en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 17:43:42 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 53344030
Nick and Charlie are very much in love. They've finally said those three little words, and Charlie has almost persuaded his mum to let him sleep over at Nick's house ... But with Nick going off to university next year, is everything about to change?

By Alice Oseman, winner of the YA Book Prize, Heartstopper encompasses all the small moments of Nick and Charlie's lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.

Contains discussions around mental health and eating disorders, and sexual references.]]> 336 Alice Oseman 1444957651 Yasmine 0 4.47 2023
author: Alice Oseman
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
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]]> 56060300 Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. The bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel about life, love, and everything that happens in between: this is the fourth volume of HEARTSTOPPER, for fans of The Art of Being Normal, Holly Bourne and Love, Simon.

Charlie didn't think Nick could ever like him back, but now they're officially boyfriends. Charlie's beginning to feel ready to say those three little words: I love you.

Nick's been feeling the same, but he's got a lot on his mind - not least coming out to his dad, and the fact that Charlie might have an eating disorder.

As summer turns to autumn and a new school year begins, Charlie and Nick are about to learn a lot about what love means.

Heartstopper is about love, friendship, loyalty and mental illness. It encompasses all the small stories of Nick and Charlie's lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.

This is the fourth volume of Heartstopper, which has now been optioned for television by See-Saw Films.]]> 384 Alice Oseman 1338617567 Yasmine 0 4.57 2021
author: Alice Oseman
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 43449920
Meanwhile Tao and Elle will face their feelings for each other, Tara and Darcy share more about their relationship origin story, and the teachers supervising the trip seem� rather close�?]]> 384 Alice Oseman Yasmine 0 4.55 2020
author: Alice Oseman
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
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]]> 40495957
Charlie Spring is in Year 10 at Truham Grammar School for Boys. The past year hasn't been too great, but at least he's not being bullied anymore. Nick Nelson is in Year 11 and on the school rugby team. He's heard a little about Charlie - the kid who was outed last year and bullied for a few months - but he's never had the opportunity to talk to him.

They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance. But love works in surprising ways, and sometimes good things are waiting just around the corner...]]> 288 Alice Oseman 152722533X Yasmine 0 4.43 2018
author: Alice Oseman
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
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]]> 43307358
But love works in surprising ways, and Nick is discovering all kinds of things about his friends, his family ... and himself.]]> 320 Alice Oseman 1444951408 Yasmine 0 4.52 2019
author: Alice Oseman
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 1617 Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.]]> 120 Elie Wiesel 0374500010 Yasmine 5 4.38 1956
author: Elie Wiesel
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1956
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
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]]> 214269390 A swoony romance between driven, practical Lynda Fan and her rich, arrogant classmate, Angela Wu. When Angela offers Lynda the chance to design characters for her otome game, Lynda discovers things she never knew about herself
or her heart.

Love is an art.

Sixteen-year-old Lynda Fan has the skills and the drive to get into the Rhode Island School of Design—but not the money. Her parents are too busy paying for her stepsister’s violin lessons to help Lynda get into art school.

So when her rich and arrogant classmate, Angela Wu, offers to hire Lynda as a character designer for an otome game—a love story-based video game—she jumps at the opportunity.

Lynda isn’t exactly a romantic, but in pursuit of her dreams, she discovers things she never knew about herself while also finding love with every heart she draws.]]> 320 Alice Lin 0593814827 Yasmine 3 3.66 2025
author: Alice Lin
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
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]]> 25422234 Only Ruth Bader Ginsburg can judge me.
The Ruth will set you free.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame—she was just trying to make the world a little better and a little freer. But along the way, the feminist pioneer's searing dissents and steely strength have inspired millions. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, created by the young lawyer who began the Internet sensation and an award-winning journalist, takes you behind the myth for an intimate, irreverent look at the justice's life and work. As America struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stays fierce. And if you don't know, now you know.]]> 240 Irin Carmon 0062415832 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.18 2015
author: Irin Carmon
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 199797773
For lovers of both Barbie and Gloria Steinem, The Movement is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected thousands of years of custom and demanded the freedom to be who they wanted and needed to be.

This engaging history traces women’s awakening, organizing, and agitating between the years of 1963 and 1973, when a decentralized collection of people and events coalesced to create a spontaneous combustion. From Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique , to the underground abortion network the Janes, to Shirley Chisolm’s presidential campaign and Billie Jean King’s 1973 battle of the sexes, Bingham artfully weaves together the fragments of that explosion person by person, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, cultural, and political revolution. Artists and politicians, athletes and lawyers, Black and white, The Movement brings readers into the rooms where these women insisted on being treated as first class citizens, and in the process, changed the fabric of American life.]]> 576 Clara Bingham 1982144211 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.31 2024
author: Clara Bingham
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 7029188 With those words, six restless young men raided the linens at a friend’s mansion in 1866. They pulled white sheets over their heads, hopped on horses, and cavorted through the streets of Pulaski, Tennessee. Soon, the six friends named their club the Ku Klux Klan and began patterning their initiations after fraternity rites, with passwords and mysterious handshakes. All too quickly, this club would grow into the self-proclaimed “Invisible Empire,â€� with secret dens spread across the South. On their brutal raids, the nightriders would claim to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers and would use psychological and physical terror against former slaves who dared to vote, own land, attend school, or worship as they pleased.

This is the story of how a secret terrorist group took root in America’s democracy. Filled with chilling and vivid personal accounts unearthed from oral histories, congressional documents, and other primary sources, this is a book to read and remember.

]]> 172 Susan Campbell Bartoletti 061844033X Yasmine 5 3.85 2010
author: Susan Campbell Bartoletti
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
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]]> 92057
Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself "the angriest Black man in America" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind.

