A.E.'s bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 12 Feb 2022 08:05:44 -0800 60 A.E.'s bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg My Last Continent 27276274 It is only among the glacial mountains, cleaving icebergs, and frigid waters of Antarctica that Deb Gardener and Keller Sullivan feel at home. For a few blissful weeks each year they study the habits of Emperor and Adelie penguins and find solace in their work and in one another. But Antarctica, like their fleeting romance, is a fragile place, imperiled by the world to the north.

Each year, Deb and Keller play tour guide to the passengers on the small expedition ship that ferries them to their research station. But this year, when Keller fails to appear on board, Deb begins to reconsider their complicated past and the uncertainty of any future they might share. Then, shortly into the journey, Deb’s ship receives an emergency signal from The Australis, a cruise liner that has hit desperate trouble in the ice-choked waters of the Southern Ocean. Soon Deb’s role will change from researcher to rescuer; among the crew of that sinking ship, Deb learns, is Keller.]]> 308 Midge Raymond 1501124706 A.E. 0 to-read 3.88 2016 My Last Continent
author: Midge Raymond
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> Appleseed 55659625 In the vein of Neal Stephenson and Jeff VanderMeer, an epic speculative novel from Young Lions Fiction Award–finalist Matt Bell, a breakout book that explores climate change, manifest destiny, humanity's unchecked exploitation of natural resources, and the small but powerful magic contained within every single apple.Ěý

In eighteenth-century Ohio, two brothers travel into the wooded frontier, planting apple orchards from which they plan to profit in the years to come. As they remake the wilderness in their own image, planning for a future of settlement and civilization, the long-held bonds and secrets between the two will be tested, fractured and broken—and possibly healed.

Fifty years from now, in the second half of the twenty-first century, climate change has ravaged the Earth. Having invested early in genetic engineering and food science, one company now owns all the world’s resources. But a growing resistance is working to redistribute both land and power—and in a pivotal moment for the future of humanity, one of the company’s original founders will return to headquarters, intending to destroy what he helped build.

A thousand years in the future, North America is covered by a massive sheet of ice. One lonely sentient being inhabits a tech station on top of the glacier—and in a daring and seemingly impossible quest, sets out to follow a homing beacon across the continent in the hopes of discovering the last remnant of civilization.

Hugely ambitious in scope and theme, Appleseed is the breakout novel from a writer “as self-assured as he is audaciousâ€� (NPR) who “may well have invented the pulse-pounding novel of ideasâ€� (Jess Walter). Part speculative epic, part tech thriller, part reinvented fairy tale, Appleseed is an unforgettable meditation on climate change; corporate, civic, and familial responsibility; manifest destiny; and the myths and legends that sustain us all.Ěý]]> 465 Matt Bell 006304014X A.E. 0 currently-reading 3.54 2021 Appleseed
author: Matt Bell
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> In the Dream House 43317482 251 Carmen Maria Machado 1644450038 A.E. 0 to-read 4.41 2019 In the Dream House
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> And West Is West 24001085
When Jessica, a young Air Force drone pilot in Nevada, is tasked with launching a missile against a suspected terrorist halfway across the world, she realizes that though women and children are in the crosshairs of her screen, she has no choice but to follow orders. Ethan, a young Wall Street quant, is involved in a more bloodless connection to war when he develops an algorithm that enables his company’s clients to profit by exploiting the international financial instability caused by exactly this kind of antiterrorist strike. These two are only minor players, but their actions have global implications that tear lives apart--including their own. When Jessica finds herself discharged from the service and Ethan makes an error that costs him his job, both find themselves adrift, cast out by a corrupt system and forced to take the blame for decisions they did not make.

In And West Is West, Ron Childress has crafted a powerful, politically charged, and terrifyingly real scenario that takes readers into the lives of characters living in different worlds yet bound together by forces beyond their control.]]> 320 Ron Childress 1616205237 A.E. 0 3.45 2015 And West Is West
author: Ron Childress
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Death in Her Hands 52878453
While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body". Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to area, having moved her from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home.

A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, 'Death in Her Hands' asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both guide us closer to the truth and keep us at bay from it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, only this time the stakes have never been higher.]]> 259 Ottessa Moshfegh 1984879359 A.E. 0 3.25 2020 Death in Her Hands
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination]]> 41940418 A bold, incisive look at race and reparative writing in American fiction, by the author of Your Face in Mine

White Flights is a meditation on whiteness in American fiction and culture from the end of the civil rights movement to the present. At the heart of the book, Jess Row ties “white flight”—the movement of white Americans into segregated communities, whether in suburbs or newly gentrified downtowns—to white writers setting their stories in isolated or emotionally insulated landscapes, from the mountains of Idaho in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping to the claustrophobic households in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Row uses brilliant close readings of work from well-known writers such as Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, Richard Ford, and David Foster Wallace to examine the ways these and other writers have sought imaginative space for themselves at the expense of engaging with race.

