Mac's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 18 Jun 2025 19:51:36 -0700 60 Mac's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Black and Deep Desires: William Shakespeare, Vampire Hunter]]> 26528517 263 Graham Holderness 1785350641 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr, shakespeare 3.20 2015 Black and Deep Desires: William Shakespeare, Vampire Hunter
author: Graham Holderness
name: Mac
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/18
shelves: to-read, f-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Not Hamlet: Meditations on the Frail Position of Women in Drama]]> 17018984 188 Janet Suzman 1849436010 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 3.86 2012 Not Hamlet: Meditations on the Frail Position of Women in Drama
author: Janet Suzman
name: Mac
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/13
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> After Dachau 94760
Daniel Quinn, well known for Ishmael —a life-changing book for readers the world over—once again turns the tables and creates an otherworld that is very like our own, yet fascinating beyond words. Imagine that Nazi Germany was the first to develop an atomic bomb and the Allies surrendered. America was never bombed, occupied, or even invaded, but was nonetheless forced to recognize Nazi world dominance. The Nazis continued to press their campaign to rid the planet of “mongrel races� until eventually the world—from Capetown to Tokyo—was populated by only white faces. Two thousand years in the future, people don’t remember, or much care, about this distant past. The reality is that to be human is to be Caucasian, and what came before was literally ancient history having nothing to do with those then living.

Now imagine that reincarnation is real, that souls migrate over time from one living creature to another, and that a soul that once animated an American black woman living at the time of World War II now animates an Aryan in Quinn’s new world—and that due to a traumatic accident, memories of this earlier incarnation assert themselves.

Compared by readers and critics alike to 1984 and Brave New World, After Dachau is a new dystopian classic with much to say about our own time, and the dynamics of human history.]]> 240 Daniel Quinn 1581952155 Mac 3
FFO: Twists and/or turns, ASL puns, woo-woo pseudoscience.]]> 3.77 2001 After Dachau
author: Daniel Quinn
name: Mac
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/06/09
shelves:
review:
A clever examination of history itself through the lens of an alternate history. I read this in high school and remember thinking it was smart but looking back on it now � admittedly without having re-read it recently � it seems a bit facile and built around a twist the way a Shyamalan movie is.

FFO: Twists and/or turns, ASL puns, woo-woo pseudoscience.
]]> <![CDATA[They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us]]> 33947154
In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car.

In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.]]> 291 Hanif Abdurraqib Mac 5
Ever since I read “Go Ahead in the Rain� five years ago, I’ve been trying to explain to people my obsession with Abdurraqib’s writing, and everything I say feels insufficient.

He has a way of connecting disparate ideas so beautifully that you have trouble ever thinking of them separately again. He manages to blend erudition and poetry in a way that doesn’t sell either short. He writes about, and connects, art and social issues in a way that takes both seriously.

When I met him at a book signing recently, I stood in line for 20min trying to think of what succinct remark I could make while he signed my books that would communicate how much his work means to me. I ended up telling him that I appreciate the care with which he treats art that is important to me but is often not taken seriously by a lot of cultural critics.

Each of the essays in this collection is digestible, poignant, with solid bones. It is the very best of cultural writing.

FFO: Fall Out Boy, road trips, nostalgia, poetry, grief]]> 4.56 2017 They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Mac
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/06/08
date added: 2025/06/08
shelves:
review:
I’m not a good enough writer to even review a book like this. Ostensibly a collection of essays primarily about music and art, but also vignettes of Abdurraqib’s life. It blends cultural writing with memoir in an often-heartbreaking way.

Ever since I read “Go Ahead in the Rain� five years ago, I’ve been trying to explain to people my obsession with Abdurraqib’s writing, and everything I say feels insufficient.

He has a way of connecting disparate ideas so beautifully that you have trouble ever thinking of them separately again. He manages to blend erudition and poetry in a way that doesn’t sell either short. He writes about, and connects, art and social issues in a way that takes both seriously.

When I met him at a book signing recently, I stood in line for 20min trying to think of what succinct remark I could make while he signed my books that would communicate how much his work means to me. I ended up telling him that I appreciate the care with which he treats art that is important to me but is often not taken seriously by a lot of cultural critics.

Each of the essays in this collection is digestible, poignant, with solid bones. It is the very best of cultural writing.

FFO: Fall Out Boy, road trips, nostalgia, poetry, grief
]]> Salvage the Bones 13513403 Salvage the Bone is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.]]> 259 Jesmyn Ward 1608196267 Mac 0 currently-reading 4.08 2011 Salvage the Bones
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Mac
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unique Hamlet: A Hitherto Unchronicled Adventure of Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]> 23936196
An agitated, portly gentleman waddles down Baker Street toward 221B, his pockets sagging and his eyes wide with panic. From his window Sherlock Holmes diagnoses the man as a collector of rare books, on his way to ask for help finding a missing volume. The brilliant detective is correct, of course, but even he is taken aback when the nature of the work in question—a first folio of Hamlet , inscribed in Shakespeare’s own hand—is revealed. As Holmes and his steadfast companion, Dr. Watson, investigate, they discover that rare-book collectors can be just as cunning and diabolical as any villain ever dreamed up by the Bard of Avon.

A founder of the Baker Street Irregulars and the author of an indispensible biography, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes , Vincent Starrett combined a scholar’s authority with a fan’s enthusiasm in his appreciation of the great detective. No one was better suited to write a new adventure for Holmes and Watson, and The Unique Hamlet is both a loving homage and a thrilling mystery.

This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.]]> 44 Vincent Starrett Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.42 1920 The Unique Hamlet: A Hitherto Unchronicled Adventure of Mr. Sherlock Holmes
author: Vincent Starrett
name: Mac
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1920
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/23
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)]]> 41864516 The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group's history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself.

Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels' shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact. Whether he's remembering The Source magazine cover announcing the Tribe's 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg's death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that--like the low end, the bass--are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.]]> 207 Hanif Abdurraqib 1477316485 Mac 5
There is something so open and vulnerable and lyrical about the way Abdurraqib talks about subjects as seemingly banal as avoiding practicing the trumpet and eating candy. Every page felt like I was having a late-night heart-to-heart with one of my oldest and best friends.

I bought this book because I heard Abdurraqib interviewed on the NY Times Book Review podcast and I had that wonderful experience of listening to someone who is much smarter and more eloquent than myself explain why something I loved (Tribe) was cool and important. It was validating in the way that having an older kid in high school compliment you on your music taste was validating.]]> 4.47 2019 Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Mac
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2020/09/27
date added: 2025/05/21
shelves:
review:
My god, what a beautiful book. Abdurraqib manages to blend memoir, music history, cultural criticism, and fan mail into a seamless epic poem about what Tribe is, was, and still represents.

There is something so open and vulnerable and lyrical about the way Abdurraqib talks about subjects as seemingly banal as avoiding practicing the trumpet and eating candy. Every page felt like I was having a late-night heart-to-heart with one of my oldest and best friends.

I bought this book because I heard Abdurraqib interviewed on the NY Times Book Review podcast and I had that wonderful experience of listening to someone who is much smarter and more eloquent than myself explain why something I loved (Tribe) was cool and important. It was validating in the way that having an older kid in high school compliment you on your music taste was validating.
]]> The Body 38926465 Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine

#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King’s timeless novella “The Body”—originally published in his 1982 short story collection Different Seasons, and adapted into the 1986 film classic Stand by Me—is now available as a stand-alone publication.

It’s 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. Ray Brower, a boy from a nearby town, has disappeared, and twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends set out on a quest to find his body along the railroad tracks. During the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio come to terms with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that doesn’t offer much in the way of a future.

A timeless exploration of the loneliness and isolation of young adulthood, Stephen King’s The Body is an iconic, unforgettable, coming-of-age story.]]> 192 Stephen King 1982103531 Mac 4
The only thing that didn’t work for me was Gordon’s writing. I know it’s a Stephen King book so the main character is legally obligated to be a writer himself, but it didn’t add anything for me and the first inserted story of Gordie’s (“Stud City�) was so awful that it almost made me quit. I understand that in context the story is supposed to be juvenile and bad, but it didn’t make it any easier to get through in the moment. Overall I think the whole component of Gordie being a writer could’ve been cut without hurting the book.

Overall a good book to make you cry some manly tears (crying any other kind of tears would definitely make you a pussy).

FFO: Adventures, jorts, river swimming, wistful recollections, bros coming before hoes, ages coming of]]> 4.03 1982 The Body
author: Stephen King
name: Mac
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/17
date added: 2025/05/19
shelves:
review:
A touching, character-driven coming-of-age story about young male friendship. Definitely the sweetest and kindest Stephen King I’ve read (I’ve not read a lot). This was recommended to me by my childhood best friend and I can see why. I think most men will find resonances and bittersweet nostalgia here.

The only thing that didn’t work for me was Gordon’s writing. I know it’s a Stephen King book so the main character is legally obligated to be a writer himself, but it didn’t add anything for me and the first inserted story of Gordie’s (“Stud City�) was so awful that it almost made me quit. I understand that in context the story is supposed to be juvenile and bad, but it didn’t make it any easier to get through in the moment. Overall I think the whole component of Gordie being a writer could’ve been cut without hurting the book.

Overall a good book to make you cry some manly tears (crying any other kind of tears would definitely make you a pussy).

FFO: Adventures, jorts, river swimming, wistful recollections, bros coming before hoes, ages coming of
]]> <![CDATA[The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare]]> 222376491 How Shakespeare became a riveting tale of London’s first playhouse and the people—actors, writers, builders, investors—who built the Theatre.

Between 1576 and 1598, a playhouse called the Theatre stood in the northeast suburbs of London, until it was secretly torn down and its timbers used to build the much more famous Globe. Dreamed up and run by a former actor and notorious brawler named James Burbage, the Theatre was the first purpose-built commercial playhouse in London. It was plagued by litigation, heavily in debt, and the target of endless condemnation by preachers and the Lord Mayor. It was also where the young William Shakespeare worked when he first arrived in London, and it was here that he wrote many of his early plays.

At the heart of the Theatre was the dream of making money from creating art. This was Burbage’s dream, of course, but it was also Shakespeare’s, who worked with a close team of actors and cowriters at the Theatre, building the foundations of his own career and devising a way to make money from writing. Nobody had ever really done this playwrights in his time were notoriously poor; and the idea that one might earn a living from writing remains a faint and tempting one today.

Daniel Swift’s The Dream Factory is a story about art and money, creativity and craft, literary inspiration and the profit motive. The Theatre was a controversial, highly commercial factory for great and challenging art; into the dream factory walked the son of a Stratford tradesman, and out emerged the greatest writer in English.]]> 320 Daniel Swift 0374601275 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 3.50 The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare
author: Daniel Swift
name: Mac
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/19
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> Ficciones 426504 Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything else in between.

Part One: The Garden of Forking Paths
Prologue
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (1936, not included in the 1941 edition)
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)
The Circular Ruins (1940)
The Lottery in Babylon (1941)
An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (1941)
The Library of Babel (1941)
The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)
Part Two: Artifices
Prologue
Funes the Memorious (1942)
The Form of the Sword (1942)
Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (1944)
Death and the Compass (1942)
The Secret Miracle (1943)
Three Versions of Judas (1944)
The End (1953, 2nd edition only)
The Sect of the Phoenix (1952, 2nd edition only)
The South (1953, 2nd edition only)]]> 174 Jorge Luis Borges 0802130305 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.46 1944 Ficciones
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Mac
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1944
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/11
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival]]> 223736238 The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Will in the World reveals the daring and subversive life of Christopher Marlowe—Shakespeare’s contemporary, inspiration, and rival.


In brutally repressive sixteenth-century England, artists had been frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners were suspect; popular entertainment largely consisted of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world came an ambitious cobbler’s son with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry—a torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Christopher Marlowe found on the other side of that door, and what he did with it, brought about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of his collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.


With propulsive narrative flair and brilliant literary criticism, Stephen Greenblatt reconstructs the youthful involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and gave us his Tamburlaine and Faustus—dramatic masterpieces on power and its costs. And with detailed historical insight, Greenblatt explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, birthed the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world—involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.]]> 352 Stephen Greenblatt 0393882276 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 4.00 Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
author: Stephen Greenblatt
name: Mac
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/09
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution]]> 7742036 Girls to the Front is the epic, definitive history of Riot Grrrl, the radical feminist uprising that exploded into the public eye in the 1990s and included incendiary punk bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and Huggy Bear. A dynamic chronicle not just a movement but an era, this is the story of a group of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet.]]> 367 Sara Marcus 0061806366 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 3.96 2010 Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution
author: Sara Marcus
name: Mac
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)]]> 44453040 From the bestselling author of The Bone Season, an epic high fantasy about a world on the brink of war with dragons-and the secret society tasked with stopping it.

A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years.

Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to ensure the continuation of her bloodline. But as she clings to her independence, assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has converted to the Six Virtues and risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she will never be truly at home in Inys. As she dutifully goes to the sanctuary each day, Ead keeps a watchful eye on the queen, protecting her with forbidden magic.

Yet even she cannot keep Sabran from harm indefinitely. Dragons are encroaching on Inysh lands for the first time in centuries, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and an age-old force is stirring that no mandate can keep at bay.]]> 831 Samantha Shannon 1635570301 Mac 0 to-read 4.22 2019 The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Mac
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Residue Years 16059455
The Residue Years switches between the perspectives of a young man, Champ, and his mother, Grace. Grace is just out of a drug treatment program, trying to stay clean and get her kids back. Champ is trying to do right by his mom and younger brothers, and dreams of reclaiming the only home he and his family have ever shared. But selling crack is the only sure way he knows to achieve his dream. In this world of few options and little opportunity, where love is your strength and your weakness, this family fights for family and against what tears one apart.

Honest in its portrayal, with cadences that dazzle, The Residue Years signals the arrival of a writer set to awe.]]> 352 Mitchell S. Jackson 1620400286 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.90 2013 The Residue Years
author: Mitchell S. Jackson
name: Mac
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> Shakespeare in Parts 11245703
This is the story of Shakespeare in Parts. As Shakespeare developed his playwriting, the apparent limitations of the medium get transformed into expressive opportunities. Both cue and speech become promise-crammed repositories of meaning and movement, and of individually discoverable space and time. Writing always for the same core group of players, Shakespeare could take - and insist upon - unprecedented risks. The result is onstage drama of astonishing immediacy.

Starting with a comprehensive history of the part in early modern theatre, Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern's mould-altering work of historical and imaginative recovery provides a unique keyhole onto hitherto forgotten practices and techniques. It not only discovers a newly active, choice-ridden actor, but a new Shakespeare.]]> 560 Simon Palfrey 0199591105 Mac 2 shakespeare
I came into this book not only with a strong interest in the material � I’ve used cue scripts in my teaching for years � but also with a higher-than-average tolerance for the kind of sock-sniffer prose that goes into academic writing on Shakespeare, having read a lot of Shakespeare scholarship over the last decade and a half.

In spite of that, I read this book with gritted teeth, slogging through 3-5 pages at a time until the insufferable prose became unbearable.

The authors seem way more concerned with demonstrating how smart they are than they are with communicating anything substantive about Shakespeare. 95% of the real estate of any given page is the kind of soulless sophistry you expect from someone defending their PhD, desperately throwing bits of Latinate jargon at the wall in the hopes that something will stick.

There are a handful of interesting ideas in this book, but reading this book was decidedly not worth it to get them.

FFO: condescension; limbs and/or outward flourishes; thesauruses, r/iamverysmart]]> 4.47 2007 Shakespeare in Parts
author: Simon Palfrey
name: Mac
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: shakespeare
review:
About 30 pages worth of sharp, revelatory insight sprinkled into 500 pages of masturbatory academic fluff.

I came into this book not only with a strong interest in the material � I’ve used cue scripts in my teaching for years � but also with a higher-than-average tolerance for the kind of sock-sniffer prose that goes into academic writing on Shakespeare, having read a lot of Shakespeare scholarship over the last decade and a half.

In spite of that, I read this book with gritted teeth, slogging through 3-5 pages at a time until the insufferable prose became unbearable.

The authors seem way more concerned with demonstrating how smart they are than they are with communicating anything substantive about Shakespeare. 95% of the real estate of any given page is the kind of soulless sophistry you expect from someone defending their PhD, desperately throwing bits of Latinate jargon at the wall in the hopes that something will stick.

There are a handful of interesting ideas in this book, but reading this book was decidedly not worth it to get them.

FFO: condescension; limbs and/or outward flourishes; thesauruses, r/iamverysmart
]]> Good Omens 386282 The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .]]> 415 Terry Pratchett Mac 4
There’s no surprises here, either you like the styles of Gaiman and Pratchett or you don’t. If magical realism and witty British bullshit is your cup of tea, this’ll hit the spot.

Like other folks have said, the least interesting parts of the book were the pages spent with the kids. I understand why we had to know them as characters for the story to make sense, but I think 15% less ink about those characters would’ve made the whole book a lot more enjoyable.

The philosophical and spiritual stuff might’ve seemed really deep in the early 90s but now it’s barely background noise. Luckily enjoying the book doesn’t require you to find it revelatory that Heaven and Hell are just like, two sides of the same coin, man.

FFO “The Four Horsemen� off Metallica’s first album, Earl Grey tea, witch trials, witch tribulations, footnotes.]]> 4.28 1990 Good Omens
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Mac
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
What a charming little book.

There’s no surprises here, either you like the styles of Gaiman and Pratchett or you don’t. If magical realism and witty British bullshit is your cup of tea, this’ll hit the spot.

Like other folks have said, the least interesting parts of the book were the pages spent with the kids. I understand why we had to know them as characters for the story to make sense, but I think 15% less ink about those characters would’ve made the whole book a lot more enjoyable.

The philosophical and spiritual stuff might’ve seemed really deep in the early 90s but now it’s barely background noise. Luckily enjoying the book doesn’t require you to find it revelatory that Heaven and Hell are just like, two sides of the same coin, man.

FFO “The Four Horsemen� off Metallica’s first album, Earl Grey tea, witch trials, witch tribulations, footnotes.
]]> Hot Wax 224103430 The new novel from the bestselling author of If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift—a vivid and immersive tale of one woman’s reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood, and made her who she is

Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills� wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.

The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.

Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back—where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.]]> 400 M.L. Rio 1668070022 Mac 0 to-read 3.76 2025 Hot Wax
author: M.L. Rio
name: Mac
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The North Adams Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne]]> 228605450 89 Molly Rideout Mac 5
However, if you’re not already interested in either of those topics, then there’s not much here for you. It’s not Hawthorne’s best prose, but these journal entries were never intended for publication.

But as someone who loves Hawthorne and lives in North Adams, I thought it was pretty neat.

FFO horses and/or carriages, bathing in rivers, locals, townies, denizens, inhabitants, running errands.]]> 5.00 The North Adams Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne
author: Molly Rideout
name: Mac
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves:
review:
If you’re interested in local history or Nathaniel Hawthorne, this is a fascinating read. Lots of brief, interesting sketches of local characters and events. My favorite is the widower bickering about the cost of his wife’s coffin.

However, if you’re not already interested in either of those topics, then there’s not much here for you. It’s not Hawthorne’s best prose, but these journal entries were never intended for publication.

But as someone who loves Hawthorne and lives in North Adams, I thought it was pretty neat.

FFO horses and/or carriages, bathing in rivers, locals, townies, denizens, inhabitants, running errands.
]]> Carmilla 48037
But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day� Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.]]> 108 J. Sheridan Le Fanu 0809510839 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.88 1872 Carmilla
author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu
name: Mac
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files, #1)]]> 222419283
It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.

In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?

As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.]]> 384 Kristen Perrin 0593474023 Mac 0 to-read 3.94 2024 How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files, #1)
author: Kristen Perrin
name: Mac
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship]]> 376160 396 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0691043442 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.81 1795 Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Mac
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1795
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> What We Owe to Each Other 278553
Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.]]> 432 T.M. Scanlon 067400423X Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 3.84 1999 What We Owe to Each Other
author: T.M. Scanlon
name: Mac
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> Monstrilio 62888185 A literary horror debut about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.

A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.]]> 336 Gerardo Sámano Córdova 1638930376 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.16 2023 Monstrilio
author: Gerardo Sámano Córdova
name: Mac
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology]]> 63874788 ENROLLMENT BEGINS NOW

A beguiling, sinister collection of 12 dark academia short stories from masters of the genre, including Olivie Blake, M.L. Rio, Susie Yang and more!

In these stories, dear student, retribution visits a lothario lecturer; the sinister truth is revealed about a missing professor; a forsaken lover uses a séance for revenge; an obsession blooms about a possible illicit affair; two graduates exhume the secrets of a reclusive scholar; horrors are uncovered in an obscure academic department; five hopeful initiates must complete a murderous task and much more!

Featuring brand-new stories from:
Olivie Blake
M.L. Rio
David Bell
Susie Yang
Layne Fargo
J.T. Ellison
James Tate Hill
Kelly Andrew
Phoebe Wynne
Kate Weinberg
Helen Grant
Tori Bovalino

Definition of dark academia in English:
dark academia
1. An internet subculture concerned with higher education, the arts, and literature, or an idealised version thereof with a focus on the pursuit of knowledge and an exploration of death.
2. A set of aesthetic principles. Scholarly with a gothic edge � tweed blazers, vintage cardigans, scuffed loafers, a worn leather satchel full of brooding poetry. Enthusiasts are usually found in museums and darkened libraries.]]> 340 Marie O'Regan Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.37 2023 In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology
author: Marie O'Regan
name: Mac
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> Hot Wax 205825264 The new novel from the bestselling author of If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift—a vivid and immersive tale of one woman’s reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood, and made her who she is

Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills� wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.

The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.

Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back—where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.]]> M.L. Rio Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.57 2025 Hot Wax
author: M.L. Rio
name: Mac
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)]]> 61219635 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250886088.

A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes.

After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success—not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.]]> 304 Travis Baldree Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.17 2022 Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)
author: Travis Baldree
name: Mac
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time]]> 46190 224 Rob Sheffield 1400083028 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 3.87 2007 Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time
author: Rob Sheffield
name: Mac
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)]]> 35036409 My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.]]> 331 Elena Ferrante Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.08 2011 My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Mac
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rough Beasts of Empire (Star Trek: Typhon Pact, #3)]]> 7956806

Meanwhile, four years after Benjamin Sisko returned from the Celestial Temple, circumstances have changed, his hopes for a peaceful life on Bajor with his wife and daughter beginning to slip away. After temporarily rejoining Starfleet for an all-hands-on-deck battle against the Borg, he must consider an offer to have him return for a longer stint. Beset by troubling events, he seeks spiritual guidance, facing demons new and old, including difficult memories from his time in the last Federation-Tzenkethi war.

]]> 383 David R. George III 1439160813 Mac 3
What's frustrating is that on paper, this book has all the ingredients I want: political procedurals with the Romulans, Spock being Spock, Ben Sisko having (another) dark night of the soul, a truly alien feeling alien race. But somehow, while being very readable, it never quite grabbed me and I have trouble articulating why exactly. The prose was fine, the plot was fine, the characters were fine. Everything was just...fine.

FFO: "Council" scenes, failed assassinations, successful assassinations, conspiracies, "The higher, the fewer"]]> 3.56 2011 Rough Beasts of Empire (Star Trek: Typhon Pact, #3)
author: David R. George III
name: Mac
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
review:
This book read like a filler episode of TNG or DS9: it definitely wasn't epic or memorable, certainly not the piece of Trek that you'd want to introduce a friend to the franchise with. But at the same time, not bad, just a comforting bit of mediocrity to keep yourself in the Trek universe with all your friends.

What's frustrating is that on paper, this book has all the ingredients I want: political procedurals with the Romulans, Spock being Spock, Ben Sisko having (another) dark night of the soul, a truly alien feeling alien race. But somehow, while being very readable, it never quite grabbed me and I have trouble articulating why exactly. The prose was fine, the plot was fine, the characters were fine. Everything was just...fine.

FFO: "Council" scenes, failed assassinations, successful assassinations, conspiracies, "The higher, the fewer"
]]> <![CDATA[The Autobiography of General Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs of the Civil War]]> 6051766 433 Ulysses S. Grant 193494114X Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 4.28 1885 The Autobiography of General Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs of the Civil War
author: Ulysses S. Grant
name: Mac
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1885
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan]]> 219603154 This evidence-based, user-friendly guide presents a 30-day digital detox plan that will help you set boundaries with your phone and live a more joyful and fulfilling life.

“I wrote The Anxious Generation to help adults improve the lives of children. Many readers have asked me for a version of the book aimed at helping adults and teens help themselves. Catherine Price has written the best such book.”—Jonathan Haidt

Do you feel addicted to your phone? Do you frequently pick it up “just to check,� only to look up forty-five minutes later wondering where the time has gone? Does social media make you anxious? Have you tried to spend less time mindlessly scrolling—and failed? If so, this book is your solution.

Award-winning health and science journalist and TED speaker Catherine Price presents a practical, evidence-based 30-day digital detox plan that will help you break up—and then make up—with your phone. The goal: better mental health, improved screen-life balance, and a long-term relationship with technology that feels good.

This engaging, user-friendly guide explains how our smartphones and apps are designed to be addictive and how the time we spend on them is increasing our anxiety and damaging our abilities to focus, think deeply, form new memories, generate ideas, and be present in our most important relationships. Next, it walks you through an effective and easy-to-follow 30-day plan that has already helped thousands of people worldwide break their phone addictions and feel more fully alive.

