and Jimmy’s, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane’s eyes? A novel that is alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser is her most astonishingly wonderful work to date.]]> 320 Katherine Heiny 052565934X Jack 0 to-read 3.51 2021 Early Morning Riser
author: Katherine Heiny
name: Jack
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> Gold Rush 204297685 We give celebrities a power they don’t deserve. Power they haven’t earned. What happens when they exploit it?

Imagine you’ve just spent the night with the most famous man on the planet. Except you don’t quite remember it. That is what happens to Rose, a twenty-something woman who seemingly has everything going for her.

Working for one of the most powerful publishers in the country, Rose spends her days doing PR for glossy magazines. There are tedious spreadsheets, fashion divas, and many A-list parties. It’s at one of those parties where she meets Milo Jax, the world-famous, globally adored, British pop sensation. An unlikely flirtation turns into an even more unlikely evening and then Rose wakes up, unable to piece it all together. What happens next changes everything.

Gold Rush is a pre-MeToo story about consent, celebrity culture, and trying to figure out where you fit in a world that consistently devalues and disrespects women’s bodies.]]> 385 Olivia Petter 0008606439 Jack 0 to-read 3.38 2024 Gold Rush
author: Olivia Petter
name: Jack
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> Heartburn 225343
Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel Samstat discovers that her husband, Mark, is in love with another woman. The fact that the other woman has "a neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb and you should see her legs" is no consolation. Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel writes cookbooks for a living. And in between trying to win Mark back and loudly wishing him dead, Ephron's irrepressible heroine offers some of her favorite recipes. "Heartburn" is a sinfully delicious novel, as soul-satisfying as mashed potatoes and as airy as a perfect soufflé.]]> 179 Nora Ephron Jack 0 to-read 3.59 1983 Heartburn
author: Nora Ephron
name: Jack
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century]]> 15793575
In the late 1500s a Nuremberg man named Frantz Schmidt began to do something utterly remarkable for his era: he started keeping a journal. But what makes Schmidt even more compelling to us is his day job. For forty-five years, Schmidt was an efficient and prolific public executioner, employed by the state to extract confessions and put convicted criminals to death. In his years of service, he executed 361 people and tortured, flogged, or disfigured hundreds more. Is it possible that a man who practiced such cruelty could also be insightful, compassionate, humane—even progressive?

In his groundbreaking book, the historian Joel F. Harrington looks for the answer in Schmidt’s journal, whose immense significance has been ignored until now. Harrington uncovers details of Schmidt’s medical practice, his marriage to a woman ten years older than him, his efforts at penal reform, his almost touching obsession with social status, and most of all his conflicted relationship with his own craft and the growing sense that it could not be squared with his faith.

A biography of an ordinary man struggling for his soul, The Faithful Executioner is also an unparalleled portrait of Europe on the cusp of modernity, yet riven by conflict and encumbered by paranoia, superstition, and abuses of power. In his intimate portrait of a Nuremberg executioner, Harrington also sheds light on our own fraught historical moment.]]> 320 Joel F. Harrington 0809049929 Jack 0 currently-reading 3.99 2013 The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century
author: Joel F. Harrington
name: Jack
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Dead Poets Society 25426213

But the Dead Poets pledges soon realize that their newfound freedom can have tragic consequences. Can the club and the individuality it inspires survive the pressure from authorities determined to destroy their dreams?]]> 133 N.H. Kleinbaum Jack 3 4.10 1988 Dead Poets Society
author: N.H. Kleinbaum
name: Jack
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell]]> 207298107
From his earliest days as a kid in Canada, Deryck Whibley was a punk who loved music and couldn’t wait to achieve something bigger and better than the humble path that lay before him. Raised by a single mom and constantly moving from place to place, Deryck was used to being the new kid, starting fights (or finishing them), and finding friends who shared his sensibility for chaotic fun and loud music. Sum 41 was born of a group of friends who loved to jam, shared a DIY ethos, and were determined to be rock stars one day.

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

With his insightful, earnest, and genuine voice, Deryck gets real about fame, fortune, and the music industry. From winning at the MTV Video Music Awards, being nominated for a Grammy, his high-profile relationships and friendships, contending with invasive paparazzi, and suffering from health issues that brought him to the brink, Deryck offers a forthright and unforgettable memoir.]]> 272 Deryck Whibley 166804501X Jack 0 to-read 4.39 Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell
author: Deryck Whibley
name: Jack
average rating: 4.39
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Echoes 202908611 A story about the weight of the past and the promise of the future set between rural Australia and London - from the bestselling author of The Bass Rock

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him.

In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, the details of their lives she never knew and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.

Both a celebration and autopsy of a relationship, The Echoes is a novel about stories and who has the right to tell them, asking what of our past can we shrug off and what is fixed forever.]]> 304 Evie Wyld 1529926998 Jack 2 3.81 2024 The Echoes
author: Evie Wyld
name: Jack
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
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]]> The Younger Wife 58545782 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister and The Mother-in-Law comes a new novel of family drama and long-buried secrets.

The moment she laid eyes on Heather Wisher, Tully knew this woman was going to destroy their lives.

Tully and Rachel are murderous when they discover their father has a new girlfriend. The fact that Heather is half his age isn't even the most shocking part. Stephen is still married to their mother, who is in a care facility with end-stage Alzheimer's disease.

Heather knows she has an uphill battle to win Tully and Rachel over - particularly while carrying the shameful secrets of her past. But, as it turns out, her soon-to-be stepdaughters have secrets of their own.

The announcement of Stephen and Heather's engagement threatens to set off a family implosion, with old wounds and dark secrets finally being forced to the surface.