White Flights aims to move fiction to a more inclusive place, and Row looks beyond criticism to consider writing as a reparative act. What would it mean, he asks, if writers used fiction “to approach each other again�? Row turns to the work of James Baldwin, Dorothy Allison, and James Alan McPherson to discuss interracial love in fiction, while also examining his own family heritage as a way to interrogate his position. A moving and provocative book that includes music, film, and literature in its arguments, White Flights is an essential work of cultural and literary criticism.]]> 325 Jess Row 1555978819 A.E. 0 4.09 2019 White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination
author: Jess Row
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
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]]> The Bluest Eye 11337 The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways.

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.]]> 216 Toni Morrison A.E. 0 4.13 1970 The Bluest Eye
author: Toni Morrison
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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]]> Know My Name 50196744
Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.]]> 384 Chanel Miller 0735223718 A.E. 0 4.69 2019 Know My Name
author: Chanel Miller
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> The Bell Jar 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 A.E. 0 4.05 1963 The Bell Jar
author: Sylvia Plath
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods]]> 7803
Hill had climbed 180 feet up into the tree high on a mountain on December 10, 1997, for what she thought would be a two- to three-week-long "tree-sit." The action was intended to stop Pacific Lumber, a division of the Maxxam Corporation, from the environmentally destructive process of clear-cutting the ancient redwood and the trees around it. The area immediately next to Luna had already been stripped and, because, as many believed, nothing was left to hold the soil to the mountain, a huge part of the hill had slid into the town of Stafford, wiping out many homes.

Over the course of what turned into an historic civil action, Hill endured El Nino storms, helicopter harassment, a ten-day siege by company security guards, and the tremendous sorrow brought about by an old-growth forest's destruction. This story--written while she lived on a tiny platform eighteen stories off the ground--is one that only she can tell.

Twenty-five-year-old Julia Butterfly Hill never planned to become what some have called her--the Rosa Parks of the environmental movement. Shenever expected to be honored as one of Good Housekeeping's "Most Admired Women of 1998" and George magazine's "20 Most Interesting Women in Politics," to be featured in People magazine's "25 Most Intriguing People of the Year" issue, or to receive hundreds of letters weekly from young people around the world. Indeed, when she first climbed into Luna, she had no way of knowing the harrowing weather conditions and the attacks on her and her cause. She had no idea of the loneliness she would face or that her feet wouldn't touch ground for more than two years. She couldn't predict the pain of being an eyewitness to the attempted destruction of one of the last ancient redwood forests in the world, nor could she anticipate the immeasurable strength she would gain or the life lessons she would learn from Luna. Although her brave vigil and indomitable spirit have made her a heroine in the eyes of many, Julia's story is a simple, heartening tale of love, conviction, and the profound courage she has summoned to fight for our earth's legacy.]]> 262 Julia Butterfly Hill 0062516590 A.E. 0 4.00 2000 The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods
author: Julia Butterfly Hill
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2000
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]]> <![CDATA[We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast]]> 43565381 Some people reject the fact, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, that our planet is warming because of human activity. But do those of us who accept the reality of human-caused climate change truly believe it? If we did, surely we would be roused to act on what we know. Will future generations distinguish between those who didn’t believe in the science of global warming and those who said they accepted the science but failed to change their lives in response?

In We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer explores the central global dilemma of our time in a surprising, deeply personal, and urgent new way. The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves—with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat—and don’t eat—for breakfast.

]]> 288 Jonathan Safran Foer 0374280002 A.E. 0 3.73 2019 We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast
author: Jonathan Safran Foer
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> A Christmas Carol 5326
Introduction and Afterword by Joe Wheeler
To bitter, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is just another day. But all that changes when the ghost of his long-dead business partner appears, warning Scrooge to change his ways before it's too late.

Part of the Focus on the Family Great Stories collection, this abridged edition features an in-depth introduction and discussion questions by Joe Wheeler to provide greater understanding for today's reader. "A Christmas Carol" captures the heart of the holidays like no other novel.]]> 184 Charles Dickens 1561797464 A.E. 0 4.06 1843 A Christmas Carol
author: Charles Dickens
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1843
rating: 0
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]]> A Thousand Acres 41193 371 Jane Smiley 1400033837 A.E. 0 3.82 1991 A Thousand Acres
author: Jane Smiley
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> The Pisces 32871394 An original, imaginative, and hilarious debut novel about love, anxiety, and sea creatures, from the author of So Sad Today.

Lucy has been writing her dissertation about Sappho for thirteen years when she and Jamie break up. After she hits rock bottom in Phoenix, her Los Angeles-based sister insists Lucy housesit for the summer—her only tasks caring for a beloved diabetic dog and trying to learn to care for herself. Annika’s home is a gorgeous glass cube atop Venice Beach, but Lucy can find no peace from her misery and anxiety—not in her love addiction group therapy meetings, not in frequent Tinder meetups, not in Dominic the foxhound’s easy affection, not in ruminating on the ancient Greeks. Yet everything changes when Lucy becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer one night while sitting alone on the beach rocks.