Whether you need help for yourself or for your family, friends, students, colleagues, clients, or community, How to Break Up with Your Phone is the ultimate guide to digital detoxing. It’s guaranteed to help you put down your phone—and come back to life.]]> 240 Catherine Price 0593837169 Mac 0 to-read 4.03 2018 How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan
author: Catherine Price
name: Mac
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[God's Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible]]> 71327434
The Bible is full of giants tromp through the land of milk and honey; Leviathan swims through the wine-dark sea. What we often believe is that God reliably vanquishes the monsters and protects us from harm. But when we look closer, we find that most of these monsters aren't God's opponents--they are God's entourage. These shape-shifters, boundary crossers, and hybrid creatures often act with stunning brutality, all in God's employ. In fact, every type of peculiar being in God's company threatens, injures, tortures, or kills on behalf of the divine will. And each type of monster reflects a facet of God's own monstrosity.

Confronting God's monsters--and the God-monster--may be uncomfortable, but the Bible is richer for their presence. The biblical writers' unflinching depictions of the monstrous God create space for our own grief, anger, dissatisfaction, and protest. God's Monsters invites us to wrestle honestly and rigorously with the monstrosity of the biblical God, perhaps to discover that if God can be held accountable, so too can those in God's entourage.]]> 304 Esther J. Hamori 1506486339 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 4.00 God's Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible
author: Esther J. Hamori
name: Mac
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 212755924 From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.�

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?

Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.

Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?

Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.]]> 464 Yuval Noah Harari 006342200X Mac 0 to-read 4.06 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Mac
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Who's Your Founding Father?: One Man’s Epic Quest to Uncover the First, True Declaration of Independence]]> 62315585
Composed during a clandestine all-night session inside the Charlotte courthouse, the Mecklenburg Declaration was signed on May 20, 1775—a date that’s still featured on the state flag of North Carolina. A year later, in 1776, Jefferson is believed to have plagiarized the MecDec while composing his own, slightly more famous Declaration and then, as he was wont to do, covered the whole thing up. Which is exactly why Adams always insisted the MecDec needed to be “thoroughly investigated� and “more universally made known to the present and future generation.� Eleven U.S. Presidents and many of today’s most respected historical scholars agree.

Now, with Who’s Your Founding Father?, David Fleming picks up where Adams left off, leaving no archive, no cemetery, no bizarre clue or wild character (and definitely no Dunkin� Donuts) unexplored while traveling the globe to bring to life one of the most fantastic, important—and controversial—stories in American history.In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register . He breathlessly described it to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as “one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me…entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since.� The story claimed that a full 14 months before Jefferson crafted his own Declaration of Independence, a misfit band of zealous Scots-Irish patriots, whiskey-loving Princeton scholars, and a fanatical frontier preacher had joined forces in a remote corner of North Carolina to become the first Americans to formally declare themselves “free and independent� from England.

Composed during a clandestine all-night session inside the Charlotte courthouse, the Mecklenburg Declaration, aka the MecDec, was signed on May 20, 1775—a date that’s still featured on the state flag of North Carolina. About a year later, in 1776, Jefferson is believed to have plagiarized the MecDec while composing his own, slightly more famous Declaration, and then, as he was wont to do, covered the whole thing up. Which is why Adams always insisted the MecDec needed to be “thoroughly investigated� and “more universally made known to the present and future generation.� Eleven U.S. Presidents and many of today’s most respected historical scholars agree. Now, with Who’s Your Founding Father?, David Fleming picks up where Adams� investigation left off. Fleming leaves no archive, cemetery, bizarre clue, conspiracy theory, or wild character unexplored as he travels the globe and shines new light on one of the most fantastic, important—and controversial—stories in American history.]]> 320 David Fleming 0306828774 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 4.14 Who's Your Founding Father?: One Man’s Epic Quest to Uncover the First, True Declaration of Independence
author: David Fleming
name: Mac
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[As If: Essays in As You Like It]]> 33656498
William N. West is Associate Professor of English, Classics, and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University, where he is also chair of the Department of Classics and co-editor of the journal Renaissance Drama . He is co-editor (with Helen Higbee) of Robert Weimann’s Author’s Pen and Actor’s Writing and Playing in Shakespeare’s Theatre (Cambridge, 2000) and (with Bryan Reynolds) of Rematerializing Authority and Representation on the Early Modern Stage (Palgrave, 2005). In addition to his book Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe (2002), he has recently published articles on Romeo and Juliet’s understudies, irony and encyclopedic writing before and after the Enlightenment, Ophelia’s intertheatricality (with Gina Bloom and Anston Bosman), humanism and the resistance to theology, Shakespeare’s matter, and conversation as a theory of knowledge in Browne’s Pseudodoxia . His work has been supported by grants from the NEH and the Beinecke, Folger, Huntington, and Newberry libraries.]]> 136 William N West 0615988172 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 4.00 As If: Essays in As You Like It
author: William N West
name: Mac
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Confederacy of Dunces (Evergreen Book)]]> 310612
His mother thinks he needs to go to work. He does, in a succession of jobs. Each job rapidly escalates into a lunatic adventure, a full-blown disaster; yet each has, like Don Quixote's, its own eerie logic.

His girlfriend, Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx, thinks he needs sex.

Ignatius is an intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, goof-off, glutton, who should repel the reader with his gargantuan bloats, his thunderous contempt, and one-man war against everybody: Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the assorted excesses of modern times.

A tragicomedy, set in New Orleans.]]> 394 John Kennedy Toole 0802130208 Mac 4
The thing that strikes me most about this gargantuan comedy is how it has the courage of its convictions the whole way through. The fact that it took me -- a reader coming to this book for the first time with no foreknowledge -- 50 pages to understand the world of the book is a testament to how committed Toole was to the bit.

The comically turgid, moralistic, pseudo-intellectual ranting of Ignatius never stopped amusing me, and the huge cast of characters with all of their varying voices and ideas reminded me of Dickens, and I am certainly not the first person to compare this book with Don Quixote.

The only plotline that never really clicked for me was Ignatius's mother's story. I just never really grew to care about what was going on with her the way I did with all the other characters. I understand the necessity of that thread to the conclusion of the story, but I never really enjoyed checking in with Irene and Santa the way I did with Jones or Levy or Dorian.

FFO: Don Quixote, dudes who say "actually," Nawlins, modest proposals, committing to the bit.]]> 3.89 1980 A Confederacy of Dunces (Evergreen Book)
author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Mac
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
I knew nothing about this book going in other than that it was a Pulitzer-Prize-winning "classic," and so it took me perhaps a little too long to settle into the unexpected absurd, comic tone. But once I did, this book was absolutely hilarious.

The thing that strikes me most about this gargantuan comedy is how it has the courage of its convictions the whole way through. The fact that it took me -- a reader coming to this book for the first time with no foreknowledge -- 50 pages to understand the world of the book is a testament to how committed Toole was to the bit.

The comically turgid, moralistic, pseudo-intellectual ranting of Ignatius never stopped amusing me, and the huge cast of characters with all of their varying voices and ideas reminded me of Dickens, and I am certainly not the first person to compare this book with Don Quixote.

The only plotline that never really clicked for me was Ignatius's mother's story. I just never really grew to care about what was going on with her the way I did with all the other characters. I understand the necessity of that thread to the conclusion of the story, but I never really enjoyed checking in with Irene and Santa the way I did with Jones or Levy or Dorian.

FFO: Don Quixote, dudes who say "actually," Nawlins, modest proposals, committing to the bit.
]]> Graveyard Shift 203578770 Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.]]> 144 M.L. Rio 1250356792 Mac 5 halloween
I have trouble writing reviews of ML Rio's work as a reader because as a writer she's probably the author I most want to emulate, so my appreciation of her prose is always tinged with the kind of artistic resentment you feel seeing someone do the exact thing you wish you were doing and doing it much better than you ever could. So, on the one hand, this is a great book and I love ML Rio for it. But on the other hand, this is a great book and I kinda hate ML Rio for it.

This is short fiction at its best: tightly-packed plot, economical characterization, a satisfying beginning-middle-end. Rio has a great sense of how much to tie up with a bow and how much to leave ambiguous. "Graveyard Shift" threaded that needle perfectly for me. The characters were vibrant, and the prose was erudite in that devil-may-care way.

Overall, a great book to finish the year and get me out of my reading slump. Five stars, already putting her next book on my TBR list.

FFO Coffee and/or cigarettes, vivisection, fun guys]]> 3.17 2024 Graveyard Shift
author: M.L. Rio
name: Mac
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: halloween
review:
I love short fiction, I love stories about insomniac weirdos, and I love ML Rio, so I find myself thinking the same thing I said about "If We Were Villains," which is that it feels like this book was written specifically for me.

I have trouble writing reviews of ML Rio's work as a reader because as a writer she's probably the author I most want to emulate, so my appreciation of her prose is always tinged with the kind of artistic resentment you feel seeing someone do the exact thing you wish you were doing and doing it much better than you ever could. So, on the one hand, this is a great book and I love ML Rio for it. But on the other hand, this is a great book and I kinda hate ML Rio for it.

This is short fiction at its best: tightly-packed plot, economical characterization, a satisfying beginning-middle-end. Rio has a great sense of how much to tie up with a bow and how much to leave ambiguous. "Graveyard Shift" threaded that needle perfectly for me. The characters were vibrant, and the prose was erudite in that devil-may-care way.

Overall, a great book to finish the year and get me out of my reading slump. Five stars, already putting her next book on my TBR list.

FFO Coffee and/or cigarettes, vivisection, fun guys
]]> If We Were Villains 30319086
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.]]> 354 M.L. Rio 125009528X Mac 5
Reading this book felt a bit like watching a great Shakespeare production and having an actor look you right in the eyes as they deliver one of the great soliloquies, like “to be or not to be� or “if it were done when tis done.� You feel like this piece of art was created just for you, like you’re the only person in the audience.]]> 4.10 2017 If We Were Villains
author: M.L. Rio
name: Mac
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/14
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth...

Reading this book felt a bit like watching a great Shakespeare production and having an actor look you right in the eyes as they deliver one of the great soliloquies, like “to be or not to be� or “if it were done when tis done.� You feel like this piece of art was created just for you, like you’re the only person in the audience.
]]> Dayspring 196044892
A singular, stunning debut that transcends and transfigures genre—at once a bold retelling of biblical tales and an unforgettable contemporary coming-of-age story, connected in collapsing time across millennia.

There are few love stories in the holy books. Love is what ruins. Love is what costs. Love is a flaming sword at our backs, a garden left to ruin and to wild.

In Dayspring, Anthony Oliveira brings to vibrant, glorious life the gospel according to the disciple Christ loved—his companion in the days before the crucifixion, the only instrument that remembers with fidelity his sound.

Sacred, profane, and rich with explicit desire and a poetic attention to form, Dayspring weaves electric and heart-wrenching stories of passion, grief, destruction, and survival into a narrative unmoored in space and time, one that re-examines and re-frames great and doomed figures from scripture and history, even as it casts its keen eye on the trials of modern life.

Seamlessly blending fiction, memoir, and verse in the exhilarating tradition of Anne Carson and Madeline Miller, Dayspring is an immersive, mesmerizing work, one that wrenches beauty from cataclysm and finds bliss in apocalypse.]]> 432 Anthony Oliveira 077100382X Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.09 2024 Dayspring
author: Anthony Oliveira
name: Mac
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> Witchcraft for Wayward Girls 207611566 There’s power in a book�

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr, halloween 3.97 2025 Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Mac
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read, f-tbr, halloween
review:

]]> The Empty Space 54509 144 Peter Brook 0684829576 Mac 3
This book would’ve made a great lecture but makes for tedious, circuitous prose. Brook was clearly a brilliant man, certainly smarter than I’ll ever be, but this book is not well-structured: it’s vague and rambling, with a half dozen references per page to various avant-garde theatre artists I’ve never heard of without any real explanation of who they were or what they did or how (or whether) their ideas should be implemented.

I learned almost nothing from this book except that Peter Brook is even smarter than I already thought. Which is a stupid thing to learn from a book.

If, for example, you’re wondering things like:

What ideals should I strive for to make better theatre? How can I make Shakespeare’s plays more engaging and more immediate for an audience? How can I be a more versatile and effective actor? How can I structure my rehearsals to support and encourage actors? How should I stage the ghost in Hamlet?

You will not get find any answers.

A generous three stars for the occasional gem.

FFO: Cruel theatre, theatrical cruelty, Theatre of Cruelty, cruelty of theatre.]]> 4.22 1968 The Empty Space
author: Peter Brook
name: Mac
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:
A handful of sharp, actionable observations sprinkled into a mountain of masturbatory philosophizing.

This book would’ve made a great lecture but makes for tedious, circuitous prose. Brook was clearly a brilliant man, certainly smarter than I’ll ever be, but this book is not well-structured: it’s vague and rambling, with a half dozen references per page to various avant-garde theatre artists I’ve never heard of without any real explanation of who they were or what they did or how (or whether) their ideas should be implemented.

