Danny's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:20:37 -0800 60 Danny's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Breakfast at Tiffany's & Other Voices, Other Rooms: Two Novels]]> 15798121 Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms, the debut novel he published as a twenty-three-year-old prodigy.

Of all his characters, Capote once said, Holly Golightly was his favorite. The hillbilly-turned-Manhattanite at the center of Breakfast at Tiffany’s shares not only the author’s philosophy of freedom but also his fears and anxieties. For Holly, the cure is to jump into a taxi and head for Tiffany’s; nothing bad could happen, she believes, amid “that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets.�

Other Voices, Other Rooms begins as thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to rural Alabama to live with his estranged father—who is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his eccentric family and finds a kindred spirit in a defiant little girl. Despite its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence, this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel revels in small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.]]> 304 Truman Capote 0812994361 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 3.78 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's & Other Voices, Other Rooms: Two Novels
author: Truman Capote
name: Danny
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Danny
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir]]> 63893014 The beloved and iconic singer-songwriter and three-time Grammy winner opens up about her traumatic childhood in the Deep South, her years of being overlooked in the music industry, and the stories that inspired her enduring songs.

Lucinda Williams’s rise to fame was anything but easy. Raised in a working-class family in the Deep South, she moved from town to town each time her father—a poet, a textbook salesman, a professor, a lover of parties—got a new job, totalling twelve different places by the time she was 18. Her mother suffered from severe mental illness and was in and out of hospitals. And when Williams was about a year old she had to have an emergency tracheotomy—an inauspicious start for a singing career.

But she was also born a fighter, and she would develop a voice that has captivated millions.

Lucinda Williams takes readers through the events that shaped her music—from performing for family friends in her living room to singing at local high schools and colleges, to recording her first album and headlining a sold-out show at Radio City Music Hall. She reveals the inspirations for her unforgettable lyrics, including the doomed love affairs with ‘poets on motorcycles�, and the gothic Southern landscapes of the many different towns of her youth. Williams spent years working at health food stores and record stores during the day so she could play her music at night, and faced record companies who told her that her music was ‘too unfinished�, ‘too country for rock and too rock for country�, and criticism that she didn’t have the right voice for radio or TV. But her fighting spirit persevered, leading to a hard-won success that spans 17 Grammy nominations and a legacy as one of the greatest and most influential songwriters of our time.

Raw, intimate and honest, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You is an evocative reflection on an extraordinary woman’s life journey.
]]> 262 Lucinda Williams 0593136500 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.14 2023 Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir
author: Lucinda Williams
name: Danny
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> Hollywood: The Oral History 55506526 The real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd, and nearly four hundred others, assembled from the American Film Institute’s treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today.

From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, The Oral History, lets a reader “listen in� on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on musicians, costumers, art directors, cinematographers, writers, sound men, editors, make-up artists, and even script timers, messengers, and publicists. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It’s the insider’s story.

Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson, both acclaimed storytellers in their own right, have undertaken the monumental task of digesting these tens of thousands of hours of talk and weaving it into a definitive portrait of workaday Hollywood.]]> 759 Jeanine Basinger 0063056968 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.05 2022 Hollywood: The Oral History
author: Jeanine Basinger
name: Danny
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/29
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]]> VenCo 61134273
Métis millennial Lucky St. James is barely hanging on when she learns she’ll be evicted from the tiny Toronto apartment she shares with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella. But then one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. She burrows through a wall to find a tarnished silver spoon, humming with otherworldly energy, etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon connects her to a teeming network of witches across North America who have anxiously awaited her discovery.

Enter VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money (its name is an anagram of “coven.�) VenCo’s witches hide in plain sight wherever women gather: Tupperware parties, Mommy & Me classes, suburban book clubs. Since colonial times, they have awaited the moment the seven spoons will come together and ignite a new era, returning women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

A wildly imaginative and compulsively readable fantasia of adventure, history, Americana, feminism, and magic, VenCo is a novel only the supremely gifted Cherie Dimaline could write.]]> 400 Cherie Dimaline 0063054914 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.91 2023 VenCo
author: Cherie Dimaline
name: Danny
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> Heretic: A Memoir 61362004 A memoir of leaving the evangelical Church and the search for radical new ways to build community, reckoning with religious trauma and Midwestern values as a means to unveil how evangelicalism directly impacts every American--religious or not--and has been a major force in driving our democracy towards fascism.

Jeanna Kadlec knew what it meant to be faithful--in her marriage to a paster's son, in the comfortable life ahead of her, in her God--but there was no denying the truth that lived under that she was queer and, if she wanted to survive, she would need to leave behind the church and every foundational building block she knew.

Heretic is a memoir of heretical rebirth. From the story of Lilith to celebrity purity rings, a newly married Kadlec interrogates how her indoctrination and years of piety intersects with her Midwest working-class upbringing as she navigates graduate school in Boston, revealing another insidious truth--that conservative Christianity has both built and undermined our political power structures, poisoned our pop culture, and infected the way we interact with one another.

Weaving the personal with powerful critique, Heretic explores how we can radically abandon these painful systems by taking a sledgehammer to the comfortable. Whether searching for community in the face of millennial loneliness or wanting to reclaim a secular form of fellowship in everyday life, Kadlec envisions the brilliant possibilities that come with not only daring to want a different way but actually striking out and claiming it for ourselves.]]> 267 Jeanna Kadlec 0358581966 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.97 2022 Heretic: A Memoir
author: Jeanna Kadlec
name: Danny
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim]]> 63546964 A New Yorker writer's illuminating and deeply personal collection of interviews with the late Stephen Sondheim, conducted in the last years of the artist's life--conversations that reveal the legendary composer-lyricist as he was rarely seen in public.

In February 2022, The New Yorker published an exclusive online issue which featured excerpts from interviews longtime staff writer D. T. Max conducted with Stephen Sondheim over the last years of his life. Max was working on a major New Yorker profile timed to the eventual premiere of the new musical Sondheim was writing. The article generated an astonishing response from readers who praised it as one of--if not the best--interviews with Sondheim ever produced; that Max had elicited a candor and vulnerability in the celebrated artist little shown before.

Now, Max brings together those unedited conversations in this commemorative collection. This book reveals this cultural icon--a star who shunned the spotlight--at his most relaxed, thoughtful, sardonic, and engaging, as he talks about his work, music, movies, family, New York City, aging, the creative process, and much more. Throughout, Max sets the scenes of the interviews, shares his impressions of Sondheim during each session, and explains how their unusual relationship evolved over the course of their "pas de deux."

This is a beautiful, surprising, and indelible portrait of an artist in his twilight, offering remarkable insight into the mind and heart of a genius whose work has defined and indelibly influenced modern American musical theater and popular culture.]]> 234 D.T. Max 0063279835 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.73 2022 Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim
author: D.T. Max
name: Danny
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/23
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]]> <![CDATA[I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood]]> 60233583
Longlisted for the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

“Sometimes I think about how much bad news there is to tell my kid, the endlessly long, looping CVS receipt scroll of truly terrible things that have happened, and I want to get under the bed and never come out. How do we tell them about all this? Can we just play Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire and then brace for questions? The first of which should be, how is this a song that played on the radio?�

In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explore the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife.