Whip-smart, neurotically funny, sexy, and above all, fearless, The Pisces is built on a premise both sirenic and incredibly real—what happens when you think love will save you but are afraid it might also kill you.]]> 270 Melissa Broder 1524761559 A.E. 0 3.31 2018 The Pisces
author: Melissa Broder
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Invitation to a Beheading 376561 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his final days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his prison cell.]]> 223 Vladimir Nabokov 0679725318 A.E. 0 3.95 1935 Invitation to a Beheading
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1935
rating: 0
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]]> The Year of Magical Thinking 7815
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 A.E. 0 3.94 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking
author: Joan Didion
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> Convenience Store Woman 38357895
A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata A.E. 0 3.70 2016 Convenience Store Woman
author: Sayaka Murata
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 A.E. 0 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> Severance 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 A.E. 0 3.90 2018 Severance
author: Ling Ma
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Homesick for Another World 30079724 An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time

Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel.
And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition.

But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.

Bettering myself --
Mr. Wu --
Malibu --
The weirdos --
A dark and winding road --
No place for good people --
Slumming --
An honest woman --
The beach boy --
Nothing ever happens here --
Dancing in the moonlight --
The surrogate --
The locked room --
A better place]]> 294 Ottessa Moshfegh 0399562885 A.E. 0 3.63 2017 Homesick for Another World
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2017
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]]> Prodigals 25664497 Prodigals. A filmmaker escapes New York, accompanied by a woman who may be his therapist, as a violent storm bears down. A lawyer in the throes of divorce seeks refuge at her seaside cottage only to find a vagrant girl living in it. A dilettantish banker sees his ambitions laid bare when he comes under the influence of two strange sisters. A group of friends gathers in the California desert for one last bacchanal, and a journalist finds his visit to the French country home of a former tennis star taking a deeply unnerving turn.

Strivers, misfits, and children of privilege, the restless, sympathetic characters in Jackson's astonishing debut hew to passion and perversity through life's tempests. Theirs is a quest for meaning and authenticity in lives spoiled by self­-knowledge and haunted by spiritual longing. Lyrical and unflinching, cerebral and surreal, Prodigals maps the degradations of contemporary life with insight and grace, from the comedy of our foibles, to the granular dignity of experience, to the pathos of our yearning for home.]]> 240 Greg Jackson 0374238138 A.E. 0 3.66 2016 Prodigals
author: Greg Jackson
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> Eileen 23453099 So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back.

This is the story of how I disappeared.

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys� prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.

Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature. Ottessa Moshfegh is also the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Homesick for Another World: Stories, and McGlue.]]> 260 Ottessa Moshfegh 1594206627 A.E. 0 3.57 2015 Eileen
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
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]]> <![CDATA[My Year of Rest and Relaxation]]> 44279110
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]> 289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522131 A.E. 0 3.62 2018 My Year of Rest and Relaxation
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer]]> 27774749
From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London

In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey.Ěý

Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy.

At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.]]> 378 Kate Summerscale 1594205787 A.E. 0 3.43 2016 The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
author: Kate Summerscale
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> Jillian 21535475 227 Halle Butler 1940430291 A.E. 0 3.53 2015 Jillian
author: Halle Butler
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> The New Me 36342706 A biting satire of the false promise of reinvention, by a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Granta Best Young American Novelist

I'm still trying to make the dream possible: still might finish my cleaning project, still might sign up for that yoga class, still might, still might. I step into the shower and almost faint, an image of taking the day by the throat and bashing its head against the wall floating in my mind.

Thirty-year-old Millie just can't pull it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless temp job until she can return home to her empty apartment, where she oscillates wildly between self-recrimination and mild delusion, fixating on all the little ways she might change her life. Then she watches TV until she drops off to sleep, and the cycle begins again.

When the possibility of a full-time job offer arises, it seems to bring the better life she's envisioning - one that involves nicer clothes, fresh produce, maybe even financial independence - within reach. But with it also comes the paralyzing realization, lurking just beneath the surface, of just how hollow that vision has become.

Darkly hilarious and devastating, The New Me is a dizzying descent into the mind of a young woman trapped in the funhouse of American consumer culture.]]> 193 Halle Butler 0143133608 A.E. 0 3.30 2019 The New Me
author: Halle Butler
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2019
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]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 A.E. 0 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
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]]> Conversations with Friends 32187419 A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth."]]> 304 Sally Rooney 0451499077 A.E. 0 3.74 2017 Conversations with Friends
author: Sally Rooney
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
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]]> Lolita 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 A.E. 0 3.87 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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]]> Atonement 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.

As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X A.E. 0 3.94 2001 Atonement
author: Ian McEwan
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> The Children Act 21965107
Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is an expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts.

But Fiona's professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider an open marriage and, after an argument, moves out of their house. His departure leaves her adrift, wondering whether it was not love she had lost so much as a modern form of respectability; whether it was not contempt and ostracism she really fears. She decides to throw herself into her work, especially a complex case involving a seventeen-year-old boy whose parents will not permit a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses. But Jack doesn't leave her thoughts, and the pressure to resolve the case - as well as her crumbling marriage - tests Fiona in ways that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page.]]> 221 Ian McEwan 0385539703 A.E. 0 3.69 2014 The Children Act
author: Ian McEwan
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2014
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]]> Nutshell 30008702 Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master.

