Nanda's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 20 Apr 2025 22:59:34 -0700 60 Nanda's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Nanda 5
SPOILERS AHEAD!!

The novel opens with a POV that’s as tight as it gets. You’re in the body of *something* that’s inside a store. The something has been recently unboxed, and you discover the world as it observes its surroundings. When this thing, called Klara, is placed in the store’s front window, you try to cobble together meager details through its limited frame to figure what it is exactly (plant, toy, robot?) and where it is in time & place. It’s a fun puzzle, and you only get to do this once, the first time you read it.

You soon glean you’re in some sort of futuristic dystopia where wealthy families purchase “artificial friends,� androids known as AFs, for their teens. Klara is an AF, and a girl named Josie promises to buy her. So Klara waits, making herself seem inferior when other buyers inspect her. As she’s solar-powered, she begins to worship the sun. She vilifies the Cootings Machine, doing street work in front of her store and creating sun-obstructing smoke and dust. Klara sees a homeless man who appears dead until the sun’s rays “bring him back to life.� This confirms her beliefs, and she prays for Josie to return to her. When Josie buys her, Klara’s belief system is set.

At Josie’s home, Klara sees the sun set behind Mr. McBain’s barn from a window, so she believes that is where the sun lives. We soon learn Josie has been lifted (genetically modified to perform better academically and succeed) and is suffering from serious side effects that may prove fatal, like they had for her older sister, Sal. Klara begins to pray to the sun to save Josie. This singular goal drives the rest of the novel as we learn more about Josie and her family. Klara prays and sacrifices parts of herself to save Josie, believing that Josie will come through. Meanwhile, Josie’s mother commissions a “portrait� that is actually 3D skin for an android that’s meant to replace Josie after she dies, and though she wants to save her daughter, she seems resigned to her death because she has already lost a daughter.

Because this is a dystopia, I expected to learn how the government and politics might affect Klara. I was curious about Klara growing and changing, and I wondered if she’d become involved in a resistance movement. But my expectations regarding the dystopian world/government were generally unacknowledged, neither fulfilled or disrupted.

In George Saunders� book on writing—A Drop of Water in the Pond—he discusses gauging reader expectations as you write/edit. As a writer, you must consider either fulfilling or disrupting reasonable expectations. Ideally, you balance your plot to avoid boring readers—by always fulfilling their expectations—or frustrating them to the point of dropping the book—by endlessly disrupting expectations. You want to hand them fun surprises, which must always feel “expected� or inevitable afterwards. But this novel veered completely away from my expectations, which frustrated me.

Overall, the plot and growth arcs were quieter and flatter than I’d hoped, especially with secondary characters. But the author manages to make up for that by forcing my eyes away from the dystopia. He never strayed from the tight POV (Josie’s), so the dystopia becomes just a backdrop. I was forced instead to consider quieter questions—the nature of being, belief, and sentience.

In Ishiguro’s other popular novel, Never Let Me Go, I was similarly frustrated, but my reactions weren’t as positive in the end. In that novel, the main character, Kathy, is a human clone in a more extreme dystopia; the ethical questions in that work directly affect the Kathy’s life so we expect some rebellion. In this dystopia, Klara is not human, so she is inherently less capable and remains a bystander to the ethics-related issues that affect her. Klara’s neutral, unfiltered observations are less frustrating than Kathy’s in Never Let Me Go.

A few other things bothered me about this novel. The dialogue, mostly great, felt stilted and unreal at times. And there were unfulfilled promises made to the reader: some characters, like the father and the love-interest neighbor Ricky, simply disappear even though we expect more from them. The ending let me down, too, partly because it reflected negatively on the other main characters, who seemed essentially unchanged by and unappreciative of Klara. Josie’s mother saves Klara from an autopsy, but she still puts her out to pasture. Literally. Klara’s in a junk yard in her final years. But Klara’s POV never falters. She believes she saved Josie and that she’s fulfilled her “life’s� duty, so the bittersweet end rang true.

I recommend this to all writers, especially those interested in POV work. I will certainly pull it out again and again to study how Ishiguro constructed his fun, tight POV, a feat that made Klara oh-so-real and unforgettable.

*A possible fun exercise: write a short scene mimicking this novel’s opening scene, one in which the reader is forced to figure out the world through an extremely limited lens.]]> 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:
I went into this novel blind, without reading the blurb. And boy was I glad.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!