An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcolm X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, and the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.]]> 466 Malcolm X Yasmine 0 to-read 4.35 1965
author: Malcolm X
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> 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 Yasmine 5 4.13 1970
author: Toni Morrison
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> 59593505
Table of Contents]]> State of Washington Yasmine 0 2.46
author: State of Washington
name: Yasmine
average rating: 2.46
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
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]]> 59336625
As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko’s past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it.]]> 224 Mieko Kawakami 1609456998 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.70 2011
author: Mieko Kawakami
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 63018951 A rousing, beautifully observed, and tender-hearted debut poetry collection about identity, culture, home, and belonging--for fans of Jasmine Mans and Fatimah Asghar

"We, children of plĂĄtanos, always gotta learn to play in everyone else's backyard and somehow feel at home."

Poet and musician Melania Luisa Marte opens PLAINTAINS AND OUR BECOMING by pointing out that Afro-Latina is not a word recognized by the dictionary. But the dictionary is far from a record of the truth. What does it mean, then, to tend to your own words and your own record--to build upon the legacies of your ancestors?

In this imaginative, blistering poetry collection, Marte looks at the identities and histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black diasporic experience. Through the exploration of themes like self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational trauma, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood.

Moving from New York to Texas to the Dominican Republic and to Haiti, this collection looks at the legacies of colonialism and racism but never shies away from highlighting the beauty--and joy--that comes from celebrating who you are and where you come from. PLANTAINS AND OUR BECOMING is "a full-throated war cry; both a request for anointment and the responding bendiciĂłn" (Elizabeth Acevedo).]]> 160 Melania Luisa Marte 0593471342 Yasmine 4 4.32 2023
author: Melania Luisa Marte
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
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My Favorite poem was Dem Dog Dayz Are Ova.
]]> 43913694 214 William Shakespeare 0998809101 Yasmine 3 3.86 1623
author: William Shakespeare
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1623
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> 1768603
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life—having nothing but his own wits to help him along.

Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive.

Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.

The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation —and a startling, provocative debut.]]> 276 Aravind Adiga 1416562591 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.76 2008
author: Aravind Adiga
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60657589
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.]]> 336 Heather Fawcett 059350013X Yasmine 0 to-read 3.98 2023
author: Heather Fawcett
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 36739755 Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,â€� she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normalâ€� person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate actionâ€�

A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata 0802128254 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.65 2016
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58842731 A debut novel about a queer Mexican American girl navigating Catholic school, while falling in love and learning to celebrate her true self.

Sixteen-year-old Yamilet Flores prefers to be known for her killer eyeliner, not for being one of the only Mexican kids at her new, mostly white, very rich Catholic school. But at least here no one knows she's gay, and Yami intends to keep it that way.

After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend before transferring to Slayton Catholic, Yami has new priorities: keep her brother out of trouble, make her mom proud, and, most importantly, don't fall in love. Granted, she's never been great at any of those things, but that's a problem for Future Yami.

The thing is, it's hard to fake being straight when Bo, the only openly queer girl at school, is so annoyingly perfect. And smart. And talented. And cute. So cute. Either way, Yami isn't going to make the same mistake again. If word got back to her mom, she could face a lot worse than rejection. So she'll have to start asking, WWSGD: What would a straight girl do?]]> 385 Sonora Reyes 006306023X Yasmine 5 4.5 Stars 4.27 2022
author: Sonora Reyes
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
]]> 22299763
Kaz Brekker and his crew of deadly outcasts have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives.

Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties.

A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world.]]> 561 Leigh Bardugo Yasmine 5 4.58 2016
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
review:
If I could give 6 stars I would. I don't know how I'm supposed to read another series after this. Leigh Bardugo please write a third book unless you kill off a character (AGAIN). But If you do make it Nina so Wesper and Kanej can have happy endings.
]]> 20409231
But when victims of a brutal new serial killer start turning up, the Naturals are pulled into an active case that strikes too close to home: the killer is a perfect copycat of Dean’s incarcerated father—a man he’d do anything to forget. Forced deeper into a murderer’s psyche than ever before, will the Naturals be able to outsmart the enigmatic killer’s brutal mind games before this copycat twists them into his web for good?

With her trademark wit, brilliant plotting, and twists that no one will see coming, Jennifer Lynn Barnes will keep readers on the edge of their seats (and looking over their shoulders) as they race through the pages of this thrilling novel.]]> 375 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1423168321 Yasmine 1 4.27 2014
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2014
rating: 1
read at: 2024/02/24
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
review:
I don't even want to get started on why I hated this book .I have never hated a thriller more.
]]> 13597723
What Cassie doesn’t realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides—especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head—and under her skin. Brooding Dean shares Cassie’s gift for profiling, but keeps her at arm’s length.

Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms closer than Cassie could ever have imagined. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive.]]> 308 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1423168232 Yasmine 2 4.22 2013
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/22
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
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]]> 23437156 Alternate cover of ISBN 9781627792127

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone...

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.]]> 480 Leigh Bardugo 1627792120 Yasmine 5 4.47 2015
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
review:
My only complaint is that we never get Wylan's Pov.
]]> 36687229 267 Mikki Kendall Yasmine 0 to-read 4.37 2020
author: Mikki Kendall
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 154488299 The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectivesâ€�. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories â€� dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.]]> 201 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717716 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.70 2013
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29236380
Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge.]]> 416 Kathleen Glasgow 1101934719 Yasmine 3 3.94 2016
author: Kathleen Glasgow
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/31
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 50638223
After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled Ariane's death as a suicide, but the trio is determined to find out what really happened.

When Nani Eszes arrives as their newest roommate, it sets into motion a series of events that no one could have predicted. As the girls retrace their friend's final days, they discover a dark secret about Grimrose--Ariane wasn't the first dead girl.