A garage full of stolen goods. An old hot-water bottle, stuffed with cash. A blood-soaked wedding. And that's only the beginning...]]> 336 Sally Hepworth 1760784982 Jack 0 to-read 3.84 2021 The Younger Wife
author: Sally Hepworth
name: Jack
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> Spiral (Ring, #2) 123479
You don't know what the RING is yet. The terms of the curse of the videotape undergo a jaw-dropping reconfiguration in this novel, the horror master's stunning reinvention of his own bestselling tale. Spiral is written as a stand-alone work; for Ring fans, its' a sequel that redefines the word.]]> 281 Kōji Suzuki 1932234160 Jack 4 3.77 1995 Spiral (Ring, #2)
author: Kōji Suzuki
name: Jack
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves:
review:

]]> The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Jack 0 to-read 3.99 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Jack
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> Listen for the Lie 127279000 What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all and, if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. But after Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer.

It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy ’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast Listen for the Lie and its too-good looking host, Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one who did it.

The truth is out there, if we just listen.]]> 352 Amy Tintera 1250880319 Jack 4 4.07 2024 Listen for the Lie
author: Amy Tintera
name: Jack
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (Ernest Cunningham, #3)]]> 206005312
My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong.

So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection.

THE MAGICIAN

THE ASSISTANT

THE EXECUTIVE

THE HYPNOTIST

THE IDENTICAL TWIN

THE COUNSELLOR

THE TECH

My clues are even more abstract: A suspect covered in blood, without a memory of how it got there. A murder committed without setting foot inside the room where it happens. And an advent calendar. Because, you know, it’s Christmas.

If I can see through the illusions, I know I can solve it.

After all, a good murder is just like a magic trick, isn’t it?]]> 175 Benjamin Stevenson 0063412861 Jack 3 3.70 2024 Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (Ernest Cunningham, #3)
author: Benjamin Stevenson
name: Jack
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> Darling Girls 127280429 SISTERS, SECRETS, LOVE, AND MURDER... Sally Hepworth’s new novel has it all.

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.

But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

A thrilling page-turner of sisterhood, secrets, love, and murder by New York Times bestselling author Sally Hepworth.]]> 359 Sally Hepworth 125028452X Jack 4 3.98 2024 Darling Girls
author: Sally Hepworth
name: Jack
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
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]]> A Language of Limbs 210373324
Over the following three decades, these two lives almost intersect in pivotal moments, the distance between them at times drawing so thin they nearly collide. Against the backdrop of an era including Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, we see these two lives ebb and flow, with joy and grief and loss and desire, until at last they come together in the most beautiful and surprising of fashions.

A Language of Limbs is about love and how it's policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak - the jokes you tell as you're dying and the ways laughing at a funeral softens the edges of our grief. An unashamed celebration of queer life in all its vibrancy and colour, this story finds the humanity in all of us, and demands we claim our futures for ourselves.]]> 277 Dylin Hardcastle 1761562428 Jack 5 4.39 2024 A Language of Limbs
author: Dylin Hardcastle
name: Jack
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
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“…and I learn how loneliness is felt most acutely in the presence of another person when the intimacy is gone.�
]]> Paradise Rot 39216527 A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery

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

This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval, presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.]]> 160 Jenny Hval Jack 0 to-read 3.49 2009 Paradise Rot
author: Jenny Hval
name: Jack
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Ledge 213912160
It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.

In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a cliff-hanger nobody will see coming. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.]]> 314 Christian White 1923022822 Jack 4 4.19 2024 The Ledge
author: Christian White
name: Jack
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> Inside Out 45167624
For decades, Demi Moore has been synonymous with celebrity. From iconic film roles to high-profile relationships, Moore has never been far from the spotlight � or the headlines.

Even as Demi was becoming the highest paid actress in Hollywood, however, she was always outrunning her past, just one step ahead of the doubts and insecurities that defined her childhood. Throughout her rise to fame and during some of the most pivotal moments of her life, Demi battled addiction, body image issues, and childhood trauma that would follow her for years � all while juggling a skyrocketing career and at times negative public perception. As her success grew, Demi found herself questioning if she belonged in Hollywood, if she was a good mother, a good actress � and, always, if she was simply good enough.

As much as her story is about adversity, it is also about tremendous resilience. In this deeply candid and reflective memoir, Demi pulls back the curtain and opens up about her career and personal life � laying bare her tumultuous relationship with her mother, her marriages, her struggles balancing stardom with raising a family, and her journey toward open heartedness. Inside Out is a story of survival, success, and surrender � a wrenchingly honest portrayal of one woman’s at once ordinary and iconic life.]]> 262 Demi Moore 0062049534 Jack 0 to-read 3.90 2019 Inside Out
author: Demi Moore
name: Jack
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Wrong Woman 60306446
Reid left the small town of Manson a decade ago, promising his former Chief of Police boss he'd never return. He made a new life in the city, became a PI and turned his back on his old life for good.

Now an insurance firm has offered him good money to look into a suspicious car crash, and he finds himself back in the place he grew up - home to his complicated family history, a scarring relationship breakdown and a very public career-ending incident.

As Reid's investigation unfolds, nothing is as it seems: rumours are swirling about the well-liked young woman who was driving the car which killed her professor husband, while a second local student has just disappeared. As Reid veers off course from the job he has been paid to do, will he find himself in the dangerous position of taking on the town again?]]> 334 J.P. Pomare 0733649491 Jack 0 to-read 3.94 2022 The Wrong Woman
author: J.P. Pomare
name: Jack
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Wedding Forecast 211780885
She needs a distraction, and Patrick, the wedding photographer, just might be the solution. Everyone has decided he is perfect for her. He is perfect for her. But the arrival of Mac, a not-quite-famous actor who has flown in from New York, complicates everything.