I learned almost nothing from this book except that Peter Brook is even smarter than I already thought. Which is a stupid thing to learn from a book.

If, for example, you’re wondering things like:

What ideals should I strive for to make better theatre? How can I make Shakespeare’s plays more engaging and more immediate for an audience? How can I be a more versatile and effective actor? How can I structure my rehearsals to support and encourage actors? How should I stage the ghost in Hamlet?

You will not get find any answers.

A generous three stars for the occasional gem.

FFO: Cruel theatre, theatrical cruelty, Theatre of Cruelty, cruelty of theatre.
]]> Such Sharp Teeth 60097467 A young woman in need of a transformation finds herself in touch with the animal inside in this gripping, incisive novel from the author of Cackle and The Return.

Rory Morris isn't thrilled to be moving back to her hometown, even if it is temporary. There are bad memories there. But her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant, estranged from the baby's father, and needs support, so Rory returns to the place she thought she'd put in her rearview. After a night out at a bar where she runs into an old almost-flame, she hits a large animal with her car. And when she gets out to investigate, she's attacked.

Rory survives, miraculously, but life begins to look and feel different. She's unnaturally strong, with an aversion to silver--and suddenly the moon has her in its thrall. She's changing into someone else--something else, maybe even a monster. But does that mean she's putting those close to her in danger? Or is embracing the wildness inside of her the key to acceptance?

This darkly comedic love story is a brilliantly layered portrait of trauma, rage, and vulnerability.]]> 336 Rachel Harrison 0593545826 Mac 5
This is everything I want in a Halloween novel: a witty, character-driven story with monsters.

The prose is zippy: clever without becoming insufferable. Lots of laugh out loud moments for me. And the pacing was excellent. Harrison manages to keep even the sections that are lighter on plot engaging and moving.

The central theme of the book is how inextricably being a werewolf is connected to being a woman. From menstruation to pregnancy to the social stigma that comes from being too angry, the metaphor of woman for lycanthrope is explored in ways that never slows the pacing of the monster plot. Harrison never stops the action to deliver a lecture; she peppers in the idea from a dozen angles and lets the reader catch what they can.

Overall it’s a whip-smart bit of socially-conscious monster fiction with a compelling human story at its core and grounded, three-dimensional characters.

The fact that it’s written in present-tense notwithstanding, I can’t recommend this highly enough.

FFO: Pumpkin spice lattes, tattoos of runes, women’s lib, nature red in tooth and/or claw, quips.]]> 3.82 2022 Such Sharp Teeth
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Mac
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves:
review:
This book was so much fucking fun.

This is everything I want in a Halloween novel: a witty, character-driven story with monsters.

The prose is zippy: clever without becoming insufferable. Lots of laugh out loud moments for me. And the pacing was excellent. Harrison manages to keep even the sections that are lighter on plot engaging and moving.

The central theme of the book is how inextricably being a werewolf is connected to being a woman. From menstruation to pregnancy to the social stigma that comes from being too angry, the metaphor of woman for lycanthrope is explored in ways that never slows the pacing of the monster plot. Harrison never stops the action to deliver a lecture; she peppers in the idea from a dozen angles and lets the reader catch what they can.

Overall it’s a whip-smart bit of socially-conscious monster fiction with a compelling human story at its core and grounded, three-dimensional characters.

The fact that it’s written in present-tense notwithstanding, I can’t recommend this highly enough.

FFO: Pumpkin spice lattes, tattoos of runes, women’s lib, nature red in tooth and/or claw, quips.
]]> The Writing Retreat 176443519
“Sex, suspense, and the supernatural fuel this propulsive debut.� � People

A young author is invited to an exclusive writer’s retreat that soon descends into a pulse-pounding nightmare—in the vein of The Plot and Please Join Us .

Alex has all but given up on her dreams of becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime attend an exclusive, month-long writing retreat at the estate of feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. Even the knowledge that Wren, her former best friend and current rival, is attending doesn’t dampen her excitement.

But when the attendees arrive, Roza drops a bombshell—they must all complete an entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one will receive a life-changing seven-figure publishing deal. Determined to win this seemingly impossible contest, Alex buckles down and tries to ignore the strange happenings at the estate, including Roza’s erratic behavior, Wren’s cruel mind games, and the alleged haunting of the mansion itself. But when one of the writers vanishes during a snowstorm, Alex realizes that something very sinister is afoot. With the clock running out, she must discover the truth—or suffer the same fate.

A claustrophobic and propulsive thriller that “will keep you up all night with its intriguing premise and gasp-worthy twists� (Kirthana Ramisette, author of Dava Shastri’s Last Day ), The Writing Retreat expertly explores the dark side of female relationships, fame, and the desire to have our stories told.]]> 320 Julia Bartz 1982199466 Mac 0 to-read 3.41 2023 The Writing Retreat
author: Julia Bartz
name: Mac
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> So Thirsty 203608552 A woman must learn to take life by the throat after a night out leads to irrevocable changes in this juicy, thrilling novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Black Sheep.

Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life.

Her husband surprises her with a birthday weekend getaway—not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi.

Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity. But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever.

The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected.]]> 290 Rachel Harrison 0593642546 Mac 4
Rachel Harrison knows her lane, and "So Thirsty" is another clever, basic-bitch feminist horror that does the work that the best speculative fiction can do: examine real-life human issues through a supernatural lens. Everything I loved about SST is here, but in the same way that vampires are creatures of human civilization instead of creatures of the untamed wilderness, the themes that Harrison examines in "So Thirsty" are likewise issues of culture and society rather than biology and nature: nurture rather than nature.

I really enjoyed this book but it suffers from a comparison to SST, which I realize isn't fair. But having read them so close together, it's hard not to notice that everything this book does well, SST does just a little bit better.

What this book does very well is make the vampires more grounded without reinventing them entirely, which is a pet peeve of mine. The world-building is thorough enough to be satisfying without being over-explained enough to lose all the mystery. The romance element wasn't a home run for me but it also didn't distract me.

Overall, a fun and satisfying pop-horror spooky season read that puts a cool feminine spin on the traditional vampire mythos.

FFO: Free bleeding, concealer, Eastern-European accents, red wine.]]> 3.48 2024 So Thirsty
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Mac
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:
I didn't love this book as much as I loved "Such Sharp Teeth," but that may just be because I don't love vampires as much as I love werewolves.

Rachel Harrison knows her lane, and "So Thirsty" is another clever, basic-bitch feminist horror that does the work that the best speculative fiction can do: examine real-life human issues through a supernatural lens. Everything I loved about SST is here, but in the same way that vampires are creatures of human civilization instead of creatures of the untamed wilderness, the themes that Harrison examines in "So Thirsty" are likewise issues of culture and society rather than biology and nature: nurture rather than nature.

I really enjoyed this book but it suffers from a comparison to SST, which I realize isn't fair. But having read them so close together, it's hard not to notice that everything this book does well, SST does just a little bit better.

What this book does very well is make the vampires more grounded without reinventing them entirely, which is a pet peeve of mine. The world-building is thorough enough to be satisfying without being over-explained enough to lose all the mystery. The romance element wasn't a home run for me but it also didn't distract me.

Overall, a fun and satisfying pop-horror spooky season read that puts a cool feminine spin on the traditional vampire mythos.

FFO: Free bleeding, concealer, Eastern-European accents, red wine.
]]> ǰǰö 13129925
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, ǰǰö is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, ǰǰö delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve.

Designed by Andie Reid, cover photography by Christine Ferrara.]]> 248 Grady Hendrix 1594745269 Mac 3 halloween
There was nothing wrong with this book, it had a satisfactory beginning, middle, and end; it was scary; and it had a fun thematic lens. But it also didn’t have anything especially interesting or poignant. It was the horror novel equivalent of a Netflix original movie. And I say this as someone who loves Netflix originals. Sometimes you just want a paint-by-numbers genre flick.

It seems like I’m the only one who hated the book design. I understand the gimmick of a book about a retail horror novel being designed to look like a retail catalog, but it just made it annoying to carry around and hold.

FFO: Office Space, Michel Foucault, particle board, Sweden.]]> 3.64 2014 ǰǰö
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Mac
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: halloween
review:
Perfectly serviceable horror story that’ll hit especially hard if you’ve spent serious time working retail.

There was nothing wrong with this book, it had a satisfactory beginning, middle, and end; it was scary; and it had a fun thematic lens. But it also didn’t have anything especially interesting or poignant. It was the horror novel equivalent of a Netflix original movie. And I say this as someone who loves Netflix originals. Sometimes you just want a paint-by-numbers genre flick.

It seems like I’m the only one who hated the book design. I understand the gimmick of a book about a retail horror novel being designed to look like a retail catalog, but it just made it annoying to carry around and hold.

FFO: Office Space, Michel Foucault, particle board, Sweden.
]]> Black Sheep 69704909
Nobody has a “normal� family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep.

Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it means returning to the toxic environment she escaped. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen.

When Vesper’s homecoming exhumes a terrifying secret, she’s forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith in this deliciously sinister novel that explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to find our place in the world.]]> 289 Rachel Harrison 0593545850 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr, halloween 3.57 2023 Black Sheep
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Mac
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr, halloween
review:

]]> The Return 49878129
Julie is missing, and the missing don't often return. But Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and she feels in her bones that her best friend is out there, and that one day she'll come back. She's right. Two years to the day that Julie went missing, she reappears with no memory of where she's been or what happened to her.]]> 296 Rachel Harrison 0593098668 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr, halloween 3.36 2020 The Return
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Mac
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr, halloween
review:

]]> Cackle 61058915 The Return.

All her life, Annie has played it nice and safe. After being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Annie seeks a fresh start. She accepts a teaching position that moves her from Manhattan to a small village upstate. She’s stunned by how perfect and picturesque the town is. The people are all friendly and warm. Her new apartment is dreamy too, minus the oddly persistent spider infestation.

Then Annie meets Sophie. Beautiful, charming, magnetic Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie, who wants to be her friend. More importantly, she wants Annie to stop apologizing and start living for herself. That’s how Sophie lives. Annie can’t help but gravitate toward the self-possessed Sophie, wanting to spend more and more time with her, despite the fact that the rest of the townsfolk seem…a little afraid of her. And like, okay. There are some things. Sophie’s appearance is uncanny and ageless, her mansion in the middle of the woods feels a little unearthly, and she does seem to wield a certain power…but she couldn’t be…could she?]]> 319 Rachel Harrison 0593202031 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr, halloween 3.71 2021 Cackle
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Mac
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr, halloween
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare's borrowed feathers: How early modern playwrights shaped the world's greatest writer]]> 208475718 272 Darren Freebury-Jones 1526177323 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 4.56 Shakespeare's borrowed feathers: How early modern playwrights shaped the world's greatest writer
author: Darren Freebury-Jones
name: Mac
average rating: 4.56
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare and Lecoq: A Practical Guide for Actors, Directors, Students and Teachers (Arden Performance Companions)]]> 213523094 This book provides actors, directors, teachers and students with a clear, practical guide to applying the work of influential theatre practitioner Jacques Lecoq to the process of rehearsing or workshopping the Shakespeare text.

Written by theatre practitioner Ed Woodall, who trained with Lecoq himself, and Shakespeare academic Abigail Rokison-Woodall, this guide begins with warm-ups and ensemble-building, and moves through explorations of the story, the world of the play, the text, character emotion, thought and physicality and staging.

Lecoq's method often relies on 'play', and play is often seen as trivial or inconsequential. This book argues that the more playful you are, the more playfully you investigate your speech or scene and the more physically motivated that playfulness is, the more vital and lifelike your acting of Shakespeare will be.]]> 234 Abigail Rokison-Woodall 1350244112 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 0.0 Shakespeare and Lecoq: A Practical Guide for Actors, Directors, Students and Teachers (Arden Performance Companions)
author: Abigail Rokison-Woodall
name: Mac
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]> 49731704 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307279286.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.

Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.]]> 542 Patrick Radden Keefe Mac 0 to-read 4.53 2018 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Mac
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You]]> 60165381 This Is What It Sounds Like is a journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favorite songs move you. But it’s also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles to became Prince’s chief engineer for Purple Rain, and then create other No. 1 hits (including Barenaked Ladies' "One Week") as one of the most successful female record producers of all time.


Now an award-winning professor of cognitive neuroscience, Susan Rogers leads readers to musical self-awareness. She explains that we each possess a unique “listener profile� based on our brain’s natural response to seven key dimensions of any song. Are you someone who prefers lyrics or melody? Do you like music “above the neck� (intellectually stimulating), or “below the neck� (instinctual and rhythmic)? Whether your taste is esoteric or mainstream, Rogers guides readers to recognize their musical personality, and offers language to describe one's own unique taste. Like most of us, Rogers is not a musician, but she shows that all of us can be musical—simply by being an active, passionate listener.