To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things.]]> 208 Ian McEwan A.E. 0 3.65 2016 Nutshell
author: Ian McEwan
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
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]]> Solar 7140754
When Michael’s personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?

A complex novel that brilliantly traces the arc of one man’s ambitions and self-deceptions, Solar is a startling, witty, and stylish new work from one of the world’s great writers.]]> 287 Ian McEwan A.E. 0 3.28 2010 Solar
author: Ian McEwan
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2010
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]]> <![CDATA[The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure]]> 989670
The Tenth Anniversary Edition

Richly illustrated with eye-candy artwork

Perfect for reading while sitting on the "throne"

Revised, improved, and updated

256 pages of crap]]> 256 Joseph C. Jenkins 0964425831 A.E. 0 4.40 1996 The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure
author: Joseph C. Jenkins
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1996
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]]> Dark Places 5886881
Since then, she has been drifting. But when she is contacted by a group who are convinced of Ben's innocence, Libby starts to ask questions she never dared to before. Was the voice she heard her brother's? Ben was a misfit in their small town, but was he capable of murder? Are there secrets to uncover at the family farm or is Libby deluding herself because she wants her brother back?

She begins to realise that everyone in her family had something to hide that day... especially Ben. Now, twenty-four years later, the truth is going to be even harder to find.

Who did massacre the Day family?]]> 424 Gillian Flynn 0307341569 A.E. 0 3.95 2009 Dark Places
author: Gillian Flynn
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
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]]> Sharp Objects 18045891
Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0307341550 (ISBN 13: 9780307341556)]]> 254 Gillian Flynn 0297851535 A.E. 0 4.05 2006 Sharp Objects
author: Gillian Flynn
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> Gone Girl 19288043 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 415 Gillian Flynn 0307588378 A.E. 0 4.22 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
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]]> <![CDATA[The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing]]> 22318578 Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you'll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo's clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).

With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house "spark joy" (and which don't), this international best seller featuring Tokyo's newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home - and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.

]]> 213 Marie KondĹŤ 1607747308 A.E. 0 3.88 2010 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
author: Marie KondĹŤ
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.88
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]]> <![CDATA[Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life]]> 13185350 Live a Meaningful Life is our finest, most important creation to date. It’s also the best thing we’ve ever written about Minimalism and will likely serve as the cornerstone to our work for years to come. It took us a year to write this book—a year of creating the best material possible and finding ways to relate it back to our lives so you would have practical ways to relate the subject matter to your life.

Chapter

Do you jump out of bed every morning excited about the day in front of you? Do you live a life defined by deep meaning, endless passion, excellent health, empowering relationships, and constant growth?

You can.

Ultimately, the eight chapters and ninety-eight sections inside this book are meant to help you take small actions each day that will radically improve your life over a short period of time.

This book’s foreword and first chapter go into vast detail on our personal backgrounds, our troubled pasts, our depression, and how we made changes that transformed our lives over two years. These chapters discuss why didn’t feel fulfilled by our careers and why we turned to our society’s idea of a meaningful we bought stuff, we spent too much money, and we lived paycheck to paycheck trying to purchase happiness in every trip to the shopping mall or luxurious vacation we could find. Instead of finding our passion, instead of searching for our mission, we pacified ourselves with ephemeral indulgences, inducing a crack-cocaine high that didn’t last far past the checkout line.

The subsequent chapters move on the the five dimensions that comprise a meaningful

1. Health
2. Relationships
3. Passions
4. Growth
5. Contribution

These are the things we changed in our lives that had the most impact. These changes resulted in more meaningful lives for the two of us. These five chapters discuss each of these concepts in depth, much more than our website. Throughout these chapters we consider why these areas are the most important dimensions of our lives and how minimalism allowed us to focus on these areas. We give you personal examples of how we changed everything in our lives over two year span. We left our big corporate jobs, changed our diets, started exercising regularly, got healthy, strengthened our core relationships, made great new relationships, started pursuing our passions, contributed to more people than we ever had, and found ways to be happy and content with our lives.

The final chapter of this book, "The Confluence of Meaning," binds together the five dimensions and asks the reader important questions about their life. These questions are not rhetorical, they are meant to make you think. The entire book is designed to help you actively engage in each chapter by reading the content more than once, taking notes, highlighting meaningful passages, making lists, and, most importantly, taking action.]]> 138 Joshua Fields Millburn A.E. 0 3.64 2011 Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life
author: Joshua Fields Millburn
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2011
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]]> <![CDATA[Beyond Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death]]> 27040541
But that was just the beginning.

In Beyond Biocentrism , acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza, one of TIME Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in 2014," and leading astronomer Bob Berman, take the reader on an intellectual thrill-ride as they re-examine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself.

The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries. Science tells us with some precision that the universe is 26.8 percent dark matter, 68.3 percent dark energy, and only 4.9 percent ordinary matter, but must confess that it doesn't really know what dark matter is and knows even less about dark energy. Science is increasingly pointing toward an infinite universe but has no ability to explain what that really means. Concepts such as time, space, and even causality are increasingly being demonstrated as meaningless.