Much-loved YA author Nina Kenwood hits the spot with her first novel for adults. Laugh-out-loud funny with chemistry that jumps off the page, The Wedding Forecast will be the feel-good romcom of the summer.]]> 336 Nina Kenwood 1922790842 Jack 4 Otherwise this was great. ]]> 4.13 2024 The Wedding Forecast
author: Nina Kenwood
name: Jack
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
Loses a point for doing the classic “if a man did what the man does in this, it would be creepy male manipulation, but it’s okay because he’s soooooooo sxc, so aww it’s romantic� romance thing that just absolutely fucken sucks.
Otherwise this was great.
]]> Seveneves 22816087
A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .

Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.]]> 872 Neal Stephenson Jack 0 to-read 4.01 2015 Seveneves
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Jack
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Heart That Works 171985149
New York Times  Bestseller *� The New Yorker � Best Books of 2022 *� Entertainment Weekly� Best Books of 2022 *� USA Today � Best Books of 2022 * � Time �100 Must-Read Books of 2022 *� Mother Jones  Books We Needed in 2022 * � People � Fall Must Read *�2022� BuzzFeed � Fall Reading Pick * New York Post Best Books of 2022 * New York Times Editors� Choice]]> 192 Rob Delaney 1954118562 Jack 0 to-read 4.62 2022 A Heart That Works
author: Rob Delaney
name: Jack
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Haar 60840449
Muriel McAuley has lived in the Scottish fishing village of Witchaven all her life. She was born there, and she intends to die there.

But when an overseas property developer threatens to evict the residents from their homes and raze Witchaven to the ground in the name of progress, all seems lost� until the day a mysterious fog bank creeps inland.

The Haar.

To some it brings redemption� to others, it brings only madness and death. What macabre secrets lie within� The Haar.

Romantic and deranged, The Haar is a gore-soaked folk horror fairy tale from David Sodergren, author of The Forgotten Island and Maggie’s Grave.]]> 206 David Sodergren Jack 3 4.08 2022 The Haar
author: David Sodergren
name: Jack
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Everyone I Know is Dying 204041701
When she’s having sex with her boss, Iris likes to have the lights on so he can see how much younger she is than his wife. She likes watching her colleagues eat unhealthy lunches at their desk while her stomach aches with emptiness. She likes coasting at work knowing she’s going to land a big promotion anyway.

So why when it arrives does she find herself sprawled on her hallway floor, crying uncontrollably? Why, instead of a sense of triumph, does a crippling depression threaten to overwhelm her? Why does the support and stability of her family and friends feel so suffocating? And why, torn between her flatmate George � good, kind, reliable George � and cold, indifferent Patrick, does she only seem capable of making choices that cause her pain?]]> 352 Emily Slapper 0008629129 Jack 5 Incredible start to the year 3.44 2024 Everyone I Know is Dying
author: Emily Slapper
name: Jack
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
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Incredible start to the year
]]> Lead Us Not 197702355 ‘When we spoke, I never knew what Olive would reveal to me. There were nights where she would lie next to me and pour herself out into the darkness, and others where it seemed she was hardly there at all.�

Millie is in her final year at a Catholic girls� school, subdued by the conformity of her life and her parents� quiet pain. But when her schoolmate Olive moves in next door, it marks the beginning of an intoxicating friendship that changes everything. In all the ways Millie feels unsure and half-formed, Olive, an aspiring actor from a devoutly Catholic family, seems at ease with her place in the world.

On the precipice of freedom, the two young women seize nights out and a school retreat as opportunities to further their own increasingly uncertain ends. Olive urges Millie on in her sexual encounters, but Millie is only becoming more consumed by Olive. When they’re not staying up all night talking, they’re watching each other from their bedroom windows � their selves are becoming blurred, their lives intimately mirrored.

That makes it all the more excruciating when, seemingly out of nowhere, Olive cuts off all contact. For all her efforts, Millie cannot understand what’s changed between them. Has she missed something? Or was their friendship, for Olive, just another performance?

An emotionally charged novel of expectation, compulsion and desire, Lead Us Not charts the unseen currents of tension and control that shape a friendship.

‘Lay’s prose is as clean and assured as a writer with many more books to her name. This could have been the beginning of either a great love story or a bitter rivalry, which is exactly what kept me turning the page.� Allee Richards

'Vividly captures the irresistible obsessiveness of first (queer) love and the claustrophobic impact of internalised homophobia . . . An extremely strong debut that reveals the inner life of an adolescent in love with rare mastery and grace.' Laura Pettenuzzo, Meanjin

'The intoxicating push and pull between them will be recognised by anyone who has ever been a teenage girl (or devoured a Ferrante novel) � with an added layer of sapphic yearning that’s exquisitely drawn.' Steph Harmon, The Guardian

'Erotically charged . . . the push and pull between the girls rings true, and the space between desire and antagonism drives the plot forcefully onwards.' Madeleine Gray, The Saturday Paper

'An insular, intoxicating narrative that will keep you absorbed until the very last page.' Ruby Grinter, Readings

'A powerful rendering of psychological unease, and fast, intimate friendships that suddenly vanish . . . One of those books that leaves you stewing over your own experiences.' Erin Stewart, ArtsHub

'Lay weaves a deep sense of unease and uncertainty into this atmospheric novel, shading her closely observed portrait of adolescent intimacy with keen instincts for the way power relations and performative behaviour can influence social development.' Sydney Morning Herald]]> 288 Abbey Lay 1761340697 Jack 0 to-read 3.77 2024 Lead Us Not
author: Abbey Lay
name: Jack
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> I Hope This Finds You Well 200987323 In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues� private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.]]> 338 Natalie Sue 0063320363 Jack 5 3.74 2024 I Hope This Finds You Well
author: Natalie Sue
name: Jack
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
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Cried at my desk at work twice
]]> You Will Never Be Me 202468441 When cracks start forming in an influencer’s curated life, she finds out that jealousy is just as viral as a video in this riveting suspense novel by bestselling author Jesse Q. Sutanto.