In interconnected essays like “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City,� “Your Husband Will Remarry Five Minutes After You Die,� “Eulogy for My Feet,� and “An Open Love Letter to Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent,� Klein explores this stage of life in all its cruel ironies, joyous moments, and bittersweetness.

Written with Klein’s signature candor and humanity, I'll Show Myself Out is an incisive, moving, and often uproarious collection.]]> 283 Jessi Klein 0062981617 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.88 2022 I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood
author: Jessi Klein
name: Danny
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/23
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]]> Antoni: Let's Do Dinner 48930355 272 Antoni Porowski 0358395321 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.07 2020 Antoni: Let's Do Dinner
author: Antoni Porowski
name: Danny
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> Land of Milk and Honey 101673225 The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.]]> 240 C Pam Zhang 0593538242 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.50 2023 Land of Milk and Honey
author: C Pam Zhang
name: Danny
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Brother's Husband, Volume 1 (Otouto no Otto, #1)]]> 30292689
Now Mike has arrived to Japan to meet Yaichi and his daughter Kana. Yaichi has to face his own preconceptions and come to terms about who his brother really was.]]> 180 Gengoroh Tagame Danny 4 4.11 My Brother's Husband, Volume 1 (Otouto no Otto, #1)
author: Gengoroh Tagame
name: Danny
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2017/04/26
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Lady Chatterley's Lover 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 3.48 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Danny
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/17
shelves: to-read, to-read-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels]]> 24368076 For the first time, all five books in the Patrick Melrose series are collected in a single edition:

NEVER MIND

BAD NEWS

SOME HOPE

MOTHER'S MILK

AT LAST

Acclaimed for their searing wit and their deep humanity, this magnificent cycle of novels - in which Patrick Melrose battles to survive the savageries of his childhood and lead a self-determined life - is one of the major achievements in English fiction.

]]> 689 Edward St. Aubyn 1250069629 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 4.11 2012 The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels
author: Edward St. Aubyn
name: Danny
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/28
shelves: to-read, to-read-own
review:

]]> A Book of Days 60466376 Just Kids and M Train, featuring more than 365 images and reflections that chart Smith’s singular aesthetic—inspired by her wildly popular Instagram.

In 2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: her hand with the simple message “Hello Everybody!� Known for shooting with her beloved Land Camera 250, Smith started posting images from her phone including portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots, and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world, photographs of her daily coffee, the books she’s reading, the graves of beloved heroes—William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, Albert Camus. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith’s unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims. Original to this book are vintage photographs: anniversary pearls, a mother’s keychain, and a husband’s Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are photos from Smith’s archives of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafés, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world.

With over 365 photographs taking you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, playful—and complete with an introduction by Smith that explores her documentary process�A Book of Days is a timeless offering for deeply uncertain times, an inspirational map of an artist’s life.]]> 389 Patti Smith 0593448545 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.42 A Book of Days
author: Patti Smith
name: Danny
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/22
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> The Complete Poems 45286 Leaves of Grass, the work that defined him as one of America’s most influential voices and that he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation, and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful “Song of Myself� and “I Sing the Body Electric� to the elegiac “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,� Whitman’s art fuses oratory, journalism, and song in a vivid celebration of humanity. Containing all Whitman’s known poetic work, this edition reprints the final, or “deathbed,� edition of Leaves of Grass (1891�92). Earlier versions of many poems are also given, including the 1855 “Song of Myself.�
Features a completely new—and fuller—introduction discussing the development of Whitman's poetic career, his influence on later American poets, and his impact on the American cultural sensibility


Includes chronology, updated suggestions for further reading, and extensive notes]]> 896 Walt Whitman 0140424512 Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-own 4.27 1892 The Complete Poems
author: Walt Whitman
name: Danny
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1892
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/17
shelves: to-read, lgbt, to-read-own
review:

]]> Becoming a Queen 60405244
If only Mark Davis hadn’t put on a dress for the talent show. It was a joke―other guys did it too―but when his boyfriend saw Mark in that dress, everything changed.

And now, fresh on the heels of high school heartbreak, Mark has given up on love. Maybe some people are just too much for this world―too weird, too wild, too feminine, too everything. Thankfully, his older brother Eric always knows what to say to keep Mark from spinning into self-loathing. "Be yourself! Your full sequin-y self.�

But Mark starts to notice signs that his perfect older brother has problems of his own.

When the source of Mark’s strength suddenly becomes the source of his greatest pain, the path back to happiness seems impossible. Searching for a way out, Mark slips into a dress to just, briefly, become someone else, live a different life. His escape, however, becomes an unexpected outlet for his pain―a path to authentic connection, and a provocation to finally see other people as fully as he wants to be seen.

Beautifully written, heart-wrenching, and ultimately uplifting, Dan Clay's Becoming a Queen is a stunning story about love, loss, and the ineffable power of a purple princess dress.]]> 416 Dan Clay 125084309X Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-need 4.24 2023 Becoming a Queen
author: Dan Clay
name: Danny
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/10
shelves: to-read, lgbt, to-read-need
review:

]]> The Guest List 52656911
The bride � The plus one � The best man � The wedding planner � The bridesmaid � The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 319 Lucy Foley Danny 4 3.82 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: Danny
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/03/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Bellies 62978902
I wore a dress on the night I first met Ming.

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a magnetic young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom’s awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming’s orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he’s already mapped out their future together. But shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.

From London to Kuala Lumpur, New York to Cologne, we follow Tom and Ming as they face tectonic shifts in their relationship and friend circle in the wake of Ming’s transition. Through a spiral of unforeseen crises—some personal, some professional, some life-altering—Tom and Ming are forced to confront the vastly different shapes their lives have taken since graduating, and each must answer the essential question: Is it worth losing a part of yourself to become who you are?

Buoyed by a voice as tender, effervescent and wryly funny as the cast of characters it centers, Bellies is an unforgettable story of youth, intimacy, hunger and heartbreak, at once boldly original yet fiercely familiar, which unabashedly holds a mirror up to our most vulnerable selves and desires.]]> 336 Nicola Dinan 0857529234 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 4.17 2023 Bellies
author: Nicola Dinan
name: Danny
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/14
shelves: to-read, to-read-own
review:

]]> The Fraud 35707006
Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle meanwhile grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realise. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The 'Tichborne Trial' captivates Mrs Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task...