They soon learn that all the past murders are connected to ancient fairy-tale curses ... and that their own fates are tied to the stories, dooming the girls to brutal and gruesome endings unless they can break the cycle for good.]]> 400 Laura Pohl 1728228875 Yasmine 2 1. The charcters fell flat because they relied on an archetype. Like say something new about them instead of rewording the same steretype over and over again.
2. The pacjng was very slow at times. You aren't giving us new details or anything of real substance, so why is it so long?
3. I swear Laura Pohl tells us their friends so many times yet we never really see it. Like they are arguing and bickering all the time while girls are legit dying from the curse. I honestly felt like they hated each other's guts relentlessly.
4. Mani's story being "Beauty and The Beast" implies that Svenja l, the only transgender character is the beast, which is like WTH? I would only expect this comparison from a far-right media outlet.
5. The plot made no real sense. It was all over the place. Like we learn nothing new about the magical books or the curse. Instead, Penelope is revealed to be an impostor who wants to kill everyone else to live her happily ever after, which is never really explained.
Pros
1. It was an interesting concept.]]> 3.55 2021
author: Laura Pohl
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
Cons
1. The charcters fell flat because they relied on an archetype. Like say something new about them instead of rewording the same steretype over and over again.
2. The pacjng was very slow at times. You aren't giving us new details or anything of real substance, so why is it so long?
3. I swear Laura Pohl tells us their friends so many times yet we never really see it. Like they are arguing and bickering all the time while girls are legit dying from the curse. I honestly felt like they hated each other's guts relentlessly.
4. Mani's story being "Beauty and The Beast" implies that Svenja l, the only transgender character is the beast, which is like WTH? I would only expect this comparison from a far-right media outlet.
5. The plot made no real sense. It was all over the place. Like we learn nothing new about the magical books or the curse. Instead, Penelope is revealed to be an impostor who wants to kill everyone else to live her happily ever after, which is never really explained.
Pros
1. It was an interesting concept.
]]> 20813135 Ich denke, also bin ich109 Jahre nach dem Ende des Dritten Weltkriegs leben nur noch fĂŒnf Menschen. Sie hausen in unterirdischen Stollen, immer am Rande des Verhungerns, und werden jede Minute ihres Lebens von einem Supercomputer gefoltert, der ein Bewusstsein erlangt hat â€� und mit ihm unendlichen Hass auf seine Erbauer. Es gibt nur einen einzigen Ausweg fĂŒr die gequĂ€lten Menschen â€� doch welcher von ihnen wird stark genug sein, ihn zu wĂ€hlen? Die Kurzgeschichte „Ich muss schreien und habe keinen Mundâ€� erscheint als exklusives E-Book Only bei Heyne und ist zusammen mit weiteren Stories von Harlan Ellison auch in dem Sammelband „Ich muss schreien und habe keinen Mundâ€� enthalten. Sie umfasst ca. 22 Buchseiten.]]> 20 Harlan Ellison Yasmine 2 3.73 1967
author: Harlan Ellison
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1967
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]> 476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.49 2021
author: Andy Weir
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61827543 Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective?

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detectiveâ€� work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).

But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could â€� because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands â€� Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.

Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.]]> 339 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0593549228 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.01 2023
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.17 2022
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, wishlist
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]]> 4952 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What Is the What is the epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man.
-back cover]]> 475 Dave Eggers 1932416641 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 4.14 2006
author: Dave Eggers
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, tbr
review:

]]> 44767249
Nothing could have prepared Kantor and Twohey for what followed the publication of their initial Weinstein story on October 5, 2017. Within days, a veritable Pandora’s box of sexual harassment and abuse was opened. Women all over the world came forward with their own traumatic stories. Over the next twelve months, hundreds of men from every walk of life and industry were outed following allegations of wrongdoing. But did too much change—or not enough? Those questions hung in the air months later as Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, and Christine Blasey Ford came forward to testify that he had assaulted her decades earlier. Kantor and Twohey, who had unique access to Ford and her team, bring to light the odyssey that led her to come forward, the overwhelming forces that came to bear on her, and what happened after she shared her allegation with the world.

In the tradition of great investigative journalism, She Said tells a thrilling story about the power of truth, with shocking new information from hidden sources. Kantor and Twohey describe not only the consequences of their reporting for the #MeToo movement, but the inspiring and affecting journeys of the women who spoke up—for the sake of other women, for future generations, and for themselves.]]> 310 Jodi Kantor 0525560343 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 4.34 2019
author: Jodi Kantor
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, tbr
review:

]]> 57693262 For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.

Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.

Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.]]> 368 Coco Mellors 1635576814 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.70 2022
author: Coco Mellors
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, tbr
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]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?â€�

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,â€� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.98 2024
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, tbr
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]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 4.21 1993
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, tbr
review:

]]> 29780253
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parentsâ€� indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.]]> 289 Trevor Noah 0385689225 Yasmine 5 4.48 2016
author: Trevor Noah
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
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]]> 43532557 Should we believe in God? In this new book, written for a new generation, the brilliant science writer and author of The God Delusion, explains why we shouldn't.

Should we believe in God? Do we need God in order to explain the existence of the universe? Do we need God in order to be good? In twelve chapters that address some of the most profound questions human beings confront, Dawkins marshals science, philosophy and comparative religion to interrogate the hypocrisies of all the religious systems and explain to readers of all ages how life emerged without a Creator, how evolution works and how our world came into being.

For anyone hoping to grapple with the meaning of life and what to believe, Outgrowing God is a challenging, thrilling and revelatory read.]]> 304 Richard Dawkins 1787631214 Yasmine 0 currently-reading 4.00 2019
author: Richard Dawkins
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the â€�80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Yasmine 5 4.39 2017
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/30
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 28421168 Secret Identities. Extraordinary Powers. She wants vengeance. He wants justice.