Influencer Meredith Leedidn't teachAspenPalmer how to blossom on social media just to be ditched as soon asAspenbecame big. So can anyone really blame Mer for doing a little stalking? Nothing serious, more like Stalking Lite.

Then Mer gets lucky; she finds one ofAspen's kids' iPads and swipes it. Now she has access to the family calendar and Aspen's social media accounts. Would anyone else be able to resist tweaking things a little here and there, showing up inAspen's place for meetings with potential sponsors? Mer's only taking back what she deserves—what should have been hers.

Meanwhile,Aspendoesn't understand why her perfectly filtered life is falling apart. Sponsors are dropping her, fellow influencers are ghosting her, and even her own husband seems to find her repulsive. If she doesn't find out who's behind everything, she might just lose it all. But what everyone seems to forget is thatAspendidn't become one of TikTok'sbiggest momfluencersby being naive.

WhenMeredith suddenlygoes missing,Aspen's world is upended and mysterious threats begin to arrive—but she won’t let anything get in the way of her perfect life again.]]> 336 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0593546946 Jack 2 3.61 2024 You Will Never Be Me
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Jack
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
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Wrapped up way too abruptly and conveniently, without being even a bit believable. It just assumes you’ll happily accept, “men will cheat on you and then kill you because men�, as a valid way to get away with murder and wrap up a story in 5 pages. And it talked far too much about how hard “influencers� have it. Come on, mate.
]]> So Late in the Day 73936042
From one of the finest writers working today, Keegan's new story asks if a lack of generosity might ruin what could be between men and women.]]> 47 Claire Keegan 0571382010 Jack 3 3.97 2023 So Late in the Day
author: Claire Keegan
name: Jack
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2024/12/25
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I ’t imagine even the most depraved, psychopathic individual pulling a chair out from under their 60 year old mum
]]> Standard Deviation 26198476
Graham Cavanaugh’s second wife, Audra, is everything his first wife was not. She considers herself privileged to live in the age of the hair towel, talks non-stop through her epidural, labour and delivery, invites the doorman to move in and the eccentric members of their son’s Origami Club to Thanksgiving. She is charming and spontaneous and fun but life with her can be exhausting.

In the midst of the day-to-day difficulties and delights of marriage and raising a child with Asperger’s, his first wife, Elspeth, reenters Graham’s life. Former spouses are hard to categorize � are they friends, enemies, old flames, or just people who know you really, really well? Graham starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did he make the right choice? Is there a right choice?]]> 322 Katherine Heiny 0008105529 Jack 4 3.56 2017 Standard Deviation
author: Katherine Heiny
name: Jack
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2024/12/25
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]]> Yr Dead 195450005
Told in lyric fragments that span both lifetimes and geography, Yr Dead is a queer, Jewish, diasporic coming of age story that questions how our historical memory shapes our political and emotional present. Visceral, propulsive, and at turns fluorescently beautiful and fluorescently tragic, Yr Dead is the electric debut novel from award-winning writer Sam Sax, one of our most dynamic and imaginative writers.]]> 281 Sam Sax 1952119995 Jack 0 to-read 3.90 2024 Yr Dead
author: Sam Sax
name: Jack
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blue Ruin 196845471 From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty, power, and capital’s influence on art and those who devote their lives to creating it.

Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent Covid case.

When Jay arrives at a house set in an enormous acreage of woodland, he finds the last person he ever expected to see Alice, a former lover from his art school days. Their relationship was tumultuous and destructive, ultimately ending when she ghosted him and left for America with his best friend and fellow artist, Rob. In the twenty years since, their fortunes could not be more as Jay teeters on the edge of collapse, Alice and Rob have found prosperity in a life surrounded by beauty. Ashamed, Jay hopes she won’t recognize him behind his dirty surgical mask; when she does, she invites him to recover on the property—where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as well—setting a reckoning decades in the making into motion.

Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind.]]> 272 Hari Kunzru 0593801377 Jack 0 to-read 3.81 2024 Blue Ruin
author: Hari Kunzru
name: Jack
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Just for the Summer (Part of Your World, #3)]]> 195820807
Emma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.

It's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected--including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?]]> 432 Abby Jimenez 1538704439 Jack 3 4.35 2024 Just for the Summer (Part of Your World, #3)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Jack
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars (give us half stars goodreads you cowards). Disappointed with the ending but not surprised, if I wrote books and ended them the way I wanted them to end I would never get a single ŷ star so what do I know
]]> Infinite Jest 6759
Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.]]> 1088 David Foster Wallace Jack 0 to-read 4.27 1996 Infinite Jest
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Jack
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> Evenings and Weekends 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever�

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]> 352 Oisín McKenna 0063319977 Jack 5 Brb Gonna call my Mum ]]> 3.77 2024 Evenings and Weekends
author: Oisín McKenna
name: Jack
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves:
review:
This was beautiful. Just really, really beautiful. Got the ol� tear ducts firing a few times. Very very Rooney-esque.
Brb Gonna call my Mum
]]> <![CDATA[Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)]]> 61918816 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin�-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass� scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,� and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she ’t refuse.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 1538704390 Jack 0 to-read 4.29 2023 Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Jack
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Little Women (Little Women, #1)]]> 1934 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780451529305.

Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.

It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with "woman’s work,� including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the "girl’s book� her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.

]]> 449 Louisa May Alcott Jack 0 to-read 4.16 1868 Little Women (Little Women, #1)
author: Louisa May Alcott
name: Jack
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1868
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Queen 199797559 The national bestselling author of #HorrorBookTok sensation The Troop returns with a heart-pounding novel of terror about a young woman searching for her missing friend and uncovering a shocking truth.

On a sunny morning in June, Margaret Carpenter wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater. The problem is, Charity’s been missing for over a month. Most people in town—even the police—think she’s dead.

Margaret and Charity have been lifelong friends. They share everything, know the most intimate details about one another…but Charity carries a secret that even she is unaware of. A secret engraved into her DNA helix. For Charity is also known Subject Six, the crown jewel of Project Athena—a clandestine and unorthodox gene manipulation experiment, the brainchild of tech titan Rudyard Crate. And when Charity’s gene sequencing actualizes during a traumatic event at a high school party, it sets in motion a chain of events that will end in tragedy, bloodshed, and death.

And now Charity wants Margaret to know her story—the real story. In a narrative that takes place over one feverish day, Margaret follows a series of increasingly dreadful breadcrumbs as she forges deeper into the mystery of her best friend—a person she never truly knew at all…]]> 384 Nick Cutter 1668020971 Jack 5 3.56 2024 The Queen
author: Nick Cutter
name: Jack
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
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]]> <![CDATA[A Fabulous Disaster: From the Garage to Madison Square Garden, the Hard Way]]> 217182437 From prolific metal guitarist and songwriter for Exodus (and formerly Slayer) Gary Holt comes an entertaining and deeply personal memoir of Holt's "destruction-laden" life, along with a firsthand account of the genesis of the Thrash Metal scene, from its origins in the Bay Area to its world domination

Since exploding out of the Bay Area heavy metal scene in the 1980s, thrash metal has made its way to every corner of the globe, conquering worldwide charts with every passing year. As the guitarist and primary songwriter of Exodus, and as an originator of the subgenre and one of its fiercest proponents, Gary Holt watched as his peers—Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax—soared to superstardom. As his fellow artists amassed millions of fans and record sales, Exodus' albums received critical recognition and inspired generations of listeners but struggled to reach the same heights of success, as the band was plagued by years of bad management, bad luck, and bad decision-making.

InA FABULOUS DISASTER,Holt shares a deeply personal account of what it was like to "live fast, play fast, and crash hard" as thrash metal dominated the globe. Holt's "destruction-laden farce" follows our narrator through the highest of highs and lowest of lows as he and his bandmates juggle major label contracts, MTV-sponsored tours and festivals, growing addictions to alcohol and meth, and the loss of key founding members. In the throes of addiction, Holt's own fall from grace is swift; one year, he's playing on the MTV Headbanger's Ball Tour with Anthrax and Helloween, and the next, he's struggling to find minimum wage jobs as he battles drugs, divorce, and the dissolution of his creative prospects. Ultimately, after the tragic death of one of his closest friends and former bandmates—Holt decides that enough is enough and realizes the only one who can save him is himself. Newly sober and determined to resurrect his career, he commits himself to Exodus, pushing the band to new heights. He then joins Slayer, one of metal’s biggest bands, and plays massive venues around the world, including Madison Square Garden. After Slayer’s unexpected retirement, Holt devotes his attention full-time to Exodus once again, recording and playing with more passion than ever before.

An "unadulterated odyssey through decades of insanity," punctuated by Holt's unique insight and knack for storytelling,A FABULOUS DISASTERis a thrill ride from start to finish. His story proves that redemption—even from the pits of rock 'n' roll excess—is always possible.]]> 304 Gary Holt 0306834014 Jack 0 to-read 4.50 A Fabulous Disaster: From the Garage to Madison Square Garden, the Hard Way
author: Gary Holt
name: Jack
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir]]> 201759089 A gritty, revealing heavy metal memoir by Lamb of God’s guitarist and lyricist, which explores both his life in music and his tumultuous path through addiction and into recovery


For a band as extreme as Lamb of God, mainstream success and touring the world to massive audiences was an almost surreal achievement. But for guitarist and lyricist Mark Morton, the triumph was dulled by the pain of addiction and loss.

In A Heavy Metal Memoir , Morton traces the highs and the lows of his career and personal life, revealing how the pressures of success and personal battles eventually came into conflict with his dedication to the creative process. Morton writes about the greatest personal tragedy of his the death of his newborndaughter, which plunged Morton further into hopelessness. Surrounded by bandmates living their wildest dreams, Morton wanted nothing more than to disappear, ingesting potentially lethal cocktails of drugs and alcohol on a daily basis.

And yet intertwined with self-destruction and harrowing heartbreak, there were moments of joy, self-acceptance, and incredible connection. Morton developed close relationships with his bandmates and crew members, sharing experiences that have made for some strange and hilarious tales. He also gained a greater sense of purpose through interactions with his fans, who remind him that his work reaches people on a deeply personal level.

DESOLATION is, at its core, about Morton's journey as a musician navigating self-doubt, anxiety, and the progressive disease of addiction, and ultimately finding relative serenity and gratitude.
]]> 310 Mark Morton 0306831007 Jack 0 to-read 4.39 Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir
author: Mark Morton
name: Jack
average rating: 4.39
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sleep Experiment (World's Scariest Legends, #2)]]> 49933218
In 2018, Dr. Roy Wallis, an esteemed psychology professor at UC Berkeley, is attempting to recreate the same experiment during the summer break in a soon-to-be demolished building on campus. He and two student assistants share an eight-hour rotational schedule to observe their young Australian test subjects around the clock.