All of science is based on information passing through our consciousness but science hasn't the foggiest idea what consciousness is, and it can't explain the linkage between subatomic states and observation by conscious observers. Science describes life as a random occurrence in a dead universe but has no real understanding of how life began or why the universe appears to be exquisitely designed for the emergence of life.

The biocentrism theory isn't a rejection of science. Quite the opposite. Biocentrism challenges us to fully accept the implications of the latest scientific findings in fields ranging from plant biology and cosmology to quantum entanglement and consciousness.

By listening to what the science is telling us, it becomes increasingly clear that life and consciousness are fundamental to any true understanding of the universe. This forces a fundamental rethinking of everything we thought we knew about life, death, and our place in the universe.]]> 224 Robert Lanza 194295221X A.E. 0 3.92 2016 Beyond Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death
author: Robert Lanza
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.92
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]]> <![CDATA[Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe]]> 5625477 US News & World Report cover story called him a "genius" and a "renegade thinker," even likening him to Einstein. Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe.

Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of Western, natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, towards doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universe’s genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the planet upside down again with the revolutionary view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around.

In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Biocentrism takes the reader on a seemingly improbable but ultimately inescapable journey through a foreign universe—our own—from the viewpoints of an acclaimed biologist and a leading astronomer. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which Western science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism will shatter the reader’s ideas of life—time and space, and even death. At the same time it will release us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal.

The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century dominated by physics. It seems fitting, then, to begin the century by turning the universe outside-in and unifying the foundations of science with a simple idea discovered by one of the leading life-scientists of our age. Biocentrism awakens in readers a new sense of possibility, and is full of so many shocking new perspectives that the reader will never see reality the same way again.]]> 223 Robert Lanza 1933771690 A.E. 0 3.90 2009 Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
author: Robert Lanza
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.90
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]]> God Help the Child 23602473
Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child is a searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the center: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish ... Booker, the man Bride loves and loses, whose core of anger was born in the wake of the childhood murder of his beloved brother ... Rain, the mysterious white child, who finds in Bride the only person she can talk to about the abuse she's suffered at the hands of her prostitute mother ... and Sweetness, Bride's mother, who takes a lifetime to understand that "what you do to children matters. And they might never forget."]]> 178 Toni Morrison 0307594173 A.E. 0 3.79 2015 God Help the Child
author: Toni Morrison
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
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]]> Slade House 40611069 Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents � an odd brother and sister � extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late...

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.]]> 241 David Mitchell 0812998693 A.E. 0 3.79 2015 Slade House
author: David Mitchell
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
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]]> The Burgess Boys 15823461
With a rare combination of brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose, and remarkable insight into character, Elizabeth Strout has brought to life two deeply human protagonists whose struggles and triumphs will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page. Tender, tough-minded, loving, and deeply illuminating about the ties that bind us to family and home, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout's newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.]]> 320 Elizabeth Strout 1400067685 A.E. 0 3.58 2013 The Burgess Boys
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
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]]> <![CDATA[Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear]]> 24453082 Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.]]> 276 Elizabeth Gilbert 1594634718 A.E. 0 3.95 2015 Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.95
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]]> See What I Have Done 32508637 See What I Have Done, Sarah Schmidt recasts one of the most fascinating murder cases of all time into an intimate story of a volatile household and a family devoid of love.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone’s killed Father. The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close to the family have a different tale to tell—of a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond even stronger than blood, desperate for their independence.

As the police search for clues, Emma comforts an increasingly distraught Lizzie whose memories of that morning flash in scattered fragments. Had she been in the barn or the pear arbor to escape the stifling heat of the house? When did she last speak to her stepmother? Were they really gone and would everything be better now? Shifting among the perspectives of the unreliable Lizzie, her older sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and the enigmatic stranger Benjamin, the events of that fateful day are slowly revealed through a high-wire feat of storytelling.]]> 328 Sarah Schmidt 0802126596 A.E. 0 3.16 2017 See What I Have Done
author: Sarah Schmidt
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.16
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]]> <![CDATA[Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl]]> 152519 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813�1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North.

Written and published in 1861 after Jacobs' harrowing escape from a vile and predatory master, the memoir delivers a powerful and unflinching portrayal of the abuses and hypocrisy of the master-slave relationship. Jacobs writes frankly of the horrors she suffered as a slave, her eventual escape after several unsuccessful attempts, and her seven years in self-imposed exile, hiding in a coffin-like "garret" attached to her grandmother's porch.

A rare firsthand account of a courageous woman's determination and endurance, this inspirational story also represents a valuable historical record of the continuing battle for freedom and the preservation of family.]]> 176 Harriet Ann Jacobs 0486419312 A.E. 0 4.15 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
author: Harriet Ann Jacobs
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1861
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]]> Twelve Years a Slave 18478222 363 Solomon Northup 0989794806 A.E. 0 4.21 1853 Twelve Years a Slave
author: Solomon Northup
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1853
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege]]> 9759438 302 Will Potter 087286538X A.E. 0 4.35 2011 Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege
author: Will Potter
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.35
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]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X A.E. 0 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
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]]> Cloud Atlas 49628
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .

Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn't end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.]]> 509 David Mitchell 0375507256 A.E. 0 4.02 2004 Cloud Atlas
author: David Mitchell
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
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]]> Three Ways to Disappear 43866638
As Sarah faces challenges in her new job--made complicated by complex local politics and a forbidden love--Quinn copes with their mother's refusal to talk about the past, her son's life-threatening illness, and her own increasingly troubled marriage. When Sarah asks Quinn to join her in India, Quinn realizes that the only way to overcome the past is to return to it, and it is in this place of stunning natural beauty and hidden danger that the sisters can finally understand the ways in which their family has disappeared--from their shared history, from one another--and recognize that they may need to risk everything to find themselves again.

With dramatic urgency, a powerful sense of place, and a beautifully rendered cast of characters revealing a deep understanding of human nature in all its flawed glory, Katy Yocom has created an unforgettable novel about saving all that is precious, from endangered species to the indelible bonds among family.]]> 316 Katy Yocom 1618220837 A.E. 0 to-read 4.24 2019 Three Ways to Disappear
author: Katy Yocom
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> The Dragon Keeper 44575844 286 Mindy Mejia 1618220640 A.E. 0 to-read 3.43 2012 The Dragon Keeper
author: Mindy Mejia
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Tourist Trail (Across Oceans, #1)]]> 8666262 An environmental novel about endangered species and those who risk their lives to protect them...

Biologist Angela Haynes is accustomed to dark, lonely nights as one of the few humans at a penguin research station in Patagonia. She has grown used to the cries of penguins before dawn, to meager supplies and housing, to spending most of her days in one of the most remote regions on earth. What she isn't used to is strange men washing ashore, which happens one day on her watch. The man won't tell her his name or where he came from, but Angela, who has a soft spot for strays, tends to him, if for no other reason than to protect her birds and her work. When she later learns why he goes by an alias, why he is a refugee from the law, and why he is a man without a port, she begins to fall in love-and embarks on a journey that takes her deep into Antarctic waters, and even deeper into the emotional territory she thought she'd left behind.

Against the backdrop of the Southern Ocean, The Tourist Trail weaves together the stories of Angela as well as FBI agent Robert Porter, dispatched on a mission that unearths a past he would rather keep buried; and Ethan Downes, a computer tech whose love for a passionate activist draws him into a dangerous mission.]]> 282 John Yunker 0979647525 A.E. 0 currently-reading 3.64 2010 The Tourist Trail (Across Oceans, #1)
author: John Yunker
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2010
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]]> <![CDATA[Everyday Book Marketing: Promotion Ideas to Fit Your Regularly Scheduled Life]]> 18345703 260 Midge Raymond 1618220276 A.E. 0 currently-reading 4.29 2013 Everyday Book Marketing: Promotion Ideas to Fit Your Regularly Scheduled Life
author: Midge Raymond
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2013
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]]> Young Men and Fire 30044 "blowup" -- an explosive, 2,000-degree firestorm 300 feet deep and 200 feet tall -- a deadly explosion of flame and wind rarely encountered and little understood at the time.Ěý Only seconds ahead of the approaching firestorm, the foreman, R. Wagner Dodge, throws himself into the ashes of an "escape fire " - and survives as most of his confused men run, their last moments obscured by smoke. The parents of the dead cry murder, charging that the foreman's fire killed their boys.Ěý Exactly what happened in Mann Gulch that day has been obscured by years of grief and controversy. Now a master storyteller finally gives the Mann Gulch fire its due as tragedy.
ĚýĚýĚýĚý These first deaths among the Forest Service's elite firefighters prompted widespread examination of federal fire policy, of the field of fire science, and of the frailty of young men. For Maclean, who witnessed the fire from the ground in August of 1949,Ěý and even then he knew he would one day become a part of its story.Ěý It is a story of Montana, of the ways of wildfires, firefighters, and fire scientists, and especially of a crew, young and proud, who "hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy." This tale is also Maclean's own, the story of a writer obsessed by a strange and human horror, unable to let the truth die with these young men, searching for the last - and lasting - word. A canvas on which to tell many stories, including the story of his research into the story itself. And finally Nature's violence colliding with human fallibility.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean returned to the scene with two of the survivors and pursues the mysteries that Mann Gulch has kept hidden since 1949.Ěý From the words of witnesses, the evidence of history, and the research of fire scientists, Maclean at last assembles the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy; in his last work that consumed 14 years of his life, and earned a 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý The excruciating detail of this book makes for a sobering reading experience. Maclean -- a former University of Chicago English professor and avid fisherman -- also wrote A River Runs Through It and Other Stories , which is set along the Missouri River, one gulch downstream from Mann Gulch.

ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý "A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."Ěý
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý —Ě� from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992

The Men who Perished in the Mann Gulch Fire:
Robert J. Bennett�
Eldon E. Diettert�
James O. Harrison

William J. Heilman�
Phillip R. McVey�
David R. Navon�
Leonard L. Piper�
Stanley J. Reba�
Marvin L. Sherman�
Joseph B. Sylvia

Henry J. Thol, Jr.