The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies � humans with extraordinary abilities � who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone... except the villains they once overthrew.

Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice � and in Nova. But Nova's allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.]]> 552 Marissa Meyer 1250044669 Yasmine 2 4.12 2017
author: Marissa Meyer
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/20
date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> 37508619 Time is running out. Together, they can save the world. But are they each other's worst nightmare?

Nova's double life is about to get a lot more complicated:

As Insomnia, she is a full-fledged member of the Renegades, a syndicate of powerful and beloved superheroes. She works with Adrian's patrol unit to protect the weak and maintain order in Gatlon City.

As Nightmare, she is an Anarchist—a group of villains who are determined to destroy the Renegades. Nova wants vengeance against the so-called heroes who once failed her when she needed them the most.

But as Nova, her feelings for Adrian are deepening, despite the fact that he is the son of her sworn enemies and, unbeknownst to Nova, he has some dangerous secrets of his own.

In this second installment of the Renegades trilogy, Nova, Adrian, and the rest of their crew—Ruby, Oscar, and Danna—are faced with escalating crime in Gatlon City, while covert weapons and conflicting missions have Nova and Adrian questioning not only their beliefs about justice but also the feelings they have for each other.

The line between good and evil has been blurred, but what's clear to them both is that too much power could mean the end of their City—and the world—as they know it.]]> 471 Marissa Meyer 125007830X Yasmine 2 4.30 2018
author: Marissa Meyer
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/23
date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> 42771754 All's fair in love and anarchy...

The epic conclusion to Marissa Meyer's thrilling Renegades Trilogy finds Nova and Adrian fighting to keep their identities secret. While the battle rages on between their alter egos and their allies, there is a darker threat shrouding Gatlon City.

The Renegades' worst enemy is back among them, threatening to reclaim Gatlon City. Nova and Adrian must brave lies and betrayal to protect those they love. Their greatest fears are about to come to life, and unless they can bridge the divide between heroes and villains, they stand to lose everything. Including each other.

Intrigue and action will leave readers on edge until the final, shocking secrets are revealed.]]> 549 Marissa Meyer 1250078385 Yasmine 2 4.37 2019
author: Marissa Meyer
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves:
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]]> 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Yasmine 4 3.5⭐⭐⭐âœ� 4.35 2022
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/25
date added: 2024/11/30
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3.5⭐⭐⭐âœ�
]]> 61273082
What would you do if you forgot the love of your life ever even existed?

Stevie and Nora had a love. A secret, epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. They also had a plan: to leave their small, ultra-conservative town and families behind after graduation and move to California, where they could finally stop hiding that love.

But then Stevie has a terrible fall. And when she comes to, she can remember nothing of the last two years—not California, not coming to terms with her sexuality, not even Nora. Suddenly, Stevie finds herself in a life she doesn’t quite understand, one where she’s estranged from her parents, drifting away from her friends, lying about the hours she works, dating a boy she can’t remember crushing on, and headed towards a future that isn’t at all what her fifteen-year-old self would have envisioned.

And Nora finds herself
forgotten. Can the two beat the odds a second time and find their way back together when “togetherâ€� itself is just a lost memory?]]> 320 Alyson Derrick 166590237X Yasmine 4 4.5⭐⭐⭐⭐âœ� 4.24 2023
author: Alyson Derrick
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:
4.5⭐⭐⭐⭐âœ�
]]> 58437812 She’s All That meets What If It’s Us in this swoon-worthy hate-to-love YA romantic comedy from #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Five Feet Apart Rachael Lippincott and debut writer Alyson Derrick.

Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl. Keeping her on the other hand
not so much. Molly Parker has everything in her life totally in control, except for her complete awkwardness with just about anyone besides her mom. She knows she’s in love with the impossibly cool Cora Myers. She just
hasn’t actually talked to her yet.

Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she’s ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she’s doing with girls, unlike her.

As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling
for each other.]]> 384 Rachael Lippincott 1534493794 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.09 2022
author: Rachael Lippincott
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60556912
Every day I clean the Winchesters� beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds outâ€� and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.

But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.

They don’t know what I’m capable ofâ€�

An unbelievably twisty read that will have you glued to the pages late into the night. Anyone who loves The Woman in the Window, The Wife Between Us and The Girl on the Train won’t be able to put this down!]]> 329 Freida McFadden 1803144378 Yasmine 2 4.31 2022
author: Freida McFadden
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/08/20
date added: 2024/11/29
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]]> 182484360
Lights. Camera. Lies.

18-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on.

But the case is dragged up from the past when the Price family agree to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again.

Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And â€� could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . .

From world-renowned author Holly Jackson comes a mind-blowing masterpiece about one girl’s search for the truth, and the terror in finding out who your family really is.]]> 438 Holly Jackson 0593374207 Yasmine 4 4.09 2024
author: Holly Jackson
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.â€�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Yasmine 0 to-read 4.10 1969
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 200776812 The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer," Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.]]> 464 Asako Yuzuki 0063236400 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.50 2017
author: Asako Yuzuki
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 75560036
Capitalism is dead. Welcome to technofeudalism. The perfect Christmas gift for the political visionaries in your life.

In his boldest and most far-reaching book, the visionary economist and number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis shows how the owners of big tech became the world's feudal overlords � replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system that enslaves our minds, defies democracy and rewrite the rules of global power.

But as Varoufakis also reveals, technofeudalism contains new opportunities to thwart and overturn it, bringing into focus more clearly than ever the revolution we need to escape our digital prison.