What begins innocently enough, however, morphs into a nightmare beyond description that no one could have imagined--with, perhaps, the exception of Dr. Roy Wallis himself.]]> 254 Jeremy Bates 1988091381 Jack 4 3.42 2019 The Sleep Experiment (World's Scariest Legends, #2)
author: Jeremy Bates
name: Jack
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:
Didn’t expect this to go as all out Tubi Movie shlock as it did, but it was a bit of bloody fun
]]> Honeybee 53952835
At the other end of the same bridge, an old man, Vic, smokes his last cigarette.

The two see each other across the void. A fateful connection is made, and an unlikely friendship blooms. Slowly, we learn what led Sam and Vic to the bridge that night. Bonded by their suffering, each privately commits to the impossible task of saving the other.

Honeybee is a heart-breaking, life-affirming novel that throws us headlong into a world of petty thefts, extortion plots, botched bank robberies, daring dog rescues and one spectacular drag show.

At the heart of Honeybee is Sam: a solitary, resilient young person battling to navigate the world as their true self; ensnared by a loyalty to a troubled mother, scarred by the volatility of a domineering step-father, and confounded by the kindness of new alliances.

Honeybee is a tender, profoundly moving novel brimming with vivid characters and luminous words. It's about two lives forever changed by a chance encounter -- one offering hope, the other redemption. It's about when to persevere, and when to be merciful, as Sam learns when to let go, and when to hold on.]]> 421 Craig Silvey 1760877220 Jack 0 to-read 4.38 2020 Honeybee
author: Craig Silvey
name: Jack
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Stanford Prison Experiment: A psychological experiment about the exploration of human behavior under imprisonment]]> 23838798 22 Gabriel Dischereit 3656613923 Jack 0 to-read 3.91 2014 The Stanford Prison Experiment: A psychological experiment about the exploration of human behavior under imprisonment
author: Gabriel Dischereit
name: Jack
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lifeform 208209822
What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina during a global plague and then she was expected to carry on like everything was normal—but was this normal, and had she or anything ever been normal? Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases—Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing—through luminous, laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more. No one writes like Jenny Slate.]]> 240 Jenny Slate 0316263931 Jack 0 to-read 3.72 2024 Lifeform
author: Jenny Slate
name: Jack
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> Mickey 7 (Mickey7, #1) 62030429 Now experience where the hit movie from Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-ho, starring Robert Pattinson, started in Mickey7 (the inspiration for the film Mickey 17).

Dying isn’t any fun…but at least it’s a living.

Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous—even suicidal—the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.

On a fairly routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, Mickey7’s fate has been sealed. There’s a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties. The idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they will likely be thrown into the recycler for protein.

Mickey7 must keep his double a secret from the rest of the colony. Meanwhile, life on Niflheim is getting worse. The atmosphere is unsuitable for humans, food is in short supply, and terraforming is going poorly. The native species are growing curious about their new neighbors, and that curiosity has Commander Marshall very afraid. Ultimately, the survival of both lifeforms will come down to Mickey7.

That is, if he can just keep from dying for good.]]> 369 Edward Ashton 3641280540 Jack 1 3.71 2022 Mickey 7 (Mickey7, #1)
author: Edward Ashton
name: Jack
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
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]]> Long Island Compromise 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?�

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives� successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 Jack 5 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Jack
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> 17 Years Later 149116142 Is the truth sometimes best left buried?

A crime masterpiece by bestselling author J. P. Pomare

The violent slaughter of the wealthy Primrose family while they slept shocked the nation of New Zealand and scarred the small idyllic rural town of Cambridge forever.

All of the evidence pointed to their young live-in chef, Bill Ruatara, who was swiftly charged with murder and brought to justice. The brutal crime is now infamous, and Bill a figure of contempt who deserves to rot in jail for life.

Seventeen years later, prison psychologist TK Phillips is fighting for an appeal. He is convinced Bill did not receive a fair trial. When celebrity true-crime podcaster Sloane Abbott takes a sudden interest, it's not long before she uncovers new evidence that could set fire to the prosecution's case.

As TK and Sloane dig deeper into the past, they become tangled in a complex web of danger and deceit. With Bill's innocence far from assured and their own lives at stake, will they risk everything to unearth the truth, or leave it buried for good?]]> 404 J.P. Pomare 0733649653 Jack 0 to-read 4.32 2024 17 Years Later
author: J.P. Pomare
name: Jack
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> Talking at Night 74872307 Will and Rosie meet as teenagers.
They're opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother's wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer - destined to be one another's great love story.
Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.
But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can't help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.
What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can't let go?]]> 389 Claire Daverley 1405953861 Jack 5 4.13 2023 Talking at Night
author: Claire Daverley
name: Jack
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/10/30
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Beautiful, frustrating and hopeful. Loved it.
]]> Blue Sisters 195430687 Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.]]> 342 Coco Mellors 0593723767 Jack 5 3.93 2024 Blue Sisters
author: Coco Mellors
name: Jack
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves:
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Stunning. What an absolutely stunning thing, this masterpiece is.
]]> Making It So 101160634
From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations with his indelible command of stage and screen. Now, he presents his long-awaited memoir, Making It So, a revealing portrait of an artist whose astonishing life—from his humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England, to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim—proves a story as exuberant, definitive, and enduring as the author himself.]]> 469 Patrick Stewart 1982167734 Jack 0 to-read 4.28 2023 Making It So
author: Patrick Stewart
name: Jack
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head]]> 220050300 From the author of Dark Days and lead singer of long-running extreme metal band, Lamb of God, ariveting and revelatory memoir about self-development and maintaining proper prospective through difficult times

In his gripping, bestselling debut memoirDark Days, Lamb of God vocalist D. Randall (Randy) Blythe unflinchingly wrote about some of the most harrowing episodes of his past.