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity, and the mystery of 'other people.']]> 464 Zadie Smith 0525558977 Danny 0 to-read 3.45 2023 The Fraud
author: Zadie Smith
name: Danny
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Black Candle Women 59049282 A Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Seen on the Today Show

“If you like Practical Magic� you will love Black Candle Women.� —Jenna Bush Hager

Named a Best Book of the Month by: Shondaland, MS. Magazine, TODAY, Reader’s Digest, Katie Couric Media, AARP Sisters, ŷ, BookRiot

A warm and wry family drama with a magical twist about four generations of Black women, a family love curse, and the secrets they keep for and from each other over one very complicated year

Generations of Montrose women—Augusta, Victoria, Willow—have always lived together in their quaint California bungalow. They keep to themselves, never venture far from home, and their collection of tinctures and spells is an unspoken bond between them. But when young Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, their quiet lives are thrown into disarray.

For the family has withheld a crucial secret from Nickie all these years: any person a Montrose woman falls in love with will die. Their surprise guest forces each woman to reckon with her own past choices and mistakes. And as new truths about the curse emerge, they're set on a collision course dating back to 1950s New Orleans’s French Quarter—where a hidden story in a mysterious book may just hold the answers they seek in life and in love�

“Richly imagined and elegantly told, with plenty of satisfying secrets, heartaches, and twists.�
—Sadeqa Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of The House of Eve, a Reese's Book Club Pick

“Propulsive and poignant, Black Candle Women concocts an intoxicating potion of warmth, wisdom, and wonder.� —Ava DuVernay]]> 336 Diane Marie Brown 1525899910 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.38 2023 Black Candle Women
author: Diane Marie Brown
name: Danny
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/28
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> Big Gay Wedding 61796679 Named one of Shondaland and Town & Country's Best Books of May � Named one of Lambda Literary's Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Books � Named one of Cosmopolitan's Best Books of 2023 (So Far)

An unashamedly proud, loud, and hilarious novel about a small town that’s forever changed by a big gay wedding, perfect for fans of Red, White & Royal Blue and The Guncle

Two grooms. One mother of a problem.

Barnett Durang has a secret. No, not THAT secret. His widowed mother has long known he’s gay. The secret is Barnett is getting married. At his mother’s farm. In their small Louisiana town. She just doesn’t know it yet.

It’ll be an intimate affair. Just two hundred or so of the most fabulous folks Barnett is shipping in from the “heathen coasts,� as Mom likes to call them, turning her quiet rescue farm for misfit animals into a most unlikely wedding venue.

But there are forces, both within this modern new family and in the town itself, that really don’t want to see this handsome couple march down the aisle. It’ll be the biggest, gayest event in the town’s history if they can pull it off, and after a glitter-filled week, nothing will ever be the same. Big Gay Wedding is an uplifting book about the power of family and the unconditional love of a mother for her son.]]> 336 Byron Lane 1250267145 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 3.71 2023 Big Gay Wedding
author: Byron Lane
name: Danny
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/28
shelves: to-read, to-read-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Been Kissed (Boy Meets Boy, #1)]]> 57352258 Dear (never-been-quite-over-you) Crush,
It's been a few years since we were together, but I can't stop thinking about the time we almost...

Wren Roland has never been kissed, but he wants that movie-perfect ending more than anything. Feeling nostalgic on the eve of his birthday, he sends emails to all the boys he (ahem) loved before he came out. Morning brings the inevitable Oh God What Did I Do?, but he brushes that panic aside. Why stress about it? None of his could-have-beens are actually going to read the emails, much less respond. Right?

Enter Derick Haverford, Wren's #1 pre-coming-out-crush and his drive-in theater's new social media intern. Everyone claims he's coasting on cinematic good looks and his father's connections, but Wren has always known there's much more to Derick than meets the eye. Too bad he doesn't feel the same way about the infamous almost-kiss that once rocked Wren's world.

Whatever. Wren's no longer a closeted teenager; he can survive this. But as their hazy summer becomes consumed with a special project that may just save the struggling drive-in for good, Wren and Derick are drawn ever-closer...and maybe, finally, Wren's dream of a perfect-kiss-before-the-credits is within reach.

A feel-good summer LGBTQIA+ New Adult RomCom, perfect for fans ofRed White & Royal Blue,Boyfriend Material, andWhat If It's Us.]]> 279 Timothy Janovsky 1728250587 Danny 0 currently-reading 3.65 2022 Never Been Kissed (Boy Meets Boy, #1)
author: Timothy Janovsky
name: Danny
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Blackouts 65215321 From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collective.

Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay--playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized--has a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories--moments of joy and oblivion--and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?

Inspired by Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pedro Páramo, Voodoo Macbeth, the book at its own center and the woman who created it, oral histories, and many more texts, images, and influences, Justin Torres's Blackouts is a work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have made--a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth.]]> 306 Justin Torres 0374293570 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.76 2023 Blackouts
author: Justin Torres
name: Danny
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/24
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]]> Learned by Heart 62874041 Eliza and Lister have never been this wide-awake in their lives, and the Slope, with its curtains drawn wide, is bright with starlight. They talk in whispers, not to disturb the maids who lie sleeping on the other side of the box room. The question Eliza’s been needing to ask swells like a great berry in her mouth, and all at once she’s not scared to let it out, not scared at all, not scared of anything . . .

In 1805, fourteen-year-old Eliza Raine is a school girl at the Manor School for Young Ladies in York. The daughter of an Indian mother and a British father, Eliza was banished to this unfamiliar country as a little girl. When she first stepped off the King George in Kent, Eliza was accompanied by her older sister, Jane, but now she boards alone at the Manor, with no one left to claim her. She spends her days avoiding the attention of her fellow pupils until, one day, a fearless and charismatic new student arrives at the school. The two girls are immediately thrown together and soon Eliza’s life is turned inside out by this strange and curious young woman.

Learned by Heart, Emma Donoghue’s mesmerising new novel, tells the heartbreaking story of the tangled lives of two women whose intense, and unlikely, relationship will change them for ever.]]> 336 Emma Donoghue 0316564435 Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-need 3.47 2023 Learned by Heart
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Danny
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/23
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]]> Happiness Falls 75495002 When a father goes missing, his family's desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another--both a riveting page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia's brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, race, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.]]> 387 Angie Kim 0593448200 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.72 2023 Happiness Falls
author: Angie Kim
name: Danny
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Pat in the City: My Life of Fashion, Style, and Breaking All the Rules]]> 61354656
Carrie Bradshaw’s pairing of a tutu with a tank top is one of the most iconic outfits ever seen on television—and a look that turned avant-garde New York designer and stylist Patricia Field into a household name. But before she was crowned the fairy godmother of haute couture, Field was the owner of the longtime East Village emporiumPat Field , a haven for drag queens, club kids, starving artists, NYU freshmen, and creative visionaries alike. Presiding over downtown with her distinctive vermillion hair and a constantly lit cigarette, Patricia was a rock ’n� roll den mother to everyone from Amanda Lepore to Lady Bunny to Patti Smith, with her store providing the city’s eccentrics with a place to discover a sense of family, home, and a rhinestone bedazzled bustier or two. In Pat in the City, Patricia describes her journey from scrappy Queens kid peddling men’s pants to the fashion world’s most notorious renegade. As the daughter of immigrant parents, Field learned the principles of glamour from her entrepreneurial mother, and applied her NYU lessons on democracy to inform a fashion ethos that would reach millions. From her Studio 54 disco-glam styling to her award-winning work in The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City to today’s buzzy costuming in Emily in Paris , Field’s inimitable styling has pushed the envelope and created trends that have become the culture standard. Now in her seventies, Patricia Field is ready to tell her story—not to take a final bow, but to spread her credo of challenging convention and filling the world with joy and dancing.]]> 272 Patricia Field 0063048329 Danny 0 to-read 3.81 Pat in the City: My Life of Fashion, Style, and Breaking All the Rules
author: Patricia Field
name: Danny
average rating: 3.81
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy]]> 61391704
On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher.