‘An epochal, once-in-a-millennium shift . . . this isn't just new technology. This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political powerâ€� Observer

‘An urgent demand to seize the means of computationâ€� CORY DOCTOROW

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR]]> 224 Yanis Varoufakis Yasmine 0 to-read 4.03 2023
author: Yanis Varoufakis
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 199393180
Neoliberalism is the dominant ideology of our time. It shapes us in countless ways, yet most of us struggle to articulate what it is. Worse, we have been persuaded to accept this extreme creed as a kind of natural law. In Invisible Doctrine, journalist George Monbiot and filmmaker Peter Hutchison shatter this myth. They show how a fringe philosophy in the 1930s—championing competition as the defining feature of humankind—was systematically hijacked by a group of wealthy elites, determined to guard their fortunes and power. Think tanks, corporations, the media, university departments and politicians were all deployed to promote the idea that people are consumers, rather than citizens.

One of the most pernicious effects has been to make our various crises—from climate disasters to economic crashes, from the degradation of public services to rampant child poverty—seem unrelated. In fact, they have all been exacerbated by the “invisible doctrine,â€� which subordinates democracy to the power of money. Monbiot and Hutchison connect the dots—and trace a direct line from neoliberalism to fascism, which preys on people’s hopelessness and desperation.

Speaking out against the fairy tale of capitalism and populist conspiracy theories, Monbiot and Hutchison lay the groundwork for a new politics, one based on truly participatory democracy and “private sufficiency, public luxuryâ€�: an inspiring vision that could help bring the neoliberal era to an end.]]> 224 George Monbiot 0593735153 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.41 2024
author: George Monbiot
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 55859957 Ìę
The Monsanto Papers is the inside story of Lee Johnson’s landmark lawsuit against Monsanto. For Lee, the case was a race against the clock, with doctors predicting he wouldn’t survive long enough to take the witness stand. For the eclectic band of young, ambitious lawyers representing him, it was a matter of professional pride and personal risk, with millions of dollars and hard-earned reputations on the line. For the public at large, the lawsuit presented a question of corporate accountability. With enough money and influence, could a company endanger its customers, hide evidence, manipulate regulators, and get away with it all—for decades?
Ìę
Readers will be astounded by the depth of corruption uncovered, captivated by the shocking twists, and moved by Lee’s quiet determination to see justice served. With gripping narrative force that reads like fiction, The Monsanto Papers takes readers behind the scenes of a grueling legal battle, pulling back the curtain on the frailties of the American court system and the lengths to which lawyers will go to fight corporate wrongdoing.Ìę ÌęÌę
Ìę
Ìę]]> 352 Carey Gillam 1642830569 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.26 2021
author: Carey Gillam
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> 913954 686 John P. McKay 0618522735 Yasmine 0 currently-reading 3.20
author: John P. McKay
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.20
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 32191706 de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.

As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important bookâ€� (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.]]> 368 Richard Rothstein 1631492853 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.44 2017
author: Richard Rothstein
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6792458
As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.]]> 290 Michelle Alexander Yasmine 0 to-read 4.52 2010
author: Michelle Alexander
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 202468410 A saucy, searingly original debut about two sisters raised in the shadow of El Salvador’s brutal dictator, El Gran Pendejo, and their flight from genocide, which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to cannery row, each followed by a chorus of furies, the ghosts of their murdered friends, who aren’t yet done telling their stories.

El Salvador, 1923. Graciela grows up on a volcano in a community of indigenous women indentured to coffee plantations owned by the country’s wealthiest, until a messenger from the Capital comes to claim at nine years old she’s been chosen to be an oracle for a rising dictator—a sinister, violent man wedded to the occult. She’ll help foresee the future of the country.Ìę Ìę Ìę

In the Capital she meets Consuelo, the sister she’s never known, stolen away from their home before Graciela was born. The two are a small fortress within the dictator’s regime, but they’re no match for El Gran Pendejo’s cruelty. Years pass and terror rises as the economy flatlines, and Graciela comes to understand the horrific vision that she’s unwittingly helped shape just as genocide strikes the community that raised her. She and Consuelo barely escape, each believing the other to be dead. They run, crossing the globe, reinventing their lives, and ultimately reconnecting at the least likely moment.Ìę Ìę Ìę

Endlessly surprising, vividly imaginative, bursting with lush life, The Volcano Daughters charts, through the stories of these sisters and the ghosts they carry with them, a new history and mythology of El Salvador, fiercely bringing forth voices that have been calling out for generations.]]> 368 Gina MarĂ­a Balibrera 0593317238 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.51 2024
author: Gina MarĂ­a Balibrera
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 18135 Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud.

In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers� final union in death seems almost inevitable. And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.]]> 281 William Shakespeare 0743477111 Yasmine 4 3.74 1597
author: William Shakespeare
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1597
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/13
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]]> 53414230
At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.]]> 145 Caleb Azumah Nelson 0241448778 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.03 2021
author: Caleb Azumah Nelson
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> 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 Yasmine 5 4.69 2019
author: Chanel Miller
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2024/02/22
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]]> 61030532 Welcome to Mae Pruett’s Los Angeles, whereÌę “Nobody talks. But everybody whispers.”Ì� As a “black-bagâ€� publicist tasked not with letting the good news out but keeping the bad news in, Mae works for one of LA’s most powerful and sought-after crisis PR firms, at the center of a sprawling web of lawyers, PR flaks, and private security firms she calls “The Beast.â€� They protect the rich and powerful and depraved by any means necessary.Ìę
Ìę
After her boss is gunned down in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel in a random attack, Mae takes it upon herself to investigate and runs headfirst into The Beast’s lawless machinations and the twisted systems it exists to perpetuate. It takes her on a roving neon joyride through a Los Angeles full of influencers pumped full of pills and fillers; sprawling mansions footsteps away from sprawling homeless encampments; crooked cops and mysterious wrecking crews in the middle of the night.
Ìę
Edgar Award-winner Jordan Harper’s EVERYBODY KNOWS is addicting and alarming, a “juggernaut of a novelâ€� and “an absolute tour de force.â€� It is what the crime novel can achieve in the modern age: portray the human lives at the center of vast American landscapes, and make us thrill at their attempts to face impossible odds.]]> 352 Jordan Harper 0316457914 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.66 2023
author: Jordan Harper
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/09
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]]> 2623
Pip must discover his true self, and his own set of values and priorities. Whether such values allow one to prosper in the complex world of early Victorian England is the major question posed by Great Expectations, one of Dickens's most fascinating, and disturbing, novels.