The novel opens with a POV that’s as tight as it gets. You’re in the body of *something* that’s inside a store. The something has been recently unboxed, and you discover the world as it observes its surroundings. When this thing, called Klara, is placed in the store’s front window, you try to cobble together meager details through its limited frame to figure what it is exactly (plant, toy, robot?) and where it is in time & place. It’s a fun puzzle, and you only get to do this once, the first time you read it.

You soon glean you’re in some sort of futuristic dystopia where wealthy families purchase “artificial friends,� androids known as AFs, for their teens. Klara is an AF, and a girl named Josie promises to buy her. So Klara waits, making herself seem inferior when other buyers inspect her. As she’s solar-powered, she begins to worship the sun. She vilifies the Cootings Machine, doing street work in front of her store and creating sun-obstructing smoke and dust. Klara sees a homeless man who appears dead until the sun’s rays “bring him back to life.� This confirms her beliefs, and she prays for Josie to return to her. When Josie buys her, Klara’s belief system is set.

At Josie’s home, Klara sees the sun set behind Mr. McBain’s barn from a window, so she believes that is where the sun lives. We soon learn Josie has been lifted (genetically modified to perform better academically and succeed) and is suffering from serious side effects that may prove fatal, like they had for her older sister, Sal. Klara begins to pray to the sun to save Josie. This singular goal drives the rest of the novel as we learn more about Josie and her family. Klara prays and sacrifices parts of herself to save Josie, believing that Josie will come through. Meanwhile, Josie’s mother commissions a “portrait� that is actually 3D skin for an android that’s meant to replace Josie after she dies, and though she wants to save her daughter, she seems resigned to her death because she has already lost a daughter.

Because this is a dystopia, I expected to learn how the government and politics might affect Klara. I was curious about Klara growing and changing, and I wondered if she’d become involved in a resistance movement. But my expectations regarding the dystopian world/government were generally unacknowledged, neither fulfilled or disrupted.

In George Saunders� book on writing—A Drop of Water in the Pond—he discusses gauging reader expectations as you write/edit. As a writer, you must consider either fulfilling or disrupting reasonable expectations. Ideally, you balance your plot to avoid boring readers—by always fulfilling their expectations—or frustrating them to the point of dropping the book—by endlessly disrupting expectations. You want to hand them fun surprises, which must always feel “expected� or inevitable afterwards. But this novel veered completely away from my expectations, which frustrated me.

Overall, the plot and growth arcs were quieter and flatter than I’d hoped, especially with secondary characters. But the author manages to make up for that by forcing my eyes away from the dystopia. He never strayed from the tight POV (Josie’s), so the dystopia becomes just a backdrop. I was forced instead to consider quieter questions—the nature of being, belief, and sentience.

In Ishiguro’s other popular novel, Never Let Me Go, I was similarly frustrated, but my reactions weren’t as positive in the end. In that novel, the main character, Kathy, is a human clone in a more extreme dystopia; the ethical questions in that work directly affect the Kathy’s life so we expect some rebellion. In this dystopia, Klara is not human, so she is inherently less capable and remains a bystander to the ethics-related issues that affect her. Klara’s neutral, unfiltered observations are less frustrating than Kathy’s in Never Let Me Go.

A few other things bothered me about this novel. The dialogue, mostly great, felt stilted and unreal at times. And there were unfulfilled promises made to the reader: some characters, like the father and the love-interest neighbor Ricky, simply disappear even though we expect more from them. The ending let me down, too, partly because it reflected negatively on the other main characters, who seemed essentially unchanged by and unappreciative of Klara. Josie’s mother saves Klara from an autopsy, but she still puts her out to pasture. Literally. Klara’s in a junk yard in her final years. But Klara’s POV never falters. She believes she saved Josie and that she’s fulfilled her “life’s� duty, so the bittersweet end rang true.

I recommend this to all writers, especially those interested in POV work. I will certainly pull it out again and again to study how Ishiguro constructed his fun, tight POV, a feat that made Klara oh-so-real and unforgettable.

*A possible fun exercise: write a short scene mimicking this novel’s opening scene, one in which the reader is forced to figure out the world through an extremely limited lens.
]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)]]> 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?�

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,� 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 Nanda 5 3.98 2024 Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> What Does It Feel Like? 214312329
“What Does It Feel Like? is fiction, but it is my most autobiographical work to date. Eve’s story is my story.”—Sophie Kinsella

Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain.

As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again—and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children—she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it.

Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This short, extraordinary novel is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humor—it will both break your heart and put it back together again.