When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim's grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life. This tragedy in a midwestern steel town soon reverberates across the United States and around the world--reaching as far away as the Vatican--as newspapers cover the story on their front pages and millions sign petitions in support of Paula.

As Paula waits on death row, her fate sparks a debate that not only animates legal circles but raises vital questions about the value of human life: What are we demanding when we call for justice? Is forgiveness an act of desperation or of profound bravery? As Bill and Paula's friendship deepens, and as Bill discovers others who have chosen to forgive after terrible violence, their story asks us to consider what radical acts of empathy we might be capable of.

In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar weaves an unforgettable narrative of an act of violence and its aftermath. This is a story about the will to live--to survive, to grow, to change--and about what we are willing to accept as justice. Tirelessly researched and told with intimacy and precision, this book brings a haunting chapter in the history of our criminal justice system to astonishing life.]]> 384 Alex Mar 0525522158 Danny 0 to-read 3.94 2023 Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy
author: Alex Mar
name: Danny
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Flux 60656032 A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his mysterious employers have inadvertently discovered time travel—and are using it to cover up a string of violent crimes...

Four days before Christmas, 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, 28-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer, and 48-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family.

So begins Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling, time-bending debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of Bo, Brandon, and Blue begin to intersect, uncovering a vast network of secrets and an experimental technology that threatens to upend life itself. Intertwined with them is the saga of an iconic �80s detective show, Raider, whose star actor has imploded spectacularly after revelations of long-term, concealed abuse.

Flux is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.]]> 352 Jinwoo Chong Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.54 2023 Flux
author: Jinwoo Chong
name: Danny
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/17
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]]> Poverty, by America 61358638 Reimagining the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.]]> 304 Matthew Desmond 0593239911 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.27 2023 Poverty, by America
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Danny
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/17
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]]> The Bridge of San Luis Rey 92508
On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below. With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world.By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.

This new edition of Wilder's 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning novel contains a new foreword by Russell Banks.]]> 160 Thornton Wilder 0060088877 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.80 1927 The Bridge of San Luis Rey
author: Thornton Wilder
name: Danny
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (The Doomsday Books, #1)]]> 57102663 Bridgerton meets Poldark in this sweeping LGBTQIA+ Regency romance from award-winning author KJ Charles

Abandoned by his father as a small child, Sir Gareth Inglis has grown up prickly, cold, and well-used to disappointment. Even so, he longs for a connection, falling headfirst into a passionate anonymous affair that's over almost as quickly as it began. Bitter at the sudden rejection, Gareth has little time to lick his wounds: his father has died, leaving him the family title, a rambling manor on the remote Romney Marsh...and the den of cutthroats and thieves that make its intricate waterways their home.

Joss Doomsday has run the Doomsday smuggling clan since he was a boy. His family is his life...which is why when the all-too-familiar new baronet testifies against Joss's sister for a hanging offense, Joss acts fast, blackmailing Gareth with the secret of their relationship to force him to recant. Their reunion is anything but happy and the path forward everything but smooth, yet after the dust settles, neither can stay away. It's a long road from there—full of danger and mysteries to be solved—yet somehow, along the way, this well-mannered gentleman may at last find true love with the least likely of scoundrels.]]> 331 K.J. Charles 1728255856 Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-need 4.08 2023 The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (The Doomsday Books, #1)
author: K.J. Charles
name: Danny
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/15
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]]> Afterglow (Golden Boys #2) 60784809
Gabriel is thrilled to create his school's first LGBTQ+ advocacy group, but his long-distance relationship is fading from summer love to something else...

Heath feels secure for the first time in years, but with his future riding on a baseball scholarship, each pitch triggers his anxiety...

Reese is set on pursuing a career in fashion design, but his creativity takes him in an unexpected direction he isn't yet ready to share...

Sal wants to be in politics, specifically local politics. After a chat with his aunt, he is ready for an unlikely path...

As graduation nears and the boys prepare to enter the real world, it's clear their friendship will never be the same. Can they find a way to stay connected and pursue their dreams?]]> 394 Phil Stamper 1547607386 Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-own 3.99 2023 Afterglow (Golden Boys #2)
author: Phil Stamper
name: Danny
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/13
shelves: to-read, lgbt, to-read-own
review:

]]> Love, Pamela 61812427 To live and dream is a wicked dance.

My dreams often come true -- a curse, and a blessing.

Pamela Anderson's blond bombshell image was ubiquitous in the 1990s. Discovered in the stands during a Canadian football game, she was quickly launched into superstardom, becoming Playboy's favorite cover girl and an emblem of Hollywood glamour and sex appeal. Yet the Pamela Anderson we think we know was created through happenstance rather than careful cultivation. Love, Pamela brings forth her true story: that of a small-town girl getting tangled up in her own dream.

Growing up on Vancouver Island, the daughter of young, wild, and unwittingly stylish parents, Pamela lived a hardscrabble childhood but developed a deep love for nature, populating her world with misfits, apparitional friends, and injured animals. Eventually overcoming her natural shyness, Pamela's restless imagination propelled her into a life few can dream of, from the beaches of Malibu to the coveted scene at the Playboy Mansion. As her star rose, she found herself a fixture of tabloid fodder, at the height of an era when paparazzi tactics were bent on destroying a person's image and self-esteem.

Pamela forged ahead with grace, finding sanctuary in her love of art and literature, and emerged a devoted mother and activist. Now, having returned to the island of her childhood, after a memorable run starring as Roxie in Chicago on Broadway, Pamela is telling her story, a story of an irrepressible free spirit coming home and discovering herself anew at every turn. With vivid prose interspersed with bursts of original poetry, Love, Pamela is a pensive, layered, and unforgettable memoir.]]> 256 Pamela Anderson 0063226561 Danny 0 3.80 2023 Love, Pamela
author: Pamela Anderson
name: Danny
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/09
shelves: to-read-need, currently-reading
review:

]]> Drowning 59345230 New York Times bestselling author T. J. Newman—whose first book Falling was an instant #1 national bestseller and the biggest thriller debut of 2021—returns for her second book, an edge-of-your-seat thriller about a commercial jetliner that crashes into the ocean, and sinks to the bottom with passengers trapped inside, and the extraordinary rescue operation to save them.