While exploring the science of music and the brain, Rogers also takes us behind the scenes of record-making, using her insider’s ear to illuminate the music of Prince, Frank Sinatra, Kanye West, Lana Del Rey, and many others. She shares records that changed her life, contrasts them with those that appeal to her coauthor and students, and encourages you to think about the records that define your own identity.


Told in a lively and inclusive style, This Is What It Sounds Like will refresh your playlists, deepen your connection to your favorite artists, and change the way you listen to music.]]> 288 Susan Rogers 0393541258 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 3.81 2022 This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You
author: Susan Rogers
name: Mac
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV]]> 77264775 From an acclaimed historian and author comes an epic the dual biography of Richard II and Henry IV, two cousins whose lives played out in extraordinary parallel, until Henry deposed the tyrant Richard and declared himself King of England. Richard of Bordeaux and Henry of Bolingbroke, cousins born just three months apart, were ten years old when Richard became king of England. They were thirty-two when Henry deposed him and became king in his place. Now, the story behind one of the strangest and most fateful events in English history (and the inspiration behind Shakespeare’s most celebrated history plays) is brought to vivid life by the acclaimed author of Blood and Roses, Helen Castor. Richard had birthright on his side, and a profound belief in his own God-given majesty. But beyond that, he lacked all qualities of leadership. A narcissist who did not understand or accept the principles that underpinned his rule, he was neither a warrior defending his kingdom, nor a lawgiver whose justice protected his people. Instead, he declared that “his laws were in his own mouth,� and acted accordingly. He sought to define as treason any resistance to his will and recruited a private army loyal to himself rather than the realm—and he intended to destroy those who tried to restrain him. Henry was everything Richard was a leader who inspired both loyalty and friendship, a soldier and a chivalric hero, dutiful, responsible, principled. After years of tension and conflict, Richard banished him and seized his vast inheritance. Richard had been crowned a king but he had become a tyrant, and as a tyrant—ruling by arbitrary will rather than established law—he was deposed by his cousin Henry, the only possible candidate to take his place. Henry was welcomed as a liberator, a champion of the people against his predecessor’s paranoid despotism. But within months he too was facing rebellion. Men knew that a deposer could in turn be deposed, and the new king found himself buffeted by unrest and by chronic ill-health until he seemed a shadow of his former self, trapped by political uncertainty and troubled by these signs that God might not, after all, endorse his actions. Captivating, immersive, and highly relevant to today’s times, The Eagle and the Hart is a story about what happens when a ruler prioritizes power over the interests of his own people. When a ruler demands loyalty to himself as an individual, rather than duty to the established constitution, and when he seeks to reshape reality rather than concede the force of verifiable truths. Above all, it is a story about how a nation was brought to the brink of catastrophe and disintegration—and, in the end, how it was brought back.]]> 528 Helen Castor 0241419328 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 4.37 2024 The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV
author: Helen Castor
name: Mac
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> Heads Will Roll 201102396 Willow’s worst nightmare was being cancelled. But the woods of Camp Castaway might destroy more than her reputation.
After sitcom star Willow tweeted herself into infamy and had to be dragged blind-drunk out of a swimming pool, her agent shipped her off to the woodsy and wonderfully anonymous confines of Camp Castaway. Tucked away in the trees of upstate New York, Castaway is a summer camp for adults in desperate need of leaving behind their mistakes, their social media accounts, their lives. No real names, no phones…no way to call for help.
Willow is relieved to find that her fellow campers seem okay. To her shock, her own favorite actress is here, sitting by the campfire and roasting a s’more. And did that jaded writer, Dani, just wink at her? But the peaceful vibe is shattered when a terrifying woman pops shrieking from the wardrobe in Willow’s room. Soon after, one of the campers vanishes.Is Willow about to get cancelled all over again, this time for good?
Soon, terror grips the group, campers begin to lose their heads—literally!—and Willow and her new friends are on the run.As paranoia grows and disturbing past deeds come to light, this escape from their shallow lifestyles might just lead to a set of shallow graves.]]> 314 Josh Winning 0593544692 Mac 0 to-read, halloween 3.50 2024 Heads Will Roll
author: Josh Winning
name: Mac
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read, halloween
review:

]]> Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch 201632616 Murdered bad girl Annie Lane is back from the grave and hellbent on revenge . . . she just has to figure out who killed her.

This fast-paced thriller by a talented debut delivers a horror-infused hunt for justice that's at once furiously feminist, darkly funny, and utterly satisfying.

Between her careless mom, her cheating ex-boyfriend, and her rotten reputation around town, Annie Lane is used to being left behind. But she’s never been left for dead before—until she wakes up to find her body’s been dumped on a mountain rumored to raise the dead.

Annie can’t remember who killed her, but she’ll stop at nothing to figure it out and make them pay. Because girls like her don’t get justice unless they take it for themselves.

Codie Crowley’s propulsive debut presents a furious and cathartic thriller skewering society’s condemnation of “unlikeable� girls.]]> 304 Codie Crowley 1368099904 Mac 3 halloween
I honestly didn’t find much to like about this book. There was too little of the characters I liked, the world-building was unsatisfying (too many things left unexplained, especially one big mystery that gets built up and then dropped without any resolution), and the prose was irritatingly teenagery.

I should’ve known what I was getting into when I read the first page and realized that the book was written in present tense

I hate to be all “old man yells at cloud� but the whole time I was reading this book I felt like I was reading more of a social media screed than a novel. This is the kinda strawman characterization that comes from telling one-sided stories for knee-jerk ‘Likes� in an echo chamber. It’s not that I disagree irl with any of the things that make Annie Lane angry, I just find one-sided stories in fiction boring. None of the villains have any interior life; they’re only as deep as Annie’s perception of them, that is to say not at all. Not that I think it’s fair to expect three-dimensional characters in a YA novel, but there are characters in Grimm’s Fairy Tales with more depth than Grady or Gun.

It’s disappointing because there were the bones of a very cool story in there: vengeful metalhead ghost girl comes back to murder dudes sounds right up my fucking alley, but this just didn’t succeed at the details.

FFO: Cussing, girls rioting, wraiths, Brendan Frasier’s character in the movie “Blast From the Past”]]> 3.67 2024 Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch
author: Codie Crowley
name: Mac
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: halloween
review:
Three stars because I feel like rating a YA book on the same rubric as other books isn’t fair.

I honestly didn’t find much to like about this book. There was too little of the characters I liked, the world-building was unsatisfying (too many things left unexplained, especially one big mystery that gets built up and then dropped without any resolution), and the prose was irritatingly teenagery.

I should’ve known what I was getting into when I read the first page and realized that the book was written in present tense

I hate to be all “old man yells at cloud� but the whole time I was reading this book I felt like I was reading more of a social media screed than a novel. This is the kinda strawman characterization that comes from telling one-sided stories for knee-jerk ‘Likes� in an echo chamber. It’s not that I disagree irl with any of the things that make Annie Lane angry, I just find one-sided stories in fiction boring. None of the villains have any interior life; they’re only as deep as Annie’s perception of them, that is to say not at all. Not that I think it’s fair to expect three-dimensional characters in a YA novel, but there are characters in Grimm’s Fairy Tales with more depth than Grady or Gun.

It’s disappointing because there were the bones of a very cool story in there: vengeful metalhead ghost girl comes back to murder dudes sounds right up my fucking alley, but this just didn’t succeed at the details.

FFO: Cussing, girls rioting, wraiths, Brendan Frasier’s character in the movie “Blast From the Past�
]]> <![CDATA[Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions]]> 433567 [sic � ed.], a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, where women-thin, straight lines-are the lowliest of shapes, and where men may have any number of sides, depending on their social status.
Through strange occurrences that bring him into contact with a host of geometric forms, Square has adventures in Spaceland (three dimensions), Lineland (one dimension) and Pointland (no dimensions) and ultimately entertains thoughts of visiting a land of four dimensions—a revolutionary idea for which he is returned to his two-dimensional world. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Flatland is not only fascinating reading, it is still a first-rate fictional introduction to the concept of the multiple dimensions of space. "Instructive, entertaining, and stimulating to the imagination." � Mathematics Teacher.]]> 96 Edwin A. Abbott 048627263X Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.82 1884 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
author: Edwin A. Abbott
name: Mac
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> How to Sell a Haunted House 59414094 Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…]]> 419 Grady Hendrix 0593201264 Mac 3 halloween
The horror component of this fell especially flat for me. I wanted “Poltergeist� but I got “Child’s Play.� But, similar to “My Best Friend’s Exorcism,� I was more drawn into the character dynamics than I was into the supernatural elements. The relationship between Louise and her brother and between the two of them and their extended family resonated with me. They’re from SC and I’m from VA but the vibes felt real to me.

Overall the scary parts were more stressful and annoying than frightening, but Hendrix knows how to construct a satisfying story so at least I didn’t finish the last page feeling narratively cheated.

FFO: Arts and/or crafts, Presbyterian matriarchs, the holy spirit, childhood trauma, ventriloquism.]]> 3.64 2023 How to Sell a Haunted House
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Mac
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: halloween
review:
Another Halloween season, another Grady Hendrix novel. I never love his books, but I also never hate them.

The horror component of this fell especially flat for me. I wanted “Poltergeist� but I got “Child’s Play.� But, similar to “My Best Friend’s Exorcism,� I was more drawn into the character dynamics than I was into the supernatural elements. The relationship between Louise and her brother and between the two of them and their extended family resonated with me. They’re from SC and I’m from VA but the vibes felt real to me.

Overall the scary parts were more stressful and annoying than frightening, but Hendrix knows how to construct a satisfying story so at least I didn’t finish the last page feeling narratively cheated.

FFO: Arts and/or crafts, Presbyterian matriarchs, the holy spirit, childhood trauma, ventriloquism.
]]> Frisk 856165 128 Dennis Cooper 0802132898 Mac 2 3.67 1991 Frisk
author: Dennis Cooper
name: Mac
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1991
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Dixie Noir 6653318
When disgraced former Alabama football star Ennis Skinner is released from prison after ten years, all he wants is to make his amends. Earning forgiveness isn’t easy in an unforgiving town like Montgomery, Alabama, however—not in a Southern capital still haunted by its complicated legacy as the birthplace of both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. Ennis is no sooner reunited with his ailing father—a one-time hero in the Movement—than he is drawn into investigating the disappearance of the daughter of the dead girlfriend responsible for his downfall. As a vulnerable nineteen-year-old incapable of distinguishing fantasy from reality, this girl—nicknamed “Dixie”—may just hold the key to mysteries that will determine whether Montgomery will put its past to rest by electing its first-ever African American mayor.�

As Ennis’s search for Dixie becomes a quest for personal redemption, he encounters a colorful cast of characters, each with his or her own peculiar ties to Alabama history: High C, the methamphetamine cook-cum-hometown publishing magnate whom Ennis tried to kill a decade earlier; Walk Compson, the “Great Man� of history who returns to the fight for racial equality after a curious period of self-exile; Amory Justice, the incumbent mayor who, with his dirty-tricks loving daughter, Reese—known locally as “the Kudzu Ann Coulter”—will go to any length to stay in power; and, finally, Red, the Zelda Fitzgerald-quoting painter whose body art represents a uniquely alluring effort to exorcise the demons of the South.�
At once fast-paced and character driven, Dixie Noir is as sticky and overheated as an August afternoon in the land of cotton.]]> 291 Kirk Curnutt 159414821X Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.94 2009 Dixie Noir
author: Kirk Curnutt
name: Mac
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Trouble Is My Business (Philip Marlowe, #8)]]> 11318
Trouble is my business --
Finger man --
Goldfish --
Red wind]]> 224 Raymond Chandler Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.06 1950 Trouble Is My Business (Philip Marlowe, #8)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Mac
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1950
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> Playback (Philip Marlowe, #7) 153590 Playback is a classic novel by Raymond Chandler, the master of hard-boiled crime.

Stalking the tawdry neon wilderness of forties and fifties Los Angeles, Raymond Chandler's hard-drinking, wise-cracking Phillip Marlowe is one of the world's most famous fictional detectives.

Playback finds Marlowe mixing business with pleasure - getting paid to follow a mysterious and lovely red-head named Eleanor King. And wherever Miss King goes, trouble seems to follow. But she's easy on the eye and Marlowe's happy to do as he's told, all in the name of chivalry, of course. But one dead body later and what started out as a lazy afternoon's snooping soon becomes a deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity - and murder . . .


'Anything Chandler writes about grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph

'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times

'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess


Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction. His books include The Big Sleep, The Little Sister, Farewell, My Lovely, The Long Good-bye, The Lady in the Lake, Playback, Killer in the Rain, The High Window and Trouble is My Business.]]> 166 Raymond Chandler Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.78 1958 Playback (Philip Marlowe, #7)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Mac
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)]]> 2054 379 Raymond Chandler 0394757688 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.19 1953 The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Mac
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5)]]> 852401 250 Raymond Chandler 039475767X Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.00 1949 The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Mac
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe, #4)]]> 776159 266 Raymond Chandler 0394758250 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.06 1943 The Lady in the Lake (Philip Marlowe, #4)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Mac
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The High Window (Philip Marlowe, #3)]]> 2049
Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the �40s and �50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily.