“Why did I write such a personal book? I have always processed my life through writing. Hiding behind my fictional characters, I have always turned my own life into a narrative. It is my version of therapy, maybe. Writing is my happy place, and writing this book, although tough going at times, was immensely satisfying and therapeutic for me.”—Sophie Kinsella]]> 144 Sophie Kinsella 0593977564 Nanda 5 4.25 2024 What Does It Feel Like?
author: Sophie Kinsella
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Nanda 5 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:

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

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

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

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

Sonya Walger’s stunning autobiographical debut is an emotionally acute palimpsest of a novel about a father and daughter, in which the drama and incident, love and tragedy that make up his life make up hers as well. The legend of his life and her distinctive and imaginatively charged telling of it make for an engrossing and unforgettable family saga.]]> 176 Sonya Walger 1681379031 Nanda 5 4.44 2025 Lion
author: Sonya Walger
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:

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

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

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Nanda 5 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/01
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves:
review:

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

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

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

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Nanda 5 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Sipsworth 113877384
Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss.

Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.

Sipsworth is a reminder that there can be second chances. No matter what we have planned for ourselves, sometimes the world has plans of its own. Simon Van Booy’s lyrical storytelling is a delight even as it will fill your heart.]]> 240 Simon Van Booy 1567927947 Nanda 5 4.11 2024 Sipsworth
author: Simon Van Booy
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Orbital 123136728
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?]]> 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Nanda 5 3.55 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Exposure 208517829 A life-changing moment encompasses conflicting truths that echo across time, in this powerful, provocative debut.

One night, two people, four sides of a story.

In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and, after a chance meeting, go home together.

Twelve years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released, and he and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby. Meanwhile, Juliette’s best friend Annie, in the throes of grief, makes a decision that threatens to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build.

Spanning decades, from California to Chicago, and told from Annie, Juliette, Noah, and Jesse’s perspectives, this sharp, timely novel delves into one fateful night and the complex lives and relationships of those affected by it, brilliantly exploring how race, artistic ambition, and grief shape the way they—and we—see their story.]]> 400 Ava Dellaira 1958506672 Nanda 5 3.85 2024 Exposure
author: Ava Dellaira
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl]]> 216599346 A girl takes on a series of identities to survive, shrouding herself in layers of secrets, until years later she is forced to reckon with her past.


On an ordinary day in an upscale Atlanta suburb, Maya is making breakfast for her two sons, when her husband drops a red-and-blue striped envelope on the counter and asks a devastating Who is Sunny?


Maya is sent reeling back to her childhood in Guyana—a time when Sunny was her only name. Unbeknownst to her husband, Maya is not who she claims to be. The letter, from her long-lost sister Roshi, now threatens to expose her true identity and shatter the seemingly perfect existence Maya worked so hard to build.


As she frantically weighs the impact of the truth on her future, Maya relives the harrowing details of her past—her journey to America on the “backtrack,� the shock of being delivered into the hands of an abusive family while being severed from her own, and her many evolutions of self as she struggles to find a path forward against all odds.


This striking debut transports the reader from the sugar cane fields of Guyana to the world of immigrant laborers in Miami to the affluent suburbs of Atlanta. Nanda Reddy takes us on a wrenching journey of assimilation, survival, and reinvention that explores the very construct of identity and the resilience of the human spirit.]]> 372 Nanda Reddy Nanda 0 4.44 2025 A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl
author: Nanda Reddy
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
review:
It's my novel! I hope you enjoy it!
]]> Annie Bot 215989058
She’s learning, too.

Doug says he loves that Annie’s artificial intelligence makes her seem more like a real woman, but the more human Annie becomes, the less perfectly she behaves. As Annie's relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder whether Doug truly desires what he says he does. In such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?]]> 240 Sierra Greer 0063312700 Nanda 5 3.90 2024 Annie Bot
author: Sierra Greer
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways: A Memoir]]> 123087730
As Brittany grew older, struggling through her own complicated relationships, she began to recognize that hell wasn't only the place she read about in the Bible; it was the experience of her family, caught in a cycle of violence. While untangling the spider web of her most painful memories, Brittany crafts a harrowing tale of self-preservation with a unique narrative style that is part memoir and part modern-day feminist coming-of-age tale. The result is a masterpiece, a marvel, and a sparkling example of a woman’s ability to withstand the most horrific experiences � and still thrive. ]]> 304 Brittany Means Nanda 5 4.29 2023 Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways: A Memoir
author: Brittany Means
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Nanda 5 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 1993/01/01
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Open Water 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 Nanda 5 4.03 2021 Open Water
author: Caleb Azumah Nelson
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves:
review:

]]> Leaving 150778780
“I never thought I’d see you here,� Sarah says. Then she adds, “But I never thought I’d see you anywhere.� Sarah and Warren’s college love story ended in a single moment.