Six minutes after takeoff, Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. During the evacuation, an engine explodes and the plane is flooded. Those still alive are forced to close the doors—but it’s too late. The plane sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers trapped inside.

More than two hundred feet below the surface, engineer Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter Shannon are waist-deep in water and fighting for their lives.

Their only chance at survival is an elite rescue team on the surface led by professional diver Chris Kent—Shannon’s mother and Will’s soon-to-be ex-wife—who must work together with Will to find a way to save their daughter and rescue the passengers from the sealed airplane, which is now teetering on the edge of an undersea cliff.

There’s not much time.

There’s even less air.

With devastating emotional power and heart-stopping suspense, Drowning is an unforgettable thriller about a family’s desperate fight to save themselves and the people trapped with them—against impossible odds.]]> 304 T.J. Newman 1982177918 Danny 0 currently-reading 4.10 2023 Drowning
author: T.J. Newman
name: Danny
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Let Us Descend 87556695
“‘Let us descend,� the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’� � Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.]]> 305 Jesmyn Ward 198210449X Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.68 2023 Let Us Descend
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Danny
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/07
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]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Danny
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/07
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]]> The Lost Americans 60916180 352 Christopher Bollen 0063224429 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.59 2023 The Lost Americans
author: Christopher Bollen
name: Danny
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/07
shelves: to-read, to-read-need, lgbt
review:

]]> Vampires of El Norte 63892214 Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda.

As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead.

Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago.

Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.

When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion—and Nena’s rage at Néstor for seemingly abandoning her long ago—is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.

And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.]]> 371 Isabel Cañas 0593436725 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.87 2023 Vampires of El Norte
author: Isabel Cañas
name: Danny
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/07
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]]> Rouge 63337133
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.

Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.]]> Mona Awad Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.58 2023 Rouge
author: Mona Awad
name: Danny
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/07
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> Camp Damascus 61884782 A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective� gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.]]> 246 Chuck Tingle 1250874629 Danny 0 to-read, lgbt 3.90 2023 Camp Damascus
author: Chuck Tingle
name: Danny
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/06
shelves: to-read, lgbt
review:

]]> Our Share of Night 61111034
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?

Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,� says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”]]> 588 Mariana Enríquez 0451495144 Danny 0 to-read 4.07 2019 Our Share of Night
author: Mariana Enríquez
name: Danny
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Hemsworth Effect 61991829 A sleepy town is about to wake up and smell the turmeric lattes #DontForgetYourKeepCup

It started with the Hemsworths. Now, Byron Bay local, Aimee Maguire, is about to lose everything because she can’t afford to pay the rent. Her engagement is also on an official time-out since her fiancé doesn’t know what he wants. The last thing she needs is a surprise visit from her micro-influencer niece looking to ‘build her brand�.

Her arrival sets off a chain of events that ends with Aimee tangled up with a group of influencers-turned-reality TV stars, exposing her to the absolute worst of humanity. But somewhere amid this mother of all messes there just might be a silver lining Aimee has been searching for. All she needs to do is embrace the one thing she’s been fighting so hard against � change.

Cashed-up celebs, desperate wannabes, cranky Karens and cringe-worthy hashtags � it’s all here in this hilarious novel about the celebrification of Byron Bay and the power of letting go.

Praise for James Weir

‘James really is one of Australia’s best comedic writers. His writing always puts a smile on your face from start to finish.’�Jackie O

‘With his acerbic wit and brilliant take downs, James Weir is a snort-out-loud writer who turns a devilish eye on the wannabes.’�Lisa Millar

‘James Weir is a national treasure. An original talent and an intelligent and hilarious wordsmith. He's the voice of his generation.’�Sam Armytage


]]> 432 James Weir 176110408X Danny 0 currently-reading 3.21 2022 The Hemsworth Effect
author: James Weir
name: Danny
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Child of the Sun 4151426 336 Kyle Onstott 0856171174 Danny 3 lgbt, to-read-own 3.77 1966 Child of the Sun
author: Kyle Onstott
name: Danny
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1966
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/29
date added: 2023/01/29
shelves: lgbt, to-read-own
review:

]]> The Paris Apartment 58468990 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest List comes a new locked room mystery, set in a Paris apartment building in which every resident has something to hide�

Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up � to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? � he’s not there.

The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.

The socialite � The nice guy � The alcoholic � The girl on the verge � The concierge

Everyone’s a neighbor. Everyone’s a suspect. And everyone knows something they’re not telling.]]> 360 Lucy Foley 0063003058 Danny 0 to-read 3.63 2022 The Paris Apartment
author: Lucy Foley
name: Danny
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America]]> 51542229
In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.

Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War is the story of what followed. This book is an assiduously researched history of an early champion of gay liberation, one who fought for the right to follow his passion and serve his country in the wake of Joseph McCarthy's Lavender Scare. We follow Kameny as he explores the underground gay scenes of Boston and Washington, D.C., where he formulates his arguments against the U.S. Government's classification of gay men and women as "sexual perverts." At a time when staying in the closet remained the default, he exposed the hypocrisies of the American establishment, accelerated a broader revolution in sexual morals, and invented what we now know as Gay Pride.

Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.]]> 494 Eric Cervini 0374139792 Danny 4 lgbt, to-read-need 4.29 2020 The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America
author: Eric Cervini
name: Danny
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/26
date added: 2023/01/26
shelves: lgbt, to-read-need
review:

]]> Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance 58772760 A hilariously filthy tale of sex, crime, and family dysfunction from the brilliantly twisted mind of John Waters, the legendary filmmaker and bestselling author of Mr. Know-It-All.

Marsha Sprinkle: Suitcase thief. Scammer. Master of disguise. Dogs and children hate her. Her own family wants her dead. She's smart, she's desperate, she's disturbed, and she's on the run with a big chip on her shoulder. They call her Liarmouth--until one insane man makes her tell the truth.

John Waters's first novel, Liarmouth, is a perfectly perverted "feel-bad romance," and the reader will thrill to hop aboard this delirious road trip of riotous revenge.]]> 240 John Waters 0374185727 Danny 0 to-read 3.31 2022 Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance
author: John Waters
name: Danny
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Have Some Questions For You 61053833
But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.]]> 448 Rebecca Makkai 0593490150 Danny 0 to-read 3.72 2023 I Have Some Questions For You
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: Danny
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Survivor Song 52581895
Dr. Ramola "Rams" Sherman, a soft-spoken pediatrician in her mid-thirties, receives a frantic phone call from Natalie, a friend who is eight months pregnant. Natalie's husband has been killed—viciously attacked by an infected neighbor—and in a failed attempt to save him, Natalie, too, was bitten. Natalie's only chance of survival is to get to a hospital as quickly as possible to receive a rabies vaccine. The clock is ticking for her and for her unborn child.

Natalie’s fight for life becomes a desperate odyssey as she and Rams make their way through a hostile landscape filled with dangers beyond their worst nightmares—terrifying, strange, and sometimes deadly challenges that push them to the brink.