Now, in his highly anticipated follow-upJust Beyond the Light,Blythe shares how he works daily to maintain positivity in a world that feels like it is spinning out of control. In his own words,Just Beyond the Lightis a "tight, concise roadmap of how I have attempted to maintain what I believe to be a proper perspective in life, even during difficult times." Written with a scathing balance of hard-edged reality offset by a knowing humor and a razor-sharp wit, voiced in in his inimitable, conversational, everyman-philosopher style, Blythe clearly breaks down his approach to life, which is a personal and idiosyncratic mix of sobriety, art, and surfing. He writes movingly of his childhood in the South, of fallen friends, of what he’s learned touring the world as the vocalist of a successful heavy metal band, and of the very real ways he is doing what he can to leave the world a better place. Above all, he offers readers hope that balance, real balance, is possible, even (or especially) when things seem hopeless.

Compelling, compassionate, and refreshingly honest,Just Beyond the Lightultimately reminds readers that “as long as we keep our feet (and minds) planted firmly on the ground that is reality, the sky isn’t falling� it never has been, and it never will.�
]]> 320 D. Randall Blythe 0306828189 Jack 0 to-read 4.26 Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head
author: D. Randall Blythe
name: Jack
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> Entitlement 209330233 A novel of money and morality from the New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind.

Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?

Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination.]]> 288 Rumaan Alam 0593718461 Jack 1 3.00 2024 Entitlement
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Jack
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
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I ’t wait until I enjoy something I’ve just read again
]]> <![CDATA[The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession]]> 62873378 One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.]]> 224 Michael Finkel 0525657320 Jack 0 to-read 3.92 2023 The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
author: Michael Finkel
name: Jack
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Jack 2 3.87 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Jack
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
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Well I just didn’t like this very much at all but the last few pages had me howling crying. And that’s WITH a good relationship with my siblings, imagine if I hated them
]]> Girl, Interrupted 68783
Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching documnet that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.]]> 169 Susanna Kaysen 0679746048 Jack 5 3.95 1993 Girl, Interrupted
author: Susanna Kaysen
name: Jack
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/24
date added: 2024/09/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Before and After (Before and After, #1)]]> 50262048 THE BEST-SELLING SCI-FI THRILLER THAT BLENDS HEALTHY LIVING AND LOTS OF DYING

Ben Stone is terrified. He's terrified because he weighs 601 pounds and needs his right leg amputated. He's terrified because a crane will shortly lift him from his fourth-floor flat and lower him 44 feet to an ambulance waiting below. He's terrified because he hasn't been outside in nine years and he doesn't know who will look after his beautiful dog.

Before and After is a must-read for anyone who loves intelligent post-apocalyptic science fiction with a twist.]]> 234 Andrew Shanahan Jack 1 3.98 2020 Before and After (Before and After, #1)
author: Andrew Shanahan
name: Jack
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/09/21
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]]> Heartsick 56473085 'Heartbreak does not seem to be a brand of grief we respect. And so we are left in the middle of the ocean, floating in a dinghy with no anchor, while the world waits for us to be okay again.'

Claire has returned from London to the dust and familiarity of her childhood home, only to realise something is wrong with her partner Maggie.

Patrick is a lonely uni student, until he meets Caitlin - but does she feel as connected as he does?

Ana is happily married with three children. Then, one night, she falls in love with someone else.

Based on three true stories, Heartsick is a compelling narrative nonfiction account of the many lows and occasional surprising highs of heartbreak. Bruising, beautiful, achingly specific but wholeheartedly universal, it reminds us that emotional pain can make us as it breaks us, and that storytelling has the ultimate healing power.]]> 336 Jessie Stephens 1760981540 Jack 5
Merged review:

Why would I ever read another book again? It’ll never be better than this.]]> 3.93 2021 Heartsick
author: Jessie Stephens
name: Jack
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/30
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:
Why would I ever read another book again? It’ll never be better than this.

Merged review:

Why would I ever read another book again? It’ll never be better than this.
]]> Four Stars: A Life, Reviewed 205193114
‘There’s no one funnier than Joel Golby' GREG JAMES

‘I love this book� DOLLY ALDERTON

How much of your life do you review? Books, TV, film, music � the reviewable things? Ever tried going a little further, reviewing the intangibles, the abstract, the ‘weird�: a houseplant; the sunlight on the pavement on a crisp spring day; being embarrassed; that strange wave you do at cars when they slow down at zebra crossings. A dead houseplant.

From almond croissants to the concept of life itself, Joel Golby embarks on a journey through modern living, leaving no stone unturned � no one thing unreviewed � to consider what it all really means; why we all care so much about opinions; and whether, deep down, it’s better to live a life that’s good rather than, well, five stars out of five.]]> 314 Joel Golby 0008284121 Jack 0 to-read 4.07 Four Stars: A Life, Reviewed
author: Joel Golby
name: Jack
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Everything You Ever Wanted 42086151
Sometimes you don't get out of bed at all.

Then you hear about Life on Nyx, a programme that allows 100 lucky winners the chance to escape it all, move to another planet and establish a new way of life. One with meaning and purpose. One without Instagram and online dating. There's one caveat: if you go, you can never come back.

But you aren't worried about that.