Decades later, when a chance meeting brings them together, a passion ignites―threatening the foundations of the lives they’ve built apart. Since they parted in college, each has married, raised a family, and made a career. When they meet again, Sarah is divorced and living outside New York, while Warren is still married and living in Boston.

Seeing Warren sparks an awakening in Sarah, who feels emotionally alive for the first time in decades. Still, she hesitates to reclaim a chance at love after her painful divorce and years of framing her life around her children and her work. Warren has no such reservations: he wants to leave his marriage but can’t predict how his wife and daughter will react.

As their affair intensifies, Sarah and Warren must confront the moral responsibilities of their love for their families and each other. Leaving charts a passage through loyalty and desire as it builds to a shattering conclusion.

In her boldest and most powerful work to date, Roxana Robinson demonstrates her “trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life� (Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune ) in an engrossing exploration of the vows we make to one another, the tensile relationships between parents and their children, and what we owe to others and ourselves.]]> 344 Roxana Robinson 1324065389 Nanda 5 3.68 2024 Leaving
author: Roxana Robinson
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves:
review:

]]> The Vanishing Half 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Nanda 5 4.11 2020 The Vanishing Half
author: Brit Bennett
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves:
review:

]]> Black Cake 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 right�? 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 Nanda 5 4.06 2022 Black Cake
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/01
date added: 2024/08/09
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]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Nanda 5 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/07/30
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]]> Our Missing Hearts 60149573 A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture� in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.]]> 335 Celeste Ng 0593492544 Nanda 5 3.74 2022 Our Missing Hearts
author: Celeste Ng
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/01
date added: 2024/07/26
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]]> Pearce Oysters 182112124 A family drama set along the Louisiana coastline during the 2010 BP Oil Spill, Pearce Oysters follows a third-generation oyster farmer whose business, family, and livelihood are on the brink of collapse.

Golden Vale, Louisiana, is a hardscrabble coastal town 80 miles south of New Orleans but worlds away culturally. For generations, families have made their living working in commercial fishing or in the petroleum industry. After the sudden death of his father, thirty-five-year-old Jordan Pearce becomes the unwitting head of his family's storied oyster company. Amid Jordan's struggles with flighty employees, a fraught romantic life, living with his distressed, widowed mother, and a fishery that's been on life support for years, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suddenly explodes off the coast of Louisiana, prompting one of the worst environmental disasters in history.

As fallout from the explosion and subsequent oil spill intensifies, Jordan must grapple with the existential repercussions for his family, and the surrounding community, which has already seen its fair share of hardship, having just barely recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Forced to seek help from his estranged brother, Benny―a beatnik musician who ran away to New Orleans years ago―Jordan and what's left of the quarrelsome Pearce clan are reunited under one roof, alongside a cast of unforgettable regional characters. Jordan’s desperation to save the business, coupled with Benny’s desire to distance himself from his past, test the bonds of their family and the strength of their principles. Together, they must commit to saving this long overlooked corner of the Gulf Coast―a final act of hope in the face of impending tragedy.

This tender, unflagging exploration of industry, class, culture, and the extraordinary beauty in the margins of life, is eye-opening, eco-fiction that elevates the voices of deeply sympathetic characters.]]> 368 Joselyn Takacs 1958506508 Nanda 5 3.74 2024 Pearce Oysters
author: Joselyn Takacs
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/26
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]]> How to Say Babylon 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 Nanda 5 4.43 2023 How to Say Babylon
author: Safiya Sinclair
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> True Biz 58395049 TRUE BIZ (adj./exclamation; American Sign Language): really, seriously, definitely, real-talk

True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another's—and changed forever.

This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.]]> 386 Sara Nović 0593241509 Nanda 5 4.06 2022 True Biz
author: Sara Nović
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Deaf Utopia: A Memoir—And a Love Letter to a Way of Life]]> 56921930
Before becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair of Deaf twins born to a multi-generational Deaf family in Queens, New York. At the hospital one day after he was born, Nyle “failed� his first test—a hearing test—to the joy and excitement of his parents.