In The High Window, Marlowe starts out on the trail of a single stolen coin and ends up knee-deep in bodies. His client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband’s collection. That’s the simple part.

But Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. If Marlowe doesn’t wrap this one up fast, he’s going to end up in jail - or worse, in a box in the ground.

Starring Toby Stephens, this thrilling dramatisation by Robin Brooks retains all the wry humour of Chandler’s serpentine suspense novel. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 October 2011.]]> 272 Raymond Chandler 0394758269 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.05 1942 The High Window (Philip Marlowe, #3)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Mac
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> No One Gets Out Alive 22935767 628 Adam L.G. Nevill 0230772099 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr, halloween 3.64 2014 No One Gets Out Alive
author: Adam L.G. Nevill
name: Mac
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: to-read, f-tbr, halloween
review:

]]> A Head Full of Ghosts 23019294
To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.]]> 287 Paul Tremblay 0062363239 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr, halloween 3.78 2015 A Head Full of Ghosts
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Mac
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: to-read, f-tbr, halloween
review:

]]> I Was a Teenage Slasher 199798522 Lamesa, Texas, July 1989

It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA � they don’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s recent death.

This is all about to change.

Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

This is Stephen Graham Jones x-raying the slasher genre, interrogating its motivations over the shoulder and in the voice of the killer itself � from a town he did some growing up in, in a year he was also seventeen.

The kills will be poignant, the jokes will hurt, and the violence will be endearing. Everything’s turned around for Tolly, for Amber � for all of Lamesa, Texas.

Be happy you weren’t there.

Be happy you’re only reading about it.]]> 373 Stephen Graham Jones 1668022249 Mac 4
I love a great meta examination of the horror genre. I love anything clever that subverts those expectations. This did all that, and overall I enjoyed it, but I didn’t finish this book with nearly the enthusiasm I started with.

My two biggest problems with this book:

The smaller problem is that the prose is so convincingly written from the POV of a teenager that it was a little grating. There’s a reason I don’t speak to teenagers: they’re not particularly eloquent.

The biggest problem that the world building felt incomplete. I loved the mechanics of how Tolly became a slasher and how his abilities manifested, but I was unsatisfied with how his being a slasher affected other people’s behavior. I would have enjoyed the story a lot more if that had either been left out or explained better.

Overall it was a fun Halloween read but def not my favorite.

FFO: Wes Craven, “Stranger Things�, 80s music, pickup trucks.]]> 3.53 2024 I Was a Teenage Slasher
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Mac
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves:
review:
Just barely four stars. The first half of this book gets five stars from me but the second half only gets three. So let’s meet in the middle and call it four?

I love a great meta examination of the horror genre. I love anything clever that subverts those expectations. This did all that, and overall I enjoyed it, but I didn’t finish this book with nearly the enthusiasm I started with.

My two biggest problems with this book:

The smaller problem is that the prose is so convincingly written from the POV of a teenager that it was a little grating. There’s a reason I don’t speak to teenagers: they’re not particularly eloquent.

The biggest problem that the world building felt incomplete. I loved the mechanics of how Tolly became a slasher and how his abilities manifested, but I was unsatisfied with how his being a slasher affected other people’s behavior. I would have enjoyed the story a lot more if that had either been left out or explained better.

Overall it was a fun Halloween read but def not my favorite.

FFO: Wes Craven, “Stranger Things�, 80s music, pickup trucks.
]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare's English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama]]> 145133 Richard III and Henry V will find this revised edition of Shakespeare's English Kings to be an essential companion.

Saccio's engaging narrative weaves together three threads: medieval English history according to the Tudor chroniclers who provided Shakespeare with his material, that history as understood by modern scholars, and the action of the plays themselves. Including a new preface, a revised further reading list, genealogical charts, an appendix of names and titles, and an index, the second edition of Shakespeare's English Kings offers excellent background reading for all of the ten history plays.]]> 284 Peter Saccio 0195123190 Mac 5 shakespeare
Saccio is one of my favorite Shakespeare scholars, and this book does not disappoint. It gives a clear and concise account of the differences between history and the highly-dramatized stories that Shakespeare wrote. It’s not quite as funny as Saccio often is, but it’s also not as dry as history books often are.

I spent about ten years dipping into chapters as Shakespeare projects came up, before deciding this year to just read the whole thing cover to cover.

In the end, I think this is a book better read a chapter at a time as you work on producing or studying a history play. Even in the hands of someone like Saccio, the parade of Duke Edwards and Earl Henries can get a little mind-numbing after 150 years. There were definitely times that I just gave up trying to keep track.

FFO: Shakespeare, England, kings, dynastic struggles, invading France, being invaded by France.]]> 3.97 1977 Shakespeare's English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama
author: Peter Saccio
name: Mac
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: shakespeare
review:
This is a Peter Saccio stan account.

Saccio is one of my favorite Shakespeare scholars, and this book does not disappoint. It gives a clear and concise account of the differences between history and the highly-dramatized stories that Shakespeare wrote. It’s not quite as funny as Saccio often is, but it’s also not as dry as history books often are.

I spent about ten years dipping into chapters as Shakespeare projects came up, before deciding this year to just read the whole thing cover to cover.

In the end, I think this is a book better read a chapter at a time as you work on producing or studying a history play. Even in the hands of someone like Saccio, the parade of Duke Edwards and Earl Henries can get a little mind-numbing after 150 years. There were definitely times that I just gave up trying to keep track.

FFO: Shakespeare, England, kings, dynastic struggles, invading France, being invaded by France.
]]> Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell 214161672
Yet the cautious Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician. Young, handsome and daring, Jonathan Strange is his very antithesis. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men � which overwhelms that between England and France. And soon their own secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine…]]> 864 Susanna Clarke Mac 0 to-read 4.15 2004 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Mac
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Labyrinth: The True Story of City of Lies, the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. and the Implication of the Los Angeles Police Department]]> 55441
Igniting a firestorm of controversy in the music industry and the Los Angeles media, the hardcover publication of LAbyrinth helped to prompt two lawsuits against the LAPD (one brought by the widow and mother of Notorious B.I.G., the other brought by Poole himself) that may finally bring this story completely out of the shadows.
]]> 336 Randall Sullivan 080213971X Mac 4
FFO: Set tripping, gang banging, criminal conspiracies, double albums.]]> 3.91 2002 Labyrinth: The True Story of City of Lies, the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. and the Implication of the Los Angeles Police Department
author: Randall Sullivan
name: Mac
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
Overall, Sullivan makes a compelling and convincing case for his (and Poole’s) version of events. I found it gripping and also made me even more scared of Suge Knight than I already was.

FFO: Set tripping, gang banging, criminal conspiracies, double albums.
]]> The Devil's Laughter 1269822
This was the society that Jean Paul Marin, who at the age of twenty, was beaten and imprisoned by the noble class and by the age of twenty five helped create the inhumane society required for the great bloodletting of the Napoleonic wars. The four years in the Comte de Gravereau's private prison have left a scar on his forehead and a deeper invisible one in his heart. Indeed the Comte is to be the baleful genius of Jean Paul's life.

Three women, so utterly different, are caught up in Jean Paul's passionate career- glamorous, tawny-haired, treacherous Lucienne; Nicole, the Comte's sister, delicate and blonde, whom Jean loves as much as he hates her brother, and Fleurette. more beautiful than either - beautiful with great calm and sweetness, but blind. Jean Paul, the public figure who rode high on the tide of a revolution is as turbulent and unpredictable, as strange a mixture of idealism and hatred, as the French Revolution itself, in the thick of which he lives and loves and pursues his feuds.]]> Frank Yerby 0440119170 Mac 3
FFO: Liberte, egalite, fraternite, guillotines]]> 3.89 1953 The Devil's Laughter
author: Frank Yerby
name: Mac
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1953
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
I loved this book in high school; it was the first piece of literature that ignited my interest in the French Revolution. Meticulously researched, perhaps a little melodramatic, but I loved it.

FFO: Liberte, egalite, fraternite, guillotines
]]> Scaramouche (Scaramouche, #1) 938105 “Last Wednesday he had been engaged in moving an audience of Rennes to anger; on this Wednesday he was to move an audience of Guichen to mirth...�

Once he was André-Louis Moreau, a lawyer raised by nobility, unconcerned with the growing discontent among France’s lower class—until his friend was mercilessly struck down by a member of the aristocracy.

Now he is Scaramouche. Speaking out against the unjust French government, he takes refuge with a nomadic band of actors and assumes the role of the clown Scaramouche—a comic figure with a very serious message...

Set during the French Revolution, this novel of swashbuckling romance is also a thought-provoking commentary on class, inequality, and the individual’s role in society—a story that has become Rafael Sabatini’s enduring legacy.

With an Introduction by Gary Hoppenstand]]> 359 Rafael Sabatini 0451527976 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.09 1921 Scaramouche (Scaramouche, #1)
author: Rafael Sabatini
name: Mac
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1921
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists 180674
Hip hop is huge, and it's time someone wrote it all down. And got it all right. With over 25 aggregate years of interviews, and virtually every hip hop single, remix and album ever recorded at their disposal, the highly respected Ego Trip staff are the ones to do it. The Book of Rap Lists runs the gamut of hip hop information. This is an exhaustive, indispensable and completely irreverant bible of true hip hip knowledge.]]> 352 Sacha Jenkins 0312242980 Mac 4
FFO: Hip hop, humor, trivia, Kool Keith.]]> 4.41 1999 Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists
author: Sacha Jenkins
name: Mac
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
This book is so fucking fun and funny. Selling my copy when I moved seven years ago is one of my biggest regrets.

FFO: Hip hop, humor, trivia, Kool Keith.
]]> The Vibe History of Hip Hop 249697
"A history? No. A story, really. A tale from the dark side. In this book, hip hop is all. It's always there. Like hip hop, this book is about the intense kind of aspiration that comes from having little. About holding and rhyming into a microphone. Mixing and scratching. Guns pain blood. Desire desperation truth true love. Art and mystery and metaphor. The singularity of voice. The magnificence of ingenious sampling. The glory of a beat. This book is that story."
-- From the Preface by Danyel Smith, editor-in-chief of VIBE, the voice of the hip hop generation, presents the essence of hip hop.]]> 432 Alan Light 0609805037 Mac 4 3.97 1999 The Vibe History of Hip Hop
author: Alan Light
name: Mac
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
I read this maybe twenty years ago but I remember it being just what the title implies: a clear and comprehensive history of hip hop.
]]> <![CDATA[Learning by Accident: A Caregiver's True Story of Family, Fear, and Hope]]> 18210919
After her husband, Hugh, is hit by a car while riding his bicycle, Rosemary Rawlins is plunged into twelve months of marathon caregiving, without the promise of a positive outcome. She works herself to the point of exhaustion to bring her grievously injured husband—who suffered a traumatic brain injury, necessitating the removal of half his skull—back home and back to himself. Then, as he slowly begins to reclaim his life, Rosemary falls apart.

She can't sleep. Her heart pounds. Her joy and trust in the world dissolve into endless anxiety. She lays awake at night wondering how her marriage will survive. Will she ever be able to relate to Hugh again? What will become of their relationship? Their children? Do they recognize each other—literally—as the people they fell in love with and married decades ago? How can she let go of her fears? And what can she learn from them?

Learning by Accident is a caregiver's story of ambiguous loss, family love, and emotional healing. This compelling personal account demonstrates with heart and humor that what we fear can be more debilitating than any physical injury. And that sometimes starting over is exactly what we need.
]]> 304 Rosemary Rawlins 1628737778 Mac 5
The book starts as a journal of events that Rosemary keeps in order to update Hugh when he wakes up from his coma. She chronicles every aspect of their story with the same level of dedication and perseverance that she showed in her care for Hugh after his injury.

The book is broken up into short, easily digested chapters that frequently begin with quotes from letters to Rosemary and Hugh from relatives and friends. It's an easy read and one that Rawlins has set at a perfect pace to keep you from putting it down. I was up until past one o'clock in the morning the night I finished it because I couldn't go to sleep until I was done.

"Learning By Accident" is intimate and the emotional range is wide. Of course there is powerful sadness in a book about someone recovering from a traumatic brain injury but it's surprising how funny it can also be. Anyone who has cared for a sick or injured loved one knows that there is humor but it's the kind of humor that only YOU can laugh at. As Hugh recovers he makes confused remarks and you feel comfortable laughing because you're viewing him through such a loving and supportive lens. Reading this story from Rosemary's perspective makes you feel like a part of the family, and family is allowed to laugh because we're trying to stave off the sorrow.

Rosemary's journey runs counter to Hugh's for most of the story; as he progresses out of the cloudy darkness of confusion and struggle she slips deeper into exhaustion and frustration and fatigue. You can feel her become more careworn on every page she she carries her family through this world-shattering event, but she never gives up.