This edition includes the original, discarded ending, Dickens's brief working notes, and the serial instalments and chapter divisions in different editions. It also uses the definitive Clarendon text.]]> 544 Charles Dickens 0192833596 Yasmine 3 3.78 1861
author: Charles Dickens
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1861
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/24
date added: 2024/01/24
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]]> 46138193 After a storm has killed off all the island's men, two women in a 1600s Norwegian coastal village struggle to survive against both natural forces and the men who have been sent to rid the community of alleged witchcraft.

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of VardĂž must fend for themselves.

Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In VardĂž, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil.

As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them with Absalom's iron rule threatening VardĂž's very existence.

Inspired by the real events of the VardĂž storm and the 1620 witch trials, The Mercies is a feminist story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.]]> 345 Kiran Millwood Hargrave 0316529257 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 3.99 2020
author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/18
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]]> 62919742 Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.']]> 352 Safiya Sinclair 1982132337 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.43 2023
author: Safiya Sinclair
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/03
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]]> 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,â€� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?â€� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!â€�), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.45 2022
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/02
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]]> 61349424 224 Tara Sun 1400239206 Yasmine 5 4.37
author: Tara Sun
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/26
date added: 2024/01/01
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]]> 32830247 The Reason I Jump, a revelatory account of autism from the inside by a nonverbal Japanese child, which became an international success.

Now he shares his thoughts and experiences as a twenty-four-year-old man living each day with severe autism. In short, powerful chapters, Higashida explores school memories, family relationships, the exhilaration of travel, and the difficulties of speech. He also allows readers to experience profound moments we take for granted, like the thought-steps necessary for him to register that it's raining outside. Acutely aware of how strange his behavior can appear to others, he aims throughout to foster a better understanding of autism and to encourage society to see people with disabilities as people, not as problems.

With an introduction by bestselling novelist David Mitchell, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 also includes a dreamlike short story Higashida wrote especially for this edition. Both moving and of practical use, this book opens a window into the mind of an inspiring young man who meets every challenge with tenacity and good humor. However often he falls down, he always gets back up.]]> 240 Naoki Higashida 0812997395 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.16 2017
author: Naoki Higashida
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> 52892857 Read the original inspiration for the new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker's epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

â€Áè±đČč»ćŸ±ČÔČ” The Color Purple was the first time I had seen Southern, Black women’s literature as world literature. In writing us into the world—bravely, unapologetically, and honestly—Alice Walker has given us a gift we will never be able to repay.â€� —Tayari Jones

â€�The Color Purple was what church should have been, what honest familial reckoning could have been, and it is still the only art object in the world by which all three generations of Black artists in my family judge American art.â€� —Kiese Laymon]]> 287 Alice Walker 0143135694 Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 4.40 1982
author: Alice Walker
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/31
shelves: to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr
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]]> 50520939
Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

Most of them.]]> 376 Olivie Blake Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.55 2020
author: Olivie Blake
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yƍko Ogawa 1101870605 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.72 1994
author: Yƍko Ogawa
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 62952152 What if the murder you had to solve was your own?

Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She's also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her.

Now it's not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she's always enjoyed--she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller.]]> 304 Katie Williams 0593543769 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.61 2023
author: Katie Williams
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 61439040
Alternate cover edition can be found here.]]> 368 George Orwell 0452284236 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 4.21 1949
author: George Orwell
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 50269327
Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?]]> 247 Sayaka Murata 1783785675 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.59 2018
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 57926137 We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

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

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

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.]]> 385 Charmaine Wilkerson Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.06 2022
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 56852407
How about everything...]]> 517 Stephen King 1982173610 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 4.11 2021
author: Stephen King
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 61065982
But she soon discovers that being known as a "self-made" widow has some surprising perks. No one messes with her, no one threatens her, and no one tries to control (ahem, marry) her. It's even been good for her business; no one wants to risk getting on her bad side by not buying her jewelry.

Freedom must look good on Geeta, because other women in the village have started asking for her help to get rid of their own no-good husbands...but not all of them are asking nicely.

Now that Geeta's fearsome reputation has become a double-edged sword, she must decide how far to go to protect it, along with the life she's built. Because even the best-laid plans of would-be widows tend to go awry.]]> 342 Parini Shroff 059349895X Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.90 2023
author: Parini Shroff
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
shelves: to-read, tbr
review:

]]> 11346 174 Toni Morrison 0452283868 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.05 1973
author: Toni Morrison
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

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

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

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.04 2023
author: Amanda Peters
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/30
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]]> 46041199 A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old “millennial everywoman,â€� she has recently left her white-collar desk job—in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time—as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women—alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist.

In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child—to put them first.

Jiyoung’s painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons “family planningâ€� birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the arrival of writer of international significance]]> 163 Cho Nam-Joo 1631496700 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.17 2016
author: Cho Nam-Joo
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 61767163 No Exit and Hairpin Bridge.

Emma Carpenter lives in isolation with her golden retriever Laika, house-sitting an old beachfront home on the rainy Washington coast. Her only human contact is her enigmatic old neighbor, Deek, and (via text) the house’s owner, Jules.

One day, she reads a poorly written—but gruesome—horror novel by the author H. G. Kane, and posts a one-star review that drags her into an online argument with none other than the author himself. Soon after, disturbing incidents start to occur at night. To Emma, this can’t just be a coincidence. It was strange enough for this author to bicker with her online about a lousy review; could he be stalking her, too?