Newton R. Thompson

Silas R. Thompson

Survivors of the Fire:
R. Wagner Dodge, foreman�
Walter B. Rumsey

Robert W. Sallee]]> 301 Norman Maclean 0226500624 A.E. 0 to-read 4.03 1992 Young Men and Fire
author: Norman Maclean
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.03
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]]> The Calcutta Chromosome 67100 The Calcutta Chromosome takes readers on a wondrous journey through time as a computer programmer trapped in a mind-numbing job hits upon a curious item that will forever change his life. When Antar discovers the battered ID card of a long-lost acquaintance, he is suddenly drawn into a spellbinding adventure across centuries and around the globe, into the strange life of L. Murugan, a man obsessed with the medical history of malaria, and into a magnificently complex world where conspiracy hangs in the air like mosquitoes on a summer night.]]> 320 Amitav Ghosh 0380813947 A.E. 0 3.49 1996 The Calcutta Chromosome
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1996
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)]]> 237209
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.]]> 429 Tana French 0670038601 A.E. 0 currently-reading 3.75 2007 In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)
author: Tana French
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
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]]> <![CDATA[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings]]> 56867342 Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.� At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare�) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.]]> 288 Maya Angelou 0812980026 A.E. 0 currently-reading 4.40 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
author: Maya Angelou
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1969
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]]> <![CDATA[The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov]]> 18062000
This edition includes the newly discovered story “Natasha."]]> 0 Vladimir Nabokov 1480543217 A.E. 0 currently-reading 4.50 1995 The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1995
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]]> <![CDATA[Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World]]> 42366966 256 Glenn A Albrecht 1501715224 A.E. 0 currently-reading 3.62 Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World
author: Glenn A Albrecht
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.62
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]]> Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1) 6149 Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.]]> 325 Toni Morrison A.E. 0 3.96 1987 Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1)
author: Toni Morrison
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1987
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]]> The Water Dancer 43982054 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.

This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children—the violent and capricious separation of families—and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.]]> 416 Ta-Nehisi Coates A.E. 0 to-read 4.03 2019 The Water Dancer
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
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]]> Between the World and Me 25489625 “This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.�
Ěý
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,� a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Ěý
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.]]> 152 Ta-Nehisi Coates A.E. 0 to-read 4.40 2015 Between the World and Me
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2015
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]]> The Underground Railroad 30555488
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey--hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.]]> 320 Colson Whitehead 0385542364 A.E. 0 to-read 4.04 2016 The Underground Railroad
author: Colson Whitehead
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
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]]> Manifesto: On Never Giving Up 58690669 From the bestselling and Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo's memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism

Bernardine Evaristo's 2019 Booker Prize win was a historic and revolutionary occasion, with Evaristo being the first Black woman and first Black British person ever to win the prize in its fifty-year history. Girl, Woman, Other was named a favorite book of the year by President Obama and Roxane Gay, was translated into thirty-five languages, and has now reached more than a million readers.

Evaristo's astonishing nonfiction debut, Manifesto, is a vibrant and inspirational account of Evaristo's life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world. With her characteristic humor, Evaristo describes her childhood as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother, tells the story of how she helped set up Britain's first Black women's theatre company, remembers the queer relationships of her twenties, and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her. She provides a hugely powerful perspective to contemporary conversations around race, class, feminism, sexuality, and aging. She reminds us of how far we have come, and how far we still have to go. In Manifesto, Evaristo charts her theory of unstoppability, showing creative people how they too can visualize and find success in their work, ignoring the naysayers.

Both unconventional memoir and inspirational text, Manifesto is a unique reminder to us all to persist in doing work we believe in, even when we might feel overlooked or discounted. Evaristo shows us how we too can follow in her footsteps, from first vision, to insistent perseverance, to eventual triumph.]]> 198 Bernardine Evaristo 0802158900 A.E. 0 to-read 3.94 2021 Manifesto: On Never Giving Up
author: Bernardine Evaristo
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
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]]> Girl, Woman, Other 41081373
Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.]]> 453 Bernardine Evaristo 0241364906 A.E. 0 to-read 4.27 2019 Girl, Woman, Other
author: Bernardine Evaristo
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
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]]> <![CDATA[Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert]]> 12990 Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams is one of the country's most eloquent and imaginative writers. The desert is her blood. In this potent collage of stories, essays, and testimony, Red makes a stirring case for the preservation of America's Redrock Wilderness in the canyon country of southern Utah.

As passionate as she is persuasive, Williams writes lyrically about the desert's power and vulnerability, describing wonders that range from an ancient Puebloan sash of macaw feathers found in Canyonlands National Park to the desert tortoise—an animal that can "teach us the slow art of revolutionary patience" as it extends our notion of kinship with all life. She examines the civil war being waged in the West today over public and private uses of land—an issue that divides even her own family. With grace, humor, and compassionate intelligence, Williams reminds us that the preservation of wildness is not simply a political process but a spiritual one.