"Learning By Accident" is an incredible story about an incredible family, the kind of family that holds each other up when things are as bad as they can be, the kind of family that doesn't quit when the going gets tough, it's a story about a man learning to let his family provide for him after so many years of providing for them, it's a story about love and friendship and recovery, it's a story about a family that you wish you were a part of, and in the end you feel like you've become a part of that family.

FFO: Bicycles, helmets, the power of love, cathartic crying.]]> 4.25 2011 Learning by Accident: A Caregiver's True Story of Family, Fear, and Hope
author: Rosemary Rawlins
name: Mac
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2011/09/12
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
Rosemary Rawlins’s memoir "Learning By Accident" is the story of a wife and mother whose life is changed in the blink of an eye when her husband Hugh is struck by a car while riding his bike, suffering a traumatic brain injury. Rosemary learns that while Hugh may have survived his crash, putting their lives back together is a journey of miles and not inches as she tirelessly attends to his recovery efforts.

The book starts as a journal of events that Rosemary keeps in order to update Hugh when he wakes up from his coma. She chronicles every aspect of their story with the same level of dedication and perseverance that she showed in her care for Hugh after his injury.

The book is broken up into short, easily digested chapters that frequently begin with quotes from letters to Rosemary and Hugh from relatives and friends. It's an easy read and one that Rawlins has set at a perfect pace to keep you from putting it down. I was up until past one o'clock in the morning the night I finished it because I couldn't go to sleep until I was done.

"Learning By Accident" is intimate and the emotional range is wide. Of course there is powerful sadness in a book about someone recovering from a traumatic brain injury but it's surprising how funny it can also be. Anyone who has cared for a sick or injured loved one knows that there is humor but it's the kind of humor that only YOU can laugh at. As Hugh recovers he makes confused remarks and you feel comfortable laughing because you're viewing him through such a loving and supportive lens. Reading this story from Rosemary's perspective makes you feel like a part of the family, and family is allowed to laugh because we're trying to stave off the sorrow.

Rosemary's journey runs counter to Hugh's for most of the story; as he progresses out of the cloudy darkness of confusion and struggle she slips deeper into exhaustion and frustration and fatigue. You can feel her become more careworn on every page she she carries her family through this world-shattering event, but she never gives up.

"Learning By Accident" is an incredible story about an incredible family, the kind of family that holds each other up when things are as bad as they can be, the kind of family that doesn't quit when the going gets tough, it's a story about a man learning to let his family provide for him after so many years of providing for them, it's a story about love and friendship and recovery, it's a story about a family that you wish you were a part of, and in the end you feel like you've become a part of that family.

FFO: Bicycles, helmets, the power of love, cathartic crying.
]]> American Hearts 27218693
This book is about America. Not the government, policy, or politics, but the people. People like Margaret Utinsky who rose from a wheat farm in St. Louis to become a secret agent during World War II. People like Chuck Taylor who leveraged a bad basketball career to make a bad basketball shoe the most famous in the world. And people like Glen Sherley who went from the confines of Folsom Prison to a record deal and tour with Johnny Cash. It’s about the people that made this country the most creative, tragic, and inspiring in history. These are their stories. These are American hearts.]]> 58 Matt Johnson 0996288813 Mac 5
I liked Johnson’s personal stories better than the stories about famous people but they were all good.

My favorite was “American Entrepreneurship is Not Dead.�

FFO: Micrononfiction, middle America, top America, bottom America, in that order.]]> 4.11 2015 American Hearts
author: Matt Johnson
name: Mac
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
Great collection of terse, nonfiction stories.

I liked Johnson’s personal stories better than the stories about famous people but they were all good.

My favorite was “American Entrepreneurship is Not Dead.�

FFO: Micrononfiction, middle America, top America, bottom America, in that order.
]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare Unlearned: Pedantry, Nonsense, and the Philology of Stupidity]]> 217488685 224 Adam Zucker 0198906773 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 5.00 Shakespeare Unlearned: Pedantry, Nonsense, and the Philology of Stupidity
author: Adam Zucker
name: Mac
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing]]> 203613989 From the award-winning author of Dressing Up, a riveting and diverse history of women’s hair that reestablishes the cultural power of hairdressing in nineteenth-century America.


In the nineteenth century, the complex cultural meaning of hair was not only significant, but it could also impact one’s place in society. After the Civil War, hairdressing was also a growing profession and the hair industry a mainstay of local, national, and international commerce. In Beyond Vanity, Elizabeth Block expands the nascent field of hair studies by restoring women’s hair as a cultural site of meaning in the early United States. With a special focus on the places and spaces in which the hair industry operated, Block argues that the importance of hair has been overlooked due to its ephemerality as well as its misguided association with frivolity and triviality. As Block clarifies, hairdressing was anything but frivolous.

Using methods of visual and material culture studies informed by concepts of cultural geography, Block identifies multiple substantive categories of place and space within which hair acted. These include the preparatory places of the bedroom, hair salon, and enslaved peoples� quarters, as well as the presentation places of parties, fairs, stages, and workplaces. Here are also the untold stories of business owners, many of whom were women of color, and the creators of trendsetting styles like the pompadour and Gibson Girl bouffant. Block’s ground-breaking study examines how race and racism affected who participated in the presentation and business of hair, and according to which standards. The result of looking closely at the places and spaces of hair is a reconfiguration that allows a new understanding of the cultural power of hair in the period.]]> 248 Elizabeth L. Block 0262049058 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 4.76 Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing
author: Elizabeth L. Block
name: Mac
average rating: 4.76
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Straight Edge: Hardcore Punk, Clean Living Youth, and Social Change]]> 1133283 264 Ross Haenfler 0813538521 Mac 4
Also he agreed to an interview for the first issue of my straight edge zine in �09 so that’s pretty cool.

FFO: stage dives, brotherhood, PMA, being a person just like you, having better things to do.]]> 3.68 2006 Straight Edge: Hardcore Punk, Clean Living Youth, and Social Change
author: Ross Haenfler
name: Mac
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves:
review:
Anyone who’s ever tried to explain some subcultural shit to someone who’s well-adjusted and wise enough not to be involved in subcultural shit can understand the enormous difficulty that Haenfler faced in writing this book. If he were just an academic, he could just go full cornball. But Haenfler is a real-life edgeman so he’s got skin in this game. I think he threads the needle pretty well in writing a book that is mostly legible to outsiders while being mostly not embarrassing to insiders.

Also he agreed to an interview for the first issue of my straight edge zine in �09 so that’s pretty cool.

FFO: stage dives, brotherhood, PMA, being a person just like you, having better things to do.
]]> <![CDATA[Seize the Fire (Star Trek: Typhon Pact, #2)]]> 7242448 Shortly after revealing its union with the Federation’s newest adversary—a coalition of galactic powers known as the Typhon Pact—the Gorn Hegemony suffers an ecological disaster that destroys the hatchery world of their critically important warrior caste. Fortunately, the Gorn had already been investigating traces of an ancient but powerful “quick terraforming� technology left behind by a long-vanished civilization. This technology, should it prove controllable, promises to restore their delicate biological and social status quo. But when a Gorn soldier prepares to use the technology to reshape the planet Hranrar into a new warrior-caste spawning ground, threatening to extinguish the native Hranrarii, he draws the unwanted attention of a mad Gorn trooper determined to bring the military caste into dominance.

Meanwhile, as the U.S.S. Titan embarks upon a search for this potent technology in the hope of using it to heal the wounds the Federation sustained during the recent Borg crisis, Captain Riker must balance his responsibility for his crew’s safety against the welfare of the Hranrarii and his duty to the Prime Directive. With a menacing Typhon Pact fleet nipping at his heels, Riker must not only stop the Gorn warriors but also plumb the secrets of an ancient terraforming artifact. But of everyone serving aboard Titan, Commander Tuvok may be the only one who understands how dangerous such planet-altering technology can be, even when used with the best of intentions. . . .

]]> 493 Michael A. Martin 1439167826 Mac 1
It’s possible that some of the flaws originated above the author’s pay grade. I’m sure that the publishing wing of Star Trek/Paramount has some say in how the books are structured, just like how writers on the series have to adhere to the show bible. But no one but Michael A. Martin himself can be blamed for writing shit like:

“…nearly blindingly refulgent with an internally generated, bluish brilliance�

How many fucking adverbs can this man cram into one clause? If you CTRL+F and removed just the consecutive letters LY from this book, it would be 75 pages shorter.

Every page is full of phrases like the one quoted above: tedious, sloppy, belabored, ugly fucking writing. Every fucking conversation drags on ad nauseam without revealing new information or making a fucking point, every movement through a physical environment is described with a dozen watered down words. It's god damned maddening waiting for this man to make a fucking point.

And to add insult to injury, the plot is weak to begin with, so it's not even like the story itself saves the weak prose. The characters' motivations are as weak and fuzzy as the prose, there's so much telling instead of showing, characters magically deduce information for the convenience of the plot, and Martin's incessant attempts to be "witty" fall flat approximately 100% of the time.

Given how weak the prose is, the characterization is, the plot is, it seems superfluous to even mention how everything about the Gorn is annoying, not least of all the decision to stick to eye dialect even when not writing explicitly from their POV. Every time I read "Rye'Kurr" or "Tie-Tan" I wanted to blind myself like Oedipus after finding out that he fucked his mom.

I didn't think anything could make me hate a Riker-centric story, but Michael A. Martin managed to not only do that, but make me skeptical of ever reading another Star Trek novel. I mean, shit, I know it's genre fiction, but this was fucking painful.

Fuck.

FFO: adverbs, anti-mammalian prejudice, words that end in ly, caste systems, adverbs, sibilance, adverbs]]> 3.58 2010 Seize the Fire (Star Trek: Typhon Pact, #2)
author: Michael A. Martin
name: Mac
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2010
rating: 1
read at: 2024/09/05
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves:
review:
Among the ugliest books I have ever read. Reading Martin’s prose is like the scene in “The Office� where Kevin drops the pot of chili dragged on for 500 pages. I cannot believe that writing this sloppy and weak was approved by a publisher.

It’s possible that some of the flaws originated above the author’s pay grade. I’m sure that the publishing wing of Star Trek/Paramount has some say in how the books are structured, just like how writers on the series have to adhere to the show bible. But no one but Michael A. Martin himself can be blamed for writing shit like:

“…nearly blindingly refulgent with an internally generated, bluish brilliance�

How many fucking adverbs can this man cram into one clause? If you CTRL+F and removed just the consecutive letters LY from this book, it would be 75 pages shorter.

Every page is full of phrases like the one quoted above: tedious, sloppy, belabored, ugly fucking writing. Every fucking conversation drags on ad nauseam without revealing new information or making a fucking point, every movement through a physical environment is described with a dozen watered down words. It's god damned maddening waiting for this man to make a fucking point.

And to add insult to injury, the plot is weak to begin with, so it's not even like the story itself saves the weak prose. The characters' motivations are as weak and fuzzy as the prose, there's so much telling instead of showing, characters magically deduce information for the convenience of the plot, and Martin's incessant attempts to be "witty" fall flat approximately 100% of the time.

Given how weak the prose is, the characterization is, the plot is, it seems superfluous to even mention how everything about the Gorn is annoying, not least of all the decision to stick to eye dialect even when not writing explicitly from their POV. Every time I read "Rye'Kurr" or "Tie-Tan" I wanted to blind myself like Oedipus after finding out that he fucked his mom.

I didn't think anything could make me hate a Riker-centric story, but Michael A. Martin managed to not only do that, but make me skeptical of ever reading another Star Trek novel. I mean, shit, I know it's genre fiction, but this was fucking painful.

Fuck.

FFO: adverbs, anti-mammalian prejudice, words that end in ly, caste systems, adverbs, sibilance, adverbs
]]> <![CDATA[Zero Sum Game (Star Trek: Typhon Pact, #1)]]> 9605138
Bashir and Douglas are sent to infiltrate the mysterious species known as the Breen, find the hidden slipstream project, and destroy it. Meanwhile, light-years away, Captain Ezri Dax and her crew on the U.S.S. Aventine play a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a Typhon Pact fleet that stands between them and the safe retrieval of Bashir and Douglas from hostile territory.]]> 357 David Mack Mac 4
As a bit of genre fiction, there were no sentences I wanted to get lost in, but in terms of world-building, story, and character, it was a satisfying and engaging read.

Bonus points for how David Mack seems to be able to effectively and economically humanize every character in the story, even the “bad guys.�

FFO: Cloaks, daggers, refrigeration suits, knowing thy enemy, pews, pews, pews.]]> 3.88 2010 Zero Sum Game (Star Trek: Typhon Pact, #1)
author: David Mack
name: Mac
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/09
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves:
review:
Tightly-plotted, well-paced, and full of characters � both from TV and other Trek books � that I was happy to see return, especially Lonnoc Kedair, maybe my favorite character introduced in the novels.