]]> 320 Paul Tremblay 0062679163 Danny 4 3.59 2020 Survivor Song
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Danny
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/26
date added: 2023/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Tell Me Everything 62971594 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Washington Post best celebrity memoir of 2023
An Audible best celebrity memoir of 2023

“A timely, urgent portrait of working-class American women.�
—Gabrielle Union

In her highly anticipated memoir Tell Me Everything, Minka Kelly shares a story as powerful as it is page-turning.

Fans know her as the spoiled, rich cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as the affluent, mysterious Samantha on the HBO megahit Euphoria. But as revealed for the first time in these pages, Minka Kelly’s life has been anything but easy.

Raised by a single mother who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka spent years waking up in strange apartments as she and her mom bounced around the country, relying on friends and relatives to take them in. At times they even lived in storage units. She reconnected with her father, Aerosmith’s Rick Dufay, and eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she landed the role of a lifetime on Friday Night Lights.

Now an established actress and philanthropist, Minka takes this next step in her career as a writer. She has poured her soul into the pages of this book, which ultimately tells a story of triumph over adversity, and how resilience and love are all we have in the end.]]> 288 Minka Kelly 1250852064 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 4.30 2023 Tell Me Everything
author: Minka Kelly
name: Danny
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/25
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]]> Ponyboy 60693551 An evocative debut novel of trans-masculinity, addiction, and the pain and joy of becoming.

In the first of three acts, Ponyboy’s titular narrator—a pill-popping, speed-snorting trans-masculine lightning bolt—unravels in his Paris apartment. Ponyboy is caught in a messy love triangle with Baby, a lesbian painter who can’t see herself being with someone trans, and Toni, a childhood friend who can actually see Ponyboy for who he is. Strung out, Ponyboy follows Baby to Berlin in act two, where he sinks deeper into drugs and falls for Hart, a fellow writer, all the while pursued by a megalomaniacal photographer hungry for the next hot thing. As Ponyboy’s relationships crumble, he overdoses and find himself alone in his childhood home in Nebraska. The novel’s final act follows Ponyboy to rehab, exploring the ways in which trans identity, addiction, and recovery reforge the bond between mother and child. Eliot Duncan reveals, in precise atmospheric prose reminiscent of Anne Carson and Allen Ginsberg, the innate splendor, joy, and ache of becoming oneself.]]> 228 Eliot Duncan 132405123X Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.80 2023 Ponyboy
author: Eliot Duncan
name: Danny
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/24
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review:

]]> Retrospective 61190812 An epic yet intimate novel about a Colombian man caught up in the sweep of global historical and ideological revolutions.

The Colombian film director, Sergio Cabrera, is in Barcelona for a retrospective of his work. It's a hard time for him: his father, famous actor Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his home country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war. In the course of a few intense days, as his films are on exhibit, Sergio recalls the events that marked his family's unusual and dramatic lives: especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own.

Growing up in Colombia as the children of famous actors, Sergio and Marianella were privileged and artistic, until their parents became disillusioned with bourgeois conventions and moved the entire family to China. Mao's Cultural Revolution was underway and the family lived in an entirely ex-pat hotel where they learned Chinese and joined the revolution, became members of the Red Guard, and trained as guerilla fighters. When they returned to Colombia to support the revolution there, they were sent into the countryside to join the guerilla force, were shot at and nearly died. Out of these lives molded by ideology and zealotry, came an artistic second life for Sergio as he escaped the movement and became his country's most celebrated film director.

From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his family to Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Colombia, Sergio and his family's experience is extraordinary by any standards. Equal parts family saga and epic historical novel, Retrospective reveals the story of one man and his family -- based on real people and events -- and a devastating portrait of the forces that shaped their lives, and for half a century turned the world upside down.
]]> 448 Juan Gabriel Vásquez 0593539613 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 3.97 2020 Retrospective
author: Juan Gabriel Vásquez
name: Danny
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/24
shelves: to-read, to-read-own
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]]> Holly 65916344 Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.

“Sometimes the universe throws you a rope.� � BILL HODGES

Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.

When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.

Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.

Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.]]> 449 Stephen King 1668016133 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.01 2023 Holly
author: Stephen King
name: Danny
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/23
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
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]]> Teach the Torches to Burn 61484873 Teach the Torches to Burn, a breathlessly romantic remix of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet and seventh book in the Remixed Classics series, a queer teen boy discovers first love amid a bloody, centuries-old feud.

Verona, Italy. Seventeen-year-old aspiring artist Romeo dreams of a quiet life with someone who loves him just as he is. But as the heir to the Montague family, he is expected to give up his womanly artistic pursuits and uphold the family honor--particularly in their centuries-old blood feud with a rival family, the Capulets. Worse still, he is also expected to marry a well-bred girl approved by his parents and produce heirs. But the more Romeo is forced to mingle with eligible maidens, the harder it is to keep his deepest secret: He only feels attracted to other boys.

In an attempt to forget his troubles for just one night, Romeo joins his cousin in sneaking into a Capulet party. During a fateful encounter in the garden, he meets the kindest, most beautiful boy he's ever encountered, and is shocked to learn he's Valentine, the younger brother of one of his closest friends. He is even more shocked to discover that Valentine is just as enamored with Romeo as Romeo is with him.

So begins a tender romance that the boys must hide from their families and friends, each of them longing for a world where they could be together without fear. And as the conflict between the Montagues and Capulets escalates out of control, Romeo and Valentine find themselves in danger of losing each other forever--if not by society's scorn, then by the edge of a blade.]]> 384 Caleb Roehrig 1250828481 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.98 2023 Teach the Torches to Burn
author: Caleb Roehrig
name: Danny
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/23
shelves: to-read, to-read-need, lgbt
review:

]]> <![CDATA[You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula]]> 62919371
An eye-opening, transformative, and actionable journey through radical and compassionate community abortion care and support what it looks like, how each and every one of us can practice and incorporate it into our daily lives, and what we can imagine and build together in a post-Roe v. Wade United States.

Abortion touches all of our lives. While statistically nearly everyone knows someone who will receive an abortion in their lifetime, limiting narratives flatten our understanding and assumptions around abortion, while stigma and criminalization stifle discussion. What we lack are the language and tools to provide care and support to all of the members of our communities who receive abortions, before, during, and after them.

Now, Hannah Matthews—abortion care worker, doula, journalist and essayist, and reproductive rights advocate—breathes depth and nuance into the oversimplified narratives surrounding abortion, presenting an accessible guide to the emotional and physical realities of providing and supporting abortion care for our own communities. Featuring stories of real abortion experiences, including Matthews’s own, You or Someone You Love offers a glimpse into the stunningly diverse landscape of abortion care across gender, race, and class lines, while illustrating how we can better support and protect the people who seek abortion in a country that increasingly promotes secrecy and shame.]]> 352 Hannah Matthews 1668005255 Danny 0 to-read 4.37 You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula
author: Hannah Matthews
name: Danny
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[10 Things That Never Happened (Material World, #1)]]> 83137176 Fake amnesia. Real feelings? Real problems.