After all, what on Earth could there possibly be to miss? ]]> 272 Luiza Sauma 0241363551 Jack 5 I cannot wait to die. ]]> 3.59 2019 Everything You Ever Wanted
author: Luiza Sauma
name: Jack
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves:
review:
Fuck me, this was good.
I cannot wait to die.
]]> <![CDATA[Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe]]> 15789310 ]]> 96 Cullen Bunn 0785164030 Jack 1 3.80 2011 Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe
author: Cullen Bunn
name: Jack
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2011
rating: 1
read at: 2024/08/30
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves:
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]]> Kill for Me, Kill for You 176451879
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you.

In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?

Intricate, heart-racing, and from an author who “is the real deal� (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Kill for Me, Kill for You will keep you breathless until the final page.]]> 340 Steve Cavanagh 1668049341 Jack 1 4.14 2023 Kill for Me, Kill for You
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Jack
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves:
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Well this just wasn’t very good
]]> <![CDATA[Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection, Vol. 17: Kraven's Last Hunt]]> 32856244
VOLUME 17: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (1963) 289-294, ANNUAL 20-21; SPIDER-MAN VERSUS WOLVERINE; PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN (1976) 131-132, ANNUAL 7; WEB OF SPIDER-MAN (1985) 31-32]]> 451 Jim Owsley 1302907050 Jack 5 4.21 2017 Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection, Vol. 17: Kraven's Last Hunt
author: Jim Owsley
name: Jack
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
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]]> Okay Days 62831265
‘Utterly immersive ... it's reminiscent of Sally Rooney and is a complex and joyous ode to being in love, messing up and finding your way� � Stylist

Sam is 28, Swedish, carefree and chaotic. Doing a work placement in London over the course of three sticky summer months, she falls hard for Lucas, a man she first met as a teenager. Lucas, 27, sensitive and calm, is trying to get a start on adult life while struggling to hold the pieces of his life together. Sam is a gorgeous distraction. But you can only avoid reality for so long, and both Sam and Lucas know their relationship can't last. Nobody can be this happy forever, surely?

Okay Days tells the story of the rise and fall of Sam and Lucas's affection for each other, looks unflinchingly at male body dysmorphia and women's reproductive rights, and the pitfalls of modern love. When is okay good enough? And what are we willing to lose in the search for a life that is much better than just okay?

‘A beautifully-observed portrait of self-discovery and uncertain love. Jenny's sharp and evocative prose gave me a feeling of immense nostalgia for London's long summer days� � Natasha Brown, author of Assembly

‘Fresh and sharply observant ... One of the most intriguing books I've read in some time� � Elaine Feeney, author of How To Build A Boat

‘Tender and spellbinding, Okay Days breaks you all the way open� � Annie Lord, author of Notes on Heartbreak

‘An intimate drama of what matters in stories: relationships. Mustard is a talented portraitist in whose hands these two characters become real, enthralling, and viscerally realized. It is one of the most entertaining novels I have read of the times we live in� � Chigozie Obioma, author of The Fishermen]]> 340 Jenny Mustard 1399713469 Jack 5 3.73 2023 Okay Days
author: Jenny Mustard
name: Jack
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/24
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]]> <![CDATA[My Year of Rest and Relaxation]]> 44279110
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]> 289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522131 Jack 1 3.62 2018 My Year of Rest and Relaxation
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Jack
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 1
read at: 2024/08/23
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves:
review:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha I fucking called it. You are JOKING cunt
]]> Lords of Chaos 116168 405 Michael Moynihan 0922915946 Jack 0 to-read 3.69 1998 Lords of Chaos
author: Michael Moynihan
name: Jack
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Eyes Are the Best Part 195703882 Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying� yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.]]> 278 Monika Kim 1645661237 Jack 4 3.81 2024 The Eyes Are the Best Part
author: Monika Kim
name: Jack
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
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]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 Jack 5 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Jack
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
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]]> Get Shorty (Chili Palmer, #1) 702539 killer movie, though it could very possibly kill him to get it made.]]> 384 Elmore Leonard 006008216X Jack 0 to-read 3.98 1990 Get Shorty (Chili Palmer, #1)
author: Elmore Leonard
name: Jack
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Seven Years 9639774 Peter Stamm, one of Switzerland's most acclaimed writers, is at his best exploring the complexities of human relationships. Seven Years is a distinct, sobering, and bold novel about the impositions of happiness in the quest for love.]]> 264 Peter Stamm 1590513940 Jack 5 3.52 2009 Seven Years
author: Peter Stamm
name: Jack
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> The Haters 201627012 The bestselling author ofThe Partyand The Drowning Woman returns with a twisted tale of fame, obsession, and the dark recesses of social media.

Camryn Lane is living her dream. After years of struggle and rejection, her first novel has finally been published. Her editor is happy; her teenage daughter is proud; and her boyfriend and friends are all excited for her. She’s on top of the world—until she receives a disturbing message from an unknown sender.

Rattled by the accusations she finds there, Camryn swallows the sick feeling in her stomach and resolves to put the missive out of her mind. But when she checks her ratings on a popular book site, she finds a scathing one-star review. The reviewer is so articulate and convincing that soon, Camryn’s book is flooded with bad reviews. Could the reviewer be the same person who sent the ugly email? And why do they want to ruin her?

As the online harassment creeps into Camryn’s personal life, she vows to find out who’s behind it. Is it really a disgruntled reader? Or could it be someone she knows? The troll’s actions are escalating, and when the abuse turns deadly, it will take everything Camryn has to unmask the enemy so intent on destroying her—and finally learn why she's being targeted.]]> 342 Robyn Harding 1538766108 Jack 4 3.56 2024 The Haters
author: Robyn Harding
name: Jack
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves:
review:

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