In this moving and engrossing memoir, Nyle shares stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, of what it means to navigate a world built for hearing people. From growing up in a rough-and-tumble childhood in Queens with his big and loving Italian-American family to where he is now, Nyle has always been driven to explore beyond the boundaries given him.

A college math major and athlete at Gallaudet—the famed university for the Deaf in Washington, DC—Nyle was drawn as a young man to acting, and dove headfirst into the reality show competitions America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars—ultimately winning both competitions.

Deaf Utopia is more than a memoir, it is a cultural anthem—a proud and defiant song of Deaf culture and a love letter to American Sign Language, Nyle’s primary language. Through his stories and those of his Deaf brothers, parents, and grandparents, Nyle opens many windows into the Deaf experience.

Deaf Utopia is intimate, suspenseful, hilarious, eye-opening, and smart—both a memoir and a celebration of what makes Deaf culture unique and beautiful.]]> 317 Nyle DiMarco 0063062356 Nanda 5 4.23 2022 Deaf Utopia: A Memoir—And a Love Letter to a Way of Life
author: Nyle DiMarco
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> This Time Tomorrow 59089704 What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?]]> 310 Emma Straub 052553900X Nanda 5 3.78 2022 This Time Tomorrow
author: Emma Straub
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession]]> 62873378 One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser.

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

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

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

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.]]> 224 Michael Finkel 0525657320 Nanda 5 3.92 2023 The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
author: Michael Finkel
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight]]> 121561903
� The Country of the Blind is about seeing—but also about marriage and family and the moral and emotional challenge of accommodating the parts of ourselves that scare us. A warm, profound, and unforgettable meditation on how we adjust to new ways of being in the world.� —Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves

We meet Andrew Leland as he’s suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be he’s midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in, such that he now sees the world as if through a narrow tube. Soon—but without knowing exactly when—he will likely have no vision left.

Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, politics, and customs. He negotiates his changing relationships with his wife and son, and with his own sense of self, as he moves from his mainstream, “typical� life to one with a disability. Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland’s determination not to merely survive this transition but to grow from it—to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening.

Thought-provoking and brimming with warmth and humor, The Country of the Blind is a deeply personal and intellectually exhilarating tour of a way of being that most of us have never paused to consider—and from which we have much to learn.]]> 368 Andrew Leland 1984881426 Nanda 5 4.09 2023 The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight
author: Andrew Leland
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> There There 36692478 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525520375.

Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.]]> 294 Tommy Orange Nanda 5 3.98 2018 There There
author: Tommy Orange
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> Misery 10614 #1, #2, #3, #4

Paul Sheldon. He's a bestselling novelist who has finally met his biggest fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.]]> 370 Stephen King 0450417395 Nanda 5 4.22 1987 Misery
author: Stephen King
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2019/02/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> The Martian 18007564
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error� are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills � and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit � he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

]]> 384 Andy Weir 0804139024 Nanda 5 4.41 2011 The Martian
author: Andy Weir
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> White Oleander 32234 White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes--each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned--becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.]]> 446 Janet Fitch 0316182540 Nanda 5 4.00 1999 White Oleander
author: Janet Fitch
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2000/01/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> The Most Fun We Ever Had 41880044
When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that's to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest: Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator-turned-stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt when the darkest part of her past resurfaces; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents'.

As the novel moves through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt--given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption fifteen years before--we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons' past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile.]]> 532 Claire Lombardo 0385544251 Nanda 5 3.88 2019 The Most Fun We Ever Had
author: Claire Lombardo
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> The Poisonwood Bible 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 Nanda 5 4.10 1998 The Poisonwood Bible
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2011/07/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> A Thousand Splendid Suns 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Nanda 5 4.44 2007 A Thousand Splendid Suns
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2012/08/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> Bel Canto 5826 318 Ann Patchett Nanda 5 3.93 2001 Bel Canto
author: Ann Patchett
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2012/05/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)]]> 13214
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

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

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.]]> 289 Maya Angelou 0553279378 Nanda 5 4.30 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
author: Maya Angelou
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 1993/06/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Nanda 5 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2016/04/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> The History of Love 3867
Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives...

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here]]> 255 Nicole Krauss 0393328627 Nanda 5 3.92 2005 The History of Love
author: Nicole Krauss
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2016/04/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)]]> 1736739
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life � sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.]]> 270 Elizabeth Strout Nanda 5 3.85 2008 Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2017/02/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Nanda 5 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves]]> 16176440
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, Lowell, Rosemary and her unusual sister Fern. Rosemary begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “Until Fern’s expulsion...,� Rosemary says, “she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her.� As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.