Sam Becker loves―or, okay, likes―his job. Sure, managing a bed and bath retailer isn't exactly glamorous, but it's good work and he gets on well with the band of misfits who keep the store running. He could see himself being content here for the long haul. Too bad, then, that the owner is an infuriating git.

Jonathan Forest should never have hired Sam. It was a sentimental decision, and Jonathan didn't get where he is by following his heart. Determined to set things right, Jonathan orders Sam down to London for a difficult talk…only for a panicking Sam to trip, bump his head, and maybe accidentally imply he doesn't remember anything?

Faking amnesia seemed like a good idea when Sam was afraid he was getting sacked, but now he has to deal with the reality of Jonathan's guilt―as well as the unsettling fact that his surly boss might have a softer side to him. There's an unexpected freedom in getting a second shot at a first impression…but as Sam and Jonathan grow closer, can Sam really bring himself to tell the truth, or will their future be built entirely on one impulsive lie?]]> 432 Alexis Hall 1728245109 Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-need 3.87 2023 10 Things That Never Happened (Material World, #1)
author: Alexis Hall
name: Danny
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/22
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cabin at the End of the World]]> 36381091
One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, "None of what’s going to happen is your fault". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: "Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."]]> 272 Paul Tremblay 0062679104 Danny 5 3.31 2018 The Cabin at the End of the World
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Danny
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/21
date added: 2023/01/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears]]> 61190219
America does not have royalty. It has the Academy Awards. For nine decades, perfectly coiffed starlets, debonair leading men, and producers with gold in their eyes have chased the elusive Oscar. What began as an industry banquet in 1929 has now exploded into a hallowed ceremony, complete with red carpets, envelopes, and little gold men. But don’t be fooled by the the Oscars, more than anything, are a battlefield, where the history of Hollywood—and of America itself—unfolds in dramas large and small. The road to the Oscars may be golden, but it’s paved in blood, sweat, and broken hearts.

In Oscar Wars, Michael Schulman chronicles the remarkable, sprawling history of the Academy Awards and the personal dramas—some iconic, others never-before-revealed—that have played out on the stage and off camera. Unlike other books on the subject, each chapter takes a deep dive into a particular year, conflict, or even category that tells a larger story of cultural change, from Louis B. Mayer to Moonlight. Schulman examines how the red carpet runs through contested turf, and the victors aren't always as clear as the names drawn from envelopes. Caught in the crossfire are their thwarted ambitions, their artistic epiphanies, their messy collaborations, their dreams fulfilled or dashed.

Featuring a star-studded cast of some of the most powerful Hollywood players of today and yesterday, as well as outsiders who stormed the palace gates, this captivating history is a collection of revelatory tales, each representing a turning point for the Academy, for the movies, or for the culture at large.]]> 608 Michael Schulman 0062859056 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.04 2023 Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears
author: Michael Schulman
name: Danny
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/20
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> Gone Tonight 61884937
Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, would never question anything about her mother's past or background. But when Ruth's desperate quest to keep her daughter by her side begins to reveal cracks in Ruth's carefully-constructed world, both mother and daughter begin a dance of deception.]]> 338 Sarah Pekkanen 1250283973 Danny 0 to-read 3.78 2023 Gone Tonight
author: Sarah Pekkanen
name: Danny
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gwen & Art Are Not in Love 61885131 Heartstopper meets A Knight’s Tale in this queer medieval rom-com YA debut about love, friendship, and being brave enough to change the course of history.

It’s been hundreds of years since King Arthur’s reign. His descendant, Arthur, a future Lord and general gadabout, has been betrothed to Gwendoline, the quick-witted, short-tempered princess of England, since birth. The only thing they can agree on is that they despise each other.

They’re forced to spend the summer together at Camelot in the run-up to their nuptials, and within 24 hours, Gwen has discovered Arthur kissing a boy, and Arthur has gone digging for Gwen's childhood diary and found confessions about her crush on the kingdom's only lady knight, Bridget Leclair.

Realizing they might make better allies than enemies, Gwen and Art make a reluctant pact to cover for each other, and as things heat up at the annual royal tournament, Gwen is swept off her feet by her knight, and Arthur takes an interest in Gwen's royal brother. Lex Croucher's Gwen & Art Are Not in Love is chock full of sword-fighting, found family, and romantic shenanigans destined to make readers fall in love.]]> 416 Lex Croucher 1250847214 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.96 2023 Gwen & Art Are Not in Love
author: Lex Croucher
name: Danny
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/19
shelves: to-read, to-read-need, lgbt
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Something Wild & Wonderful (Nashville Love, #2)]]> 61399138 From the author ofLove & Other Disasters comes a sparkling grumpy-meets-sunshineromance featuring two men's sweeping journey across the Western wilderness.

Alexei Lebedev’s journey on the Pacific Crest Trail begins with a single snake. And it is angling for the hot stranger who seemed to have appeared out of thin air. Lex is prepared for rattlesnakes, blisters, and months of solitude. What he isn’t prepared for is Ben Caravalho. But somehow—on a 2,500-mile trail—Alexei keeps running into the outgoing and charismatic hiker with golden-brown eyes, again and again. It might be coincidence. Then again, maybe there’s a reason the trail keeps bringing them together . . .

Ben has made his fair share of bad decisions, and almost all of them involved beautiful men. And yet there’s something about the gorgeous and quietly nerdy Alexei that Ben can’t just walk away from. Surely a bad decision can’t be this cute and smart. And there are worse things than falling in love during the biggest adventure of your life. But when their plans for the future are turned upside down, Ben and Alexei begin to wonder if it’s possible to hold on to something this wild and wonderful.]]> 384 Anita Kelly 1538754886 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 4.24 2023 Something Wild & Wonderful (Nashville Love, #2)
author: Anita Kelly
name: Danny
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/19
shelves: to-read, to-read-need, lgbt
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Twentieth-Century Man: The Wild Life of Peter Beard]]> 62925063 288 Christopher Wallace 0063066416 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.51 Twentieth-Century Man: The Wild Life of Peter Beard
author: Christopher Wallace
name: Danny
average rating: 3.51
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/19
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
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]]> Like a Sister 61237021 A twisty, voice-driven thriller for fans of Megan Miranda and Jessica Knoll, in which no one bats an eye when a Black reality TV star is found dead in the Bronx—except her estranged half-sister, whose refusal to believe the official story leads her on a dangerous search for the truth.

When the body of disgraced reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found on a playground in the Bronx the morning after her 25th birthday party, the police and the media are quick to declare her death an overdose. It’s a tragedy, certainly, but not a crime.

But Desiree’s half-sister Lena Scott knows that can’t be the case. A graduate student at Columbia, Lena has spent the past decade forging her own path far from the spotlight, but some facts about Desiree just couldn’t have changed since their childhood. And Desiree would never travel above 125th Street. So why is no one listening to her?