"Lush elegies to the wilderness.... Earthy, spiritual, evocative." �The Boston Globe

"Erotic, scientific, literary.... Her intimacy with this landscape is complex and passionate." �Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Her finest writing... Use[s] pure language in the face of laws that need to be changed and lawmakers and citizens who need to understand that there is another way to see." �Portland Oregonian]]> 288 Terry Tempest Williams 0375725180 A.E. 0 to-read 4.04 2001 Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert
author: Terry Tempest Williams
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2001
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]]> A Confederacy Of Dunces 18340986
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.]]> 415 John Kennedy Toole A.E. 0 currently-reading 3.89 1980 A Confederacy Of Dunces
author: John Kennedy Toole
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food]]> 57637452 Combining the ethical clarity of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals with the disquieting vision of Alan Weissman's bestseller The World Without Us, a thought-provoking, entertaining exploration of a future where animal consumption is a thing of the past.

Though increasing numbers of people know that eating meat is detrimental to our planet's health, many still can't be convinced to give up eating meat. But how can we change behavior when common arguments and information aren't working?

Acclaimed anthropologist Roanne Van Voorst changes the dialogue. In Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals, she shifts the focus from the present looking forward to the future looking back--imagining a world in which most no longer use animals for food, clothing, or other items. By shifting the viewpoint, she offers a clear and compelling vision of what it means to live in a world without meat.

A massive shift is already taking place--everything van Voorst covers in this book has already been invented and is being used today by individuals and small organizations worldwide.

Hopeful and persuasive, Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals offers a tantalizing vision of what is not only possible but perhaps inevitable.]]> 288 Roanne van Voorst 0063005883 A.E. 0 to-read 3.51 2019 Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food
author: Roanne van Voorst
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2019
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]]> <![CDATA[The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America]]> 40961561
Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot’s rangers, but the Big Burn saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in their favor and became the creation myth that drove the Forest Service, with consequences still felt in the way our national lands are protected� �  or not —� today.]]> 349 Timothy Egan A.E. 0 4.24 2009 The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
author: Timothy Egan
name: A.E.
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
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]]> Dreamtime 55478682
The world may be on a precipice but Sol, fresh from Tucson-desert rehab, finally has an answer to the question that has dogged her since childhood. And not a moment too soon. With aviation grinding to a halt in the face of global climate meltdown, this is the last chance to connect with her absentee father, a US marine stationed in Okinawa.

To mend their broken past Sol and her lovelorn friend Kit must journey across poisoned oceans to the furthest reaches of the Japanese archipelago, a place where sea, sky and earth converge at the forefront of an encroaching environmental and geopolitical catastrophe; a place battered by the relentless tides of history, haunted by the ghosts of its past, where the real and the virtual, the dreamed and the lived, are ever harder to define. In Dreamtime Venetia Welby paints a terrifying and captivating vision of our near future and takes us on a vertiginous odyssey into the unknown.]]> 265 Venetia Welby 1784632414 A.E. 0 currently-reading 3.75 Dreamtime
author: Venetia Welby
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.75
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]]> <![CDATA[My Days of Dark Green Euphoria]]> 59487092

Thirtysomething Cara Foster is, one might say, eco-anxious-perhaps even eco-neurotic. She eats out of dumpsters (not because she wants to but because it's the right thing to do), does laundry as seldom as possible, takes navy showers every couple of days, and is reevaluating her boyfriend for killing a spider instead of saving a life.


Cara has never met her six (soon to be seven) nephews and nieces because she doesn't fly domestic (unless it's an emergency) or international (ever). She longs for a carbon footprint so light you'd hardly know she exists.


Then, during a mimosa-soaked Sunday brunch, she meets her boyfriend's alluring mother, Millie, and Cara finds herself mesmerized. Millie represents everything Cara's against: She eats meat, has cowhide rugs, drives a car the size of a small yacht, and blithely travels the world by boat, plane, and train-without any guilt whatsoever. In fact, Cara soon admits this may be why she finds herself so drawn to Millie. As they begin spending time together, getting pedicures and drinking sixteen-olive martinis, Cara becomes hooked on Millie and this new freedom from the harsh realities of life in the twenty-first century.


Yet before long, Cara risks losing everything to be close to the mundane extravagance of Millie's world-her career, her best friend, and her identity all hang in the balance as she struggles to disentangle from this intoxicating muse.


Irreverent, witty, and provocative, My Days of Dark Green Euphoria-winner of the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature-is a satirical novel of how a life on the edge of eco-anxiety can spiral wildly out of control, as well as how promising and inspiring a commitment to saving our planet can be.

A.E. Copenhaver is a writer, editor, science communicator, and climate interpreter who has worked in the environmental and nonprofit sectors for almost a decade. She has ghostwritten book chapters about cities plagued by factory farming, air pollution, and automobile traffic, and she has written about migrating white sharks, threatened sea otters, and depleted Pacific bluefin tuna. In recent years, she's been exploring how best to contribute to the global transition toward compassion and justice for all people, animals, and the living world. She holds degrees in English and environmental studies from Santa Clara University, and in 2009, she earned her master of arts degree in culture and modernity from the University of East Anglia in England. She moves back and forth between Eugene, Oregon, and Carmel, California.]]> 312 A.E. Copenhaver A.E. 0 currently-reading 3.63 2022 My Days of Dark Green Euphoria
author: A.E. Copenhaver
name: A.E.
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2022
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]]>