In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date—a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences.]]> 310 Karen Joy Fowler 0399162097 Nanda 5 3.70 2013 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
author: Karen Joy Fowler
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]]> 10569 (back cover)]]> 320 Stephen King 0743455967 Nanda 5 4.33 2000 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
author: Stephen King
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2018/08/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> The Namesake 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail � the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase � that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]> 304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Nanda 5 4.01 2003 The Namesake
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2014/03/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Ender’s Game (Ender's Saga, #1)]]> 375802
But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.]]> 324 Orson Scott Card 0812550706 Nanda 5 4.31 1985 Ender’s Game (Ender's Saga, #1)
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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]]> Bird by Bird 12543 A newer edition of this title can be found here.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said. 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"

With this basic instruction always in mind, Anne Lamott returns to offer us a new gift: a step-by-step guide on how to write and on how to manage the writer's life. From "Getting Started,' with "Short Assignments," through "Shitty First Drafts," "Character," "Plot," "Dialogue." all the way from "False Starts" to "How Do You Know When You're Done?" Lamott encourages, instructs, and inspires. She discusses "Writers Block," "Writing Groups," and "Publication." Bracingly honest, she is also one of the funniest people alive.

If you have ever wondered what it takes to be a writer, what it means to be a writer, what the contents of your school lunches said about what your parents were really like, this book is for you. From faith, love, and grace to pain, jealousy, and fear, Lamott insists that you keep your eyes open, and then shows you how to survive. And always, from the life of the artist she turns to the art of life.

]]> 238 Anne Lamott Nanda 5 4.24 1994 Bird by Bird
author: Anne Lamott
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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]]> My Notorious Life 16130211 My Notorious Life is an ambitious, thrilling novel introducing Axie Muldoon, a fiery heroine for the ages. Axie's story begins on the streets of 1860s New York. The impoverished child of Irish immigrants, she grows up to become one of the wealthiest and most controversial women of her day.

In vivid prose, Axie recounts how she is forcibly separated from her mother and siblings, apprenticed to a doctor, and how she and her husband parlay the sale of a few bottles of 'Lunar Tablets for Female Complaint' into a thriving midwifery business. Flouting convention and defying the law in the name of women's reproductive rights, Axie rises from grim tenement rooms to the splendor of a mansion on Fifth Avenue, amassing wealth while learning over and over never to trust a man who says "trust me."

When her services attract outraged headlines, Axie finds herself on a collision course with a crusading official, Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It will take all of Axie's cunning and power to outwit him in the fight to preserve her freedom and everything she holds dear.

Inspired by the true history of an infamous female physician who was once called "the Wickedest Woman in New York," My Notorious Life is a mystery, a family saga, a love story, and an exquisitely detailed portrait of nineteenth-century America. Axie Muldoon's inimitable voice brings the past alive, and her story haunts and enlightens the present.]]> 448 Kate Manning 1451698089 Nanda 5 4.03 2013 My Notorious Life
author: Kate Manning
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity]]> 11869272
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter - Annawadi's "most-everything girl" - will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy."

But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.]]> 278 Katherine Boo 1400067553 Nanda 5 3.97 2012 Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
author: Katherine Boo
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human]]> 11148989 The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. when our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began.

Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be used instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor.

Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors' diets, Catching Fire sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins--or in our modern eating habits.

--from the dustjacket]]> 309 Richard W. Wrangham Nanda 5 3.87 2009 Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
author: Richard W. Wrangham
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> March 13529 Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

From the author of the acclaimed Year of Wonders, a historical novel and love story set during a time of catastrophe, on the front lines of the American Civil War. Acclaimed author Geraldine Brooks gives us the story of the absent father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women—and conjures a world of brutality, stubborn courage and transcendent love. An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union—which is also capable of barbarism and racism—but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief.]]> 280 Geraldine Brooks Nanda 5 3.77 2005 March
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Nanda 5 4.38 2005 The Book Thief
author: Markus Zusak
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2013/01/01
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]]> The Space Between Us 218357 321 Thrity Umrigar 006079156X Nanda 5 4.02 2005 The Space Between Us
author: Thrity Umrigar
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2008/06/01
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]]> The Fountainhead 2122
This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand’s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction—that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress...