As a bit of genre fiction, there were no sentences I wanted to get lost in, but in terms of world-building, story, and character, it was a satisfying and engaging read.

Bonus points for how David Mack seems to be able to effectively and economically humanize every character in the story, even the “bad guys.�

FFO: Cloaks, daggers, refrigeration suits, knowing thy enemy, pews, pews, pews.
]]> The Basketball Diaries 682745
Jim Carroll grew up to become a renowned poet and punk rocker. But in this memoir of the mid-1960's, set during his coming-of-age from 12 to 15, he was a rebellious teenager making a place and a name for himself on the unforgiving streets of New York City. During these years, he chronicled his experiences, and the result is a diary of unparalleled candor that conveys his alternately hilarious and terrifying teenage existence. Here is Carroll prowling New York City--playing basketball, hustling, stealing, getting high, getting hooked, and searching for something pure.]]> 224 Jim Carroll Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 3.99 1978 The Basketball Diaries
author: Jim Carroll
name: Mac
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Mac
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain]]> 33413910
An uproarious account of Mark Twain’s endless attempts to strike it rich, all of which served only to empty his pockets

Mark Twain’s lifetime spans America’s era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term “Gilded Age� failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess.

Instead, Twain’s mining firm failed, despite striking real silver. He ended up somehow owing money over his 70,000 acres of inherited land. And his plan to market the mysteriously energizing coca leaves from the Amazon fizzled when no ships would sail to South America. Undaunted, Twain poured his money into the latest newfangled inventions of his time, all of which failed miserably.

In Crawford’s hilarious telling, the familiar image of Twain takes on a new and surprising dimension. Twain’s story of financial optimism and perseverance is a kind of cracked-mirror history of American business itself—in its grandest cockeyed manifestations, its most comical lows, and its determined refusal to ever give up.]]> 224 Alan Pell Crawford 0544836464 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 3.57 How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain
author: Alan Pell Crawford
name: Mac
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America's Revolutionary War in the South]]> 199388345
The famous battles that form the backbone of the story put forth of American independence—at Lexington and Concord, Brandywine, Germantown, Saratoga, and Monmouth, while crucial, did not lead to the surrender at Yorktown.

It was in the three-plus years between Monmouth and Yorktown that the war was won.

Alan Pell Crawford’s riveting new book, This Fierce People, tells the story of these missing three years, long ignored by historians, and of the fierce battles fought in the south that made up the central theater of military operations in the latter years of the Revolutionary War, upending the essential American myth that the War of Independence was fought primarily in the north.

Weaving throughout the stories of the heroic men and women, largely unsung patriots—African Americans and whites, militiamen and “irregulars,� Patriots and Tories, Americans, Frenchmen, Brits and Hessians, Crawford reveals the misperceptions and contradictions of our accepted understanding of how our nation came to be, as well as the national narrative that America’s victory over the British lay solely with General George Washington and his troops.]]> 400 Alan Pell Crawford 0593318501 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 4.13 This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America's Revolutionary War in the South
author: Alan Pell Crawford
name: Mac
average rating: 4.13
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rebel with a Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian]]> 55959426 For fans of Mary Norris and Benjamin Dreyer, an unconventional guide to the English language drawn from the cross-country adventures of an itinerant grammarian.

When EllenJovinfirst walked outside her Manhattan apartment and set up a folding table with a sign reading “Grammar Table,� it took about 30 seconds to get her first visitor. EVERYONE had a question for her.Grammar Table was such a hit—attracting the attention of theNew York Times, NPR, and CBS National News—that Ellen soon hit the road, traveling across the U.S. to answer questions from students, retired editors, bickering couples, and anyone else who uses words in this world.

InRebel with a Clauseshe tackles what is most on people’s minds, grammatically speaking—from the Oxford comma to things you were never told about dictionaries, the ubiquity oflike, common errors in online dating profiles, the likely lifespan ofwhom, semicolonphobia, and much, much more!

Punctuated with linguistic debates from tiny towns to sprawling state capitals, this is a treasure trove for anyone wishing to shore up their prose or delight in our age-old and universal fascination with language.]]> 400 Ellen Jovin 0358278155 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 4.00 2022 Rebel with a Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian
author: Ellen Jovin
name: Mac
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> Thinking Shakespeare 1334872 455 Barry Edelstein 1411498720 Mac 3
It might be in part because it’s written for a very beginner audience, and even though I’m by no means an expert, there wasn’t much that was new to me.

However, the biggest problem for me was that the exercises and tools were not simply explained, every single one was demonstrated to within an inch of its life.

Rather than simply saying “Paraphrase your lines into your own words to understand what your character is saying,� Edelstein gives five examples of how you might paraphrase every speech he talks about.

Rather than simply saying “When scanning metric beats in your verse, sometimes there will be words than can be scanned multiple ways,� Edelstein gives a dozen examples of verse lines and how they might be scanned and what each might mean.

After a while, it became tedious.

I don’t necessarily disagree with any of Edelstein’s acting advice, other than the fact that he places such an enormous emphasis on scansion and I think scansion is mostly bullshit. But the way he lays out his information feels like it misses the forest for the trees.

The first and last chapters are really great. The stuff in the middle is a little repetitive.

Also, maybe the worst book cover in history? Christ, I’ve never seen something so hideous.

FFO: iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls, anapests.]]> 4.63 2007 Thinking Shakespeare
author: Barry Edelstein
name: Mac
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
review:
This book was a real slog for me.

It might be in part because it’s written for a very beginner audience, and even though I’m by no means an expert, there wasn’t much that was new to me.

However, the biggest problem for me was that the exercises and tools were not simply explained, every single one was demonstrated to within an inch of its life.

Rather than simply saying “Paraphrase your lines into your own words to understand what your character is saying,� Edelstein gives five examples of how you might paraphrase every speech he talks about.

Rather than simply saying “When scanning metric beats in your verse, sometimes there will be words than can be scanned multiple ways,� Edelstein gives a dozen examples of verse lines and how they might be scanned and what each might mean.

After a while, it became tedious.

I don’t necessarily disagree with any of Edelstein’s acting advice, other than the fact that he places such an enormous emphasis on scansion and I think scansion is mostly bullshit. But the way he lays out his information feels like it misses the forest for the trees.

The first and last chapters are really great. The stuff in the middle is a little repetitive.

Also, maybe the worst book cover in history? Christ, I’ve never seen something so hideous.

FFO: iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls, anapests.
]]> Shakespeare and the Jews 102014 Even as Shakespeare has come to embody Englishness itself, The Merchant of Venice, with its exploration of Jewish criminality, conversion, race, alien status, and national identity, now stands at the crossroads of cultural exclusion and cultural longing. In this formidably researched new book, Shapiro sheds fascinating light on the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries and opens new questions about culture and identity in Elizabethan England.]]> 320 James Shapiro 0231103441 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 4.06 1995 Shakespeare and the Jews
author: James Shapiro
name: Mac
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642]]> 948440 339 Andrew Gurr 0521807301 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 3.86 2010 The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642
author: Andrew Gurr
name: Mac
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres (Oxford Shakespeare Topics)]]> 286621 text for performance, excitingly returning the play to its original staging at the Globe.]]> 188 Andrew Gurr 0198711581 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 4.26 2000 Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres (Oxford Shakespeare Topics)
author: Andrew Gurr
name: Mac
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Playgoing in Shakespeare's London]]> 985703 360 Andrew Gurr 0521543223 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare 4.12 1987 Playgoing in Shakespeare's London
author: Andrew Gurr
name: Mac
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr, shakespeare
review:

]]> Clock Without Hands 93258 256 Carson McCullers 0395929733 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.88 1961 Clock Without Hands
author: Carson McCullers
name: Mac
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> Reflections in a Golden Eye 243924 136 Carson McCullers 0618084754 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.89 1941 Reflections in a Golden Eye
author: Carson McCullers
name: Mac
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1941
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> The Member of the Wedding 330244
The novel that became an award-winning play and a major motion picture and that has charmed generations of readers, Carson McCullers's classic The Member of the Wedding is now available in small-format trade paperback for the first time.

"A marvelous study of the agony of adolescence" (Detroit Free Press), The Member of the Wedding showcases Carson McCullers at her most sensitive, astute, and lasting best.

An alternate-cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.]]> 163 Carson McCullers 0618492399 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.82 1946 The Member of the Wedding
author: Carson McCullers
name: Mac
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories]]> 45791 A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers’s best stories, including her beloved novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café.� A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose café serves as the town’s gathering place. Among other fine works, the collection also includes “Wunderkind,� McCullers’s first published story written when she was only seventeen about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist. Newly reset and available for the first time in a handsome trade paperback edition, The Ballad of the Sad Café is a brilliant study of love and longing from one of the South’s finest writers.]]> 160 Carson McCullers 0618565868 Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 3.96 1951 The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
author: Carson McCullers
name: Mac
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 37380 359 Carson McCullers 0618084746 Mac 5
I’m someone who loves lots of plot and lots of words. Give me exciting action or sentences that go on for days and I’m happy. This book had neither and somehow I still couldn’t put it down.

McCullers’s writing reminds me of all the late nights I spent in the 24-hour dive bar in my hometown. And that would be true even if a significant portion of the book didn’t take place in an all-night diner. There’s something about the way she arranges a group of characters who are fascinating while being understated and tells a story where lots of things happen but no single thing is the focus or the crux. There’s no single protagonist; there’s no single climax. There’s just life: life in its varied and lonely weirdness.

I used to sit at the dive until four or five in the morning on weekends shooting the shit with my friends, watching the freaks and listening to their stories. Only a writer as brilliant as McCullers could turn that into a great novel.]]> 4.00 1940 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
author: Carson McCullers
name: Mac
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1940
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/10
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves:
review:
The only word I can use to describe this book is haunting. It is insightful and compelling in a way that I have never encountered in a book before. I didn’t even know that books could do what this book did. I don’t understand it at all.

I’m someone who loves lots of plot and lots of words. Give me exciting action or sentences that go on for days and I’m happy. This book had neither and somehow I still couldn’t put it down.

McCullers’s writing reminds me of all the late nights I spent in the 24-hour dive bar in my hometown. And that would be true even if a significant portion of the book didn’t take place in an all-night diner. There’s something about the way she arranges a group of characters who are fascinating while being understated and tells a story where lots of things happen but no single thing is the focus or the crux. There’s no single protagonist; there’s no single climax. There’s just life: life in its varied and lonely weirdness.

I used to sit at the dive until four or five in the morning on weekends shooting the shit with my friends, watching the freaks and listening to their stories. Only a writer as brilliant as McCullers could turn that into a great novel.
]]> <![CDATA[The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War]]> 198137952
From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over a thousand productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four) Americans, two thirds of whom had never seen a play before. At its helm was an unassuming theater professor, Hallie Flanagan. It employed, at its peak, over twelve thousand struggling artists, some of whom, like Orson Welles and Arthur Miller, would soon be famous, but most of whom were just ordinary people eager to work again at their craft. It was the product of a moment when the arts, no less than industry and agriculture, were thought to be vital to the health of the republic, bringing Shakespeare to the public, alongside modern plays that confronted the pressing issues of the day—from slum housing and public health to racism and the rising threat of fascism.

The Playbook takes us through some of its most remarkable productions, including a groundbreaking Black production of Macbeth in Harlem and an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s anti-fascist novel It Can’t Happen Here that opened simultaneously in 18 cities, underscoring the Federal Theatre’s incredible range and vitality. But this once thriving Works Progress Administration relief program did not survive and has left little trace. For the Federal Theatre was the first New Deal project to be attacked and ended on the grounds that it promoted “un-American� activity, sowing the seeds not only for the McCarthyism of the 1950s but also for our own era of merciless polarization. It was targeted by the first House un-American Affairs Committee, and its demise was a turning point in American cultural life—for, as Shapiro brilliantly argues, “the health of democracy and theater, twin born in ancient Greece, have always been mutually dependent.�

A defining legacy of this culture war was how the strategies used to undermine and ultimately destroy the Federal Theatre were assembled by a charismatic and cunning congressman from East Texas, the now largely forgotten Martin Dies, who in doing so pioneered the right-wing political playbook now so prevalent that it seems eternal.]]> 384 James Shapiro 0593490207 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 3.99 2024 The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War
author: James Shapiro
name: Mac
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Perfume: The Story of a Murderer]]> 343 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.]]> 263 Patrick Süskind Mac 0 to-read, f-tbr 4.05 1985 Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
author: Patrick Süskind
name: Mac
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: to-read, f-tbr
review:

]]> Cleopatra: A Life 7968243 The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.

Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.

Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and–after his murder–three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.

Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra’s supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff ‘s is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.]]> 369 Stacy Schiff 0316001929 Mac 0 to-read, nf-tbr 3.73 2010 Cleopatra: A Life
author: Stacy Schiff
name: Mac
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves: to-read, nf-tbr
review:

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