As Emma digs into Kane’s life and work, she learns he has published sixteen other novels, all similarly sadistic tales of stalking and murder. But who is he? How did he find her? And what else is he capable of?]]> 337 Taylor Adams 0063222892 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.67 2023
author: Taylor Adams
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/26
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]]> 43263520
In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.]]> 416 Kim Liggett 1250145449 Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 4.11 2019
author: Kim Liggett
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/24
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]]> 57846320 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781982156121 can be found here.

In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parentsâ€� sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter Harriet does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough.

Until Frida has a horrible day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida â€� ones who check their phones while their kids are on the playground; who let their children walk home alone; in other words, mothers who only have one lapse of judgement. Now, a host of government officials will determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that she can live up to the standards set for mothers â€� that she can learn to be good.

This propulsive, witty page-turner explores the perils of “perfectâ€� upper-middle-class parenting, the violence enacted upon women by the state and each other, and the boundless love a mother has for her daughter.]]> 336 Jessamine Chan Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 3.51 2022
author: Jessamine Chan
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/24
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]]> 57850265
Among those adjusting to this new normal are an aspiring comedian, employed by a theme park designed for terminally ill children, who falls in love with a mother trying desperately to keep her son alive; a scientist who, having failed to save his own son from the plague, gets a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects-a pig-develops human speech; a man who, after recovering from his own coma, plans a block party for his neighbours who have also woken up to find that they alone have survived their families; and a widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter who must set off on cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.

From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead, How High We Go in the Dark follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humanity endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world. This is a story of unshakable hope that crosses literary lines to give us a world rebuilding itself through an endless capacity for love, resilience and reinvention. Wonderful and disquieting, dreamlike and all too possible.]]> 293 Sequoia Nagamatsu 0063072645 Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 3.81 2022
author: Sequoia Nagamatsu
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/24
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]]> 61713106
Since then, I've sworn never to love anyone again. With three exceptions: My friends, Sony, Neo, and Coeur, a little gang of rebellious, dying kids. Sony leads the charge with the air of freedom and only one lung to breathe it. Neo, a bad-tempered and wheel-chaired writer, keeps track of our great deeds from stealing to terrorizing our nurse. Coeur is the beautiful boy, the muscle, the gentle giant with a failing heart.

Before death inevitably knocks down our doors, my thieves and I have one last heist planned. A great escape that will take us far from abusive parents, crippling loss, and the realities of our diseases. So what happens when someone else walks through the door? What happens when a girl joins our party and renders me speechless with her mischievous smile? What happens when she has suns in her eyes, and as terrified as I am to lose again, I start to fall?

Trigger warnings found in foreword

Written By Lancali]]> 402 Lancali Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 3.86 2022
author: Lancali
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 60784546 After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again�

All eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow wants to do is hold her family together. With a brother on the frontline forced to fight on behalf of the Gods now missing from the frontline and a mother drowning her sorrows, Iris’s best bet is winning the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.

But when Iris’s letters to her brother fall into the wrong hands â€� that of the handsome but cold Roman Kitt, her rival at the paper â€� an unlikely magical connection forms.

Expelled into the middle of a mystical war, magical typewriters in tow, can their bond withstand the fight for the fate of mankind and, most importantly, love?

An epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.]]> 357 Rebecca Ross 1250857430 Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 4.14 2023
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/24
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]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]> 374 Suzanne Collins Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 4.34 2008
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/24
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]]> 22055262
Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.]]> 400 Victoria E. Schwab 0765376458 Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 4.04 2015
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/24
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]]> 40874032 A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn't automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question.]]> 402 Victoria E. Schwab Yasmine 0 to-read, kindle-unlimited-tbr 4.17 2013
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> 133206574 When a rich Black debutante enlists the help of a low-level speakeasy manager to identify the head of an underground crime syndicate, the two are thrust into the dangerous world of Prohibition-era Chicago.

The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore with Chicago at its beating heart.

Twenty-year-old Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the alleged “wealthiest Negro in America,â€� a Kentucky horse breeder whose wealth and prestige catapults his family to the heights of the exclusive, elite Black society. After the unexpected death of her brother—the family’s presumed heir—Nelly goes from being virtually unknown to a premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage. For the past year, she has worked undercover as an investigative journalist for the Chicago Defender , sharing the achievements and tribulations of everyday Black people living in the shadow of Jim Crow. Now, her latest assignment thrusts her into the den of a dangerous vice the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street.

Charming and mysterious, Jay Shorey strives to balance his connection to the Chicago underworld with his desperate yearning for the refinement and protection of high society. Born to a murdered bi-racial couple in rural Alabama, he knows firsthand what it means to be denied a chance at the American dream. When a tragic turn of fate gave Jay a rare path out, he took it without question. He washed up on Chicago’s storied shores and never looked back, until now.Ìę

When Nelly’s and Jay’s paths cross, she recruits him to help expose the Mayor and bring about a lasting change in a corrupted city. Trapped between the monolith of Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the Black upper class, and the violence of Prohibition-era Chicago, Jay and Nelly work together and stoke the flames of a love worth fighting for. And yet, as with all things in America, there is a price to be paid. What risk is Nelly willing to take for a young man willing to risk it all?Ìę

Debut author Avery Cunningham’s stunning novel is at once an epic love story, a riveting historical drama, and a brilliant exploration of Black society and perseverance when the â€�20s first began to roar.]]> 528 Avery Cunningham 1368093000 Yasmine 0 to-read 3.52 2024
author: Avery Cunningham
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/20
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]]> 56898187 A look at what power is, who gets it, and what happens when they do, based on over 500 interviews with those who (temporarily, at least) have had the upper hand—from the creator of the Power Corrupts podcast and Washington Post columnist Brian Klaas.