“A writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly...This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.”—The New York Times]]> 704 Ayn Rand Nanda 5 3.87 1943 The Fountainhead
author: Ayn Rand
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1943
rating: 5
read at: 1992/08/01
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]]> Atonement 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.

As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Nanda 5 3.94 2001 Atonement
author: Ian McEwan
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2012/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Outliers: The Story of Success]]> 3228917 Learn what sets high achievers apart � from Bill Gates to the Beatles � in this #1 bestseller from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.]]> 309 Malcolm Gladwell 0316017922 Nanda 5 4.19 2008 Outliers: The Story of Success
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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]]> Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Nanda 5 4.46 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2019/04/01
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]]> Rules of Civility 10054335 335 Amor Towles Nanda 5 4.06 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2020/03/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents]]> 51152447 The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.�

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.]]> 544 Isabel Wilkerson 0593230256 Nanda 5 4.52 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row]]> 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 Nanda 5 4.64 2018 The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row
author: Anthony Ray Hinton
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Body: A Guide for Occupants]]> 43582376 A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe.

Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.

A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.]]> 450 Bill Bryson 0385539304 Nanda 5 4.30 2019 The Body: A Guide for Occupants
author: Bill Bryson
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/01
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]]> Hamnet 43890641 Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

A New York Times Notable Book (2020), Best Book of 2020: Guardian, Financial Times, Literary Hub, and NPR.]]> 372 Maggie O'Farrell 1472223799 Nanda 5 4.16 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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]]> Bewilderment 56404444 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain�

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?]]> 278 Richard Powers 0393881148 Nanda 5 3.87 2021 Bewilderment
author: Richard Powers
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 5
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]]> The Invention of Wings 18079776
Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimké is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble. She also knows that she cannot accept. And so, indeed, the trouble begins ...

A powerful, sweeping novel, inspired by real events, and set in the American Deep South in the nineteenth century, The Invention of Wings evokes a world of shocking contrasts, of beauty and ugliness, of righteous people living daily with cruelty they fail to recognize; and celebrates the power of friendship and sisterhood against all the odds.]]> 384 Sue Monk Kidd 0670024783 Nanda 5 4.24 2014 The Invention of Wings
author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/01
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]]> What Strange Paradise 53773242
In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir's life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.
]]> 256 Omar El Akkad 0525657908 Nanda 5 4.03 2021 What Strange Paradise
author: Omar El Akkad
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl with the Louding Voice]]> 50214741 All you have are your words.

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education.

As the only daughter of a broke father, she is a valuable commodity. Removed from school and sold as a third wife to an old man, Adunni's life amounts to this: four goats, two bags of rice, some chickens and a new TV. When unspeakable tragedy swiftly strikes in her new home, she is secretly sold as a domestic servant to a household in the wealthy enclaves of Lagos, where no one will talk about the strange disappearance of her predecessor, Rebecca. No one but Adunni...

As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless servant, fourteen-year-old Adunni is repeatedly told that she is nothing. But Adunni won't be silenced. She is determined to find her voice - in a whisper, in song, in broken English - until she can speak for herself, for the girls like Rebecca who came before, and for all the girls who will follow.

]]> 371 Abi Daré 1524746029 Nanda 5 4.40 2020 The Girl with the Louding Voice
author: Abi Daré
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/01
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]]> How High We Go in the Dark 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 Nanda 5 3.81 2022 How High We Go in the Dark
author: Sequoia Nagamatsu
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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]]> The Girls in the Stilt House 54762315 Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder—perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and If the Creek Don't Rise.

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father.

Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio.

As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.]]> 384 Kelly Mustian 1728217717 Nanda 5 3.99 2021 The Girls in the Stilt House
author: Kelly Mustian
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/01
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]]> Station Eleven 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 Nanda 5 4.05 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/01
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]]> Reasons to Stay Alive 25733573 Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.

Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it.

Everyone’s lives are touched by mental illness: if we do not suffer from it ourselves, then we have a friend or loved one who does. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it. Above all, his humor and encouragement never let us lose sight of hope. Speaking as his present self to his former self in the depths of depression, Matt is adamant that the oldest cliché is the truest—there is light at the end of the tunnel. He teaches us to celebrate the small joys and moments of peace that life brings, and reminds us that there are always reasons to stay alive.]]> 256 Matt Haig 0143128728 Nanda 5 4.04 2015 Reasons to Stay Alive
author: Matt Haig
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/01
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]]> If I Survive You 59808611
Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper--himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica--Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn't want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.

Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery's debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.]]> 260 Jonathan Escoffery 037460598X Nanda 5 3.67 2022 If I Survive You
author: Jonathan Escoffery
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> Speak 39280444
"Speak up for yourself—we want to know what you have to say."

From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication.

In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.

Speak was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.]]> 224 Laurie Halse Anderson 0374311250 Nanda 5 4.13 1999 Speak
author: Laurie Halse Anderson
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> Brown Girls 57717412
We live in the dregs of Queens, New York, where airplanes fly so low that we are certain they will crush us...

This remarkable story brings you deep into the lives of a group of friends--young women of color growing up in Queens, New York City's most vibrant and eclectic borough. Here, streets echo with languages from all over the globe, subways rumble above dollar stores, trees bloom and topple across sidewalks, and the briny scent of the ocean wafts from Rockaway Beach. Here, girls like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and many others, attempt to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture they come of age in. Here, they become friends for life--or so they vow.

Exuberant and wild, they sing Mariah Carey at the tops of their lungs and roam the streets of The City That Never Sleeps, pine for crushes who pay them no mind--and break the hearts of those who do--all the while trying to heed their mothers' commands to be dutiful daughters, obedient young women. As they age, however, their paths diverge and rifts form between them, as some choose to remain on familiar streets, while others find themselves ascending in the world, drawn to the allure of other skylines, careers, and lovers, beckoned by existences foreign and seemingly at odds with their humble roots.

In musical, evocative prose, Brown Girls illustrates a collective portrait of childhood, motherhood, and beyond, and is an unflinching exploration of race, class, and marginalization in America. It is an account of the forces that bind friends to one another, their families, and communities, and is a powerful depiction of women of color attempting to forge their place in the world. For even as the dueling forces of ambition and loyalty, freedom and marriage, reinvention and stability threaten to divide them, it is to each other--and to Queens--that the girls ultimately return.]]> 209 Daphne Palasi Andreades 0593243420 Nanda 5 3.90 2022 Brown Girls
author: Daphne Palasi Andreades
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> Solito 59900688 Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll
take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.�

Javier Zamora’s adventure is a 3,000-mile journey from his small town in
El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border.
He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a
mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling
alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote� hired to lead them to safety,
Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.

At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents� arms,
snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He
cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns,
arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two
weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants
who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.

A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and
intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey,
but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most
unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story
of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.]]> 384 Javier Zamora 0593498062 Nanda 5 4.46 2022 Solito
author: Javier Zamora
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/23
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> The Science of Storytelling 43183121
There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story � from Joseph Campbell’s well-worn theories about myth and archetype to recent attempts to crack the ‘Bestseller Code�. But few have used a scientific approach. This is curious, for if we are to truly understand storytelling in its grandest sense, we must first come to understand the ultimate storyteller � the human brain.

In this scalpel-sharp, thought-provoking book, Will Storr demonstrates how master storytellers manipulate and compel us, leading us on a journey from the Hebrew scriptures to Mr Men, from Booker Prize-winning literature to box set TV. Applying dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to the foundations of our myths and archetypes, he shows how we can use these tools to tell better stories � and make sense of our chaotic modern world.]]> 144 Will Storr Nanda 5 4.01 2019 The Science of Storytelling
author: Will Storr
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 Nanda 5 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> Heavy 63026545
Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer. In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.]]> 248 Kiese Laymon Nanda 5 4.47 2018 Heavy
author: Kiese Laymon
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> The Nix 28251002
To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.]]> 625 Nathan Hill 110194661X Nanda 5 4.08 2016 The Nix
author: Nathan Hill
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> To Kill a Mockingbird 2657 "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Nanda 5 4.25 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird
author: Harper Lee
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 5
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]]> The Outsiders 231804 The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.

Librarian note: This record is for one of the three editions published with different covers and with ISBN 0-140-38572-X / 978-0-14-038572-4. The records are for the 1988 cover (this record), the 1995 cover, and the 2008 cover which is also the current in-print cover.]]> 208 S.E. Hinton 0670532576 Nanda 5 4.13 1967 The Outsiders
author: S.E. Hinton
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1967
rating: 5
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]]> The Catcher in the Rye 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919�2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Nanda 5 3.81 1951 The Catcher in the Rye
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Nanda
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 5
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]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Nanda 5 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Nanda
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
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]]>