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are tyrants made or born? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they just bad people? If you were suddenly thrust into a position of power, would you be able to resist the temptation to line your pockets or seek revenge against your enemies?

To answer these questions, Corruptible draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world’s top leaders—from the noblest to the dirtiest—including presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators. Some of the fascinating insights include: how facial appearance determines who we pick as leaders, why narcissists make more money, why some people don’t want power at all and others are drawn to it out of a psychopathic impulse, and why being the “betaâ€� (second in command) may actually be the optimal place for health and well-being.

Corruptible also features a wealth of counterintuitive examples from history and social science: you’ll meet the worst bioterrorist in American history, hit the slopes with a ski instructor who once ruled Iraq, and learn why the inability of chimpanzees to play baseball is central to the development of human hierarchies.
]]> 320 Brian Klaas 1982154098 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.17 2021
author: Brian Klaas
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/20
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]]> 53121662 A scholar of American Christianity presents a seventy-five-year history of evangelicalism that identifies the forces that have turned Donald Trump into a hero of the Religious Right.

How did a libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith win 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016? And why have white evangelicals become a presidential reprobate’s staunchest supporters? These are among the questions acclaimed historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez asks in Jesus and John Wayne, which delves beyond facile headlines to explain how white evangelicals have brought us to our fractured political moment. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majorityâ€� backed Donald Trump for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Donald Trump in fact represents the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicalsâ€� most deeply held values.

Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping account of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, showing how American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism, or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.â€� As Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the role of culture in modern American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals may not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical popular culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.â€� Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done.

Trump, in other words, is hardly the first flashy celebrity to capture evangelicalsâ€� hearts and minds, nor is he the first strongman to promise evangelicals protection and power. Indeed, the values and viewpoints at the heart of white evangelicalism today—patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community—are likely to persist long after Trump leaves office.

A much-needed reexamination, Jesus and John Wayne explains why evangelicals have rallied behind the least-Christian president in American history and how they have transformed their faith in the process, with enduring consequences for all of us.]]> 356 Kristin Kobes Du Mez 1631495739 Yasmine 0 to-read 4.27 2020
author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 40726583
On a routine delivery, a client asks Hanneke for help. Expecting to hear that Mrs. Janssen wants meat or kerosene, Hanneke is shocked by the older woman's frantic plea to find a person - a Jewish teenager Mrs. Janssen had been hiding, who has vanished without a trace from a secret room. Hanneke initially wants nothing to do with such dangerous work, but is ultimately drawn into a web of mysteries and stunning revelations that lead her into the heart of the resistance, open her eyes to the horrors of the Nazi war machine, and compel her to take desperate action.

Beautifully written, intricately plotted, and meticulously researched, Girl in the Blue Coat is an extraordinary, gripping novel from a bright new voice.]]> 310 Monica Hesse 0316260649 Yasmine 5 4.02 2016
author: Monica Hesse
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 34964905 A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.

But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.

With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.]]> 272 Anthony Ray Hinton 1250124719 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.64 2018
author: Anthony Ray Hinton
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 60435878 Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular.

By the time Carrie retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Slam titles. And if you ask her, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father as her coach.

But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning, British player named Nicki Chan.

At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked the 'Battle-Axe' anyway. Even if her body doesn't move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.

In spite of it all: Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells a story about the cost of greatness and a legendary athlete attempting a comeback.]]> 384 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158687 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 4.19 2022
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 44890081
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.]]> 373 Kate Elizabeth Russell 006294150X Yasmine 0 tbr, to-read 4.09 2020
author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 53223710
These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected.

Kawakami's simple yet profound new work stands as a dazzling testament to her literary talent. There can be little doubt that it has cemented her reputation as one of the most important young authors working to expand the boundaries of contemporary Japanese literature.]]> 192 Mieko Kawakami 1609456211 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.80 2009
author: Mieko Kawakami
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 53310061 What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family?

You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue!

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It's the biggest job yet for the family wedding businessâ€�"Don't leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!"—and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie's perfect buttercream flowers.

But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love—and biggest heartbreak—makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?]]> 299 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0593336739 Yasmine 0 to-read, tbr 3.67 2021
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 3.83 2023
author: James McBride
name: Yasmine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 35960069 What if Mulan had to travel to the Underworld?

When Captain Shang is mortally wounded by Shan Yu in battle, Mulan must travel to the Underworld, Diyu, in order to save him from certain death. But King Yama, the ruler of Diyu, is not willing to give Shang up easily.

With the help of Shang's great lion guardian ShiShi, Mulan must traverse Diyu to find Shang's spirit, face harrowing obstacles, and leave by sunrise⁠—or become King Yama's prisoner forever.

Moreover, Mulan is still disguised as the soldier called Ping, wrestling with the decision to reveal her true identity to her closest friend.

Will Mulan be able to save Shang before it's too late? Will he ever be able to trust her again? Or will she lose him—and be lost in the Underworld⁠—forever?]]> 416 Elizabeth Lim 1484781295 Yasmine 0 to-read, wishlist 4.00 2018
author: Elizabeth Lim
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/19
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]]> 56905097 The finale to A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series. By the end of this mystery series, you'll never think of good girls the same way again...

Pip is about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She’s used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can’t help noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

Soon the threats escalate and Pip realizes that someone is following her in real life. When she starts to find connections between her stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, she wonders if maybe the wrong man is behind bars.

Police refuse to act, so Pip has only one choice: find the suspect herself—or be the next victim. As the deadly game plays out, Pip discovers that everything in her small town is coming full circle... and if she doesn’t find the answers, this time she will be the one who disappears...]]> 500 Holly Jackson 0593379853 Yasmine 5 4.20 2021
author: Holly Jackson
name: Yasmine
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/28
date added: 2023/12/19
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review:

]]>