Despite the bitter truth that the two haven’t spoken in two years, torn apart by Desiree’s partying and by their father, Mel, a wealthy and influential hip-hop mogul, Lena becomes determined to find justice for her sister, even if it means untangling her family’s darkest secrets—or ending up dead herself]]> 320 Kellye Garrett 0316256773 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.44 2022 Like a Sister
author: Kellye Garrett
name: Danny
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/19
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> Countries of Origin 62802740 In this stunning debut, Javier Fuentes chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire

It is 2007, in New York where Demetrio, 24, is a celebrated pastry chef at the French restaurant, Le Bourrelet. It will be his seventh year as their patissier and the chef-owner, stern, but paternal feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as Head of Pastries at a Michelin-starred restaurant, he wants nothing more than to accept it. Undocumented, he is missing one crucial thing: papers. Terrified he will be found out, he makes the difficult decision of voluntary departure to permanently return to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. This will mean leaving the only family he knows, his beloved uncle Chus, who brought him up and who he still lives with. On his flight to Madrid, he sits next to the handsome, playful and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.

In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo's subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy, and anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality and they avoid their true feelings and deep passion until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another's lives. Powerfully sensual, and dramatic, Countries of Origin is a story which immerses you in the intense emotions and conflicts of love and loss.]]> 304 Javier Fuentes 0593317580 Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-own 3.54 2023 Countries of Origin
author: Javier Fuentes
name: Danny
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/17
shelves: to-read, lgbt, to-read-own
review:

]]> The Satanic Verses 12781
From the back cover.]]> 561 Salman Rushdie 0312270828 Danny 0 3.73 1988 The Satanic Verses
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Danny
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/15
shelves: to-read-own, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Invisible Hour 62919793
One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter ? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?

From “the reigning queen of magical realism� (Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author), this is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.]]> 272 Alice Hoffman 1982175370 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 3.54 2023 The Invisible Hour
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Danny
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/13
shelves: to-read, to-read-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983 - 1992]]> 45162906 Named one of the best books of 2017 by Time, People, Amazon.com, The Guardian, Paste Magazine, The Economist, Entertainment Weekly, & Vogue

Tina Brown kept delicious daily diaries throughout her eight spectacular years as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Today they provide an incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood.

The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding. In the face of rampant skepticism, she triumphantly reinvents a failing magazine.

Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers that sold millions—the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. In the diary's cinematic pages, the drama, the comedy, and the struggle of running an "it" magazine come to life. Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries is also a woman's journey, of making a home in a new country and of the deep bonds with her husband, their prematurely born son, and their daughter.

Astute, open-hearted, often riotously funny, Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries is a compulsively fascinating and intimate chronicle of a woman's life in a glittering era.]]> 448 Tina Brown Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.74 2017 The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983 - 1992
author: Tina Brown
name: Danny
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> The Block Party 61884965 This summer, meet your neighbors.

The residents of the exclusive cul-de-sac on Alton Road are entangled in a web of secrets and scandal utterly unknown to the outside world, and even to each other.

On the night of the annual Summer block party, there has been a murder.

But, who did it and why takes readers back one year earlier, as rivalries and betrayals unfold—discovering that the real danger lies within their own block and nothing—and no one—is ever as it seems.]]> 384 Jamie Day 1250283191 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-own 3.59 2023 The Block Party
author: Jamie Day
name: Danny
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> People Collide 61222894
As Eli comes closer to finding Elizabeth—while learning to exist in her body—he begins to wonder what effect this metamorphosis will have on their relationship and how long he can maintain the illusion of living as someone he isn't. Will their new marriage wither completely in each other's bodies? Or is this transformation the very thing Eli and Elizabeth need for their marriage to thrive?

A rich, rewarding exploration of ambition and sacrifice, desire and loss, People Collide is a tender portrait of shared lives that shines a refreshing light on everything we thought we knew about love, sexuality, and the truth of who we are.]]> 272 Isle McElroy 0063283786 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.67 2023 People Collide
author: Isle McElroy
name: Danny
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> The Vaster Wilds 62952130
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.]]> 272 Lauren Groff 0593418395 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.73 2016 The Vaster Wilds
author: Lauren Groff
name: Danny
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> Bridge 64000639 Bridge, a wildly entertaining, reality-bending new thriller from Lauren Beukes, author of the AppleTV+ smash hit The Shining Girls.

It was a game they played; the other worlds, the other lives. It was part of her mom’s grand delusions. It wasn’t real. Unless it was…�

Bridget Kittinger has always been paralyzed by choices. It has a lot to do with growing up in the long shadow of her mother, Jo, a troubled neuroscientist. Jo’s obsession with one mythical object, the “dreamworm”—which she believed enabled travel to other worlds—led to their estrangement.

Now, suddenly, Jo is dead. And in packing up her home, Bridge finds a strange device buried deep in Jo’s freezer: the dreamworm. Against all odds, it actually can open the door—to all other realities, and to all other versions of herself, too.Could Bridge find who she should be in this world, by visiting the others? And could her Jo still be alive somewhere? But there’s a sinister cost to trading places, and others hunting the dreamworm who would kill to get their hands on it . . .

Across a thousand possible lives, from Portland to Haiti, from Argentina to the alligator-infested riverways of North Carolina, Bridge takes readers on a highly original thrill ride, pushing the boundaries of what we know about mothers and daughters, hunters and seekers, and who we each choose to be.]]> 432 Lauren Beukes 0316267880 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.61 2023 Bridge
author: Lauren Beukes
name: Danny
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> The Librarianist 62645180 From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes the story of Bob Comet, a man who has lived his life through and for literature, unaware that his own experience is a poignant and affecting narrative in itself.

Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.

Behind Bob Comet's straight-man facade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Bob's experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsize players to welcome onto the stage of his life.

With his inimitable verve, skewed humor, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert's condition. The Librarianist celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity.]]> 352 Patrick deWitt 0063085127 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.37 2023 The Librarianist
author: Patrick deWitt
name: Danny
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> August Blue 62039277 The Man Who Saw Everything and The Cost of Living.

At the height of her career, the piano virtuoso Elsa M. Anderson―former child prodigy, now in her thirties―walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance.

Now she is in Athens, watching an uncannily familiar woman purchase a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, on the run from her talent and her history.

So begins her journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who seems to be her double. A dazzling portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis, Deborah Levy’s August Blue uncovers the ways in which we attempt to revise our oldest stories and make ourselves anew.]]> 208 Deborah Levy Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.63 2023 August Blue
author: Deborah Levy
name: Danny
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> My Murder 60466391 What if the murder you had to solve was your own?

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

Now it's not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she's always enjoyed--she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller.]]> 304 Katie Williams 0593543785 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.83 2023 My Murder
author: Katie Williams
name: Danny
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Beware the Woman 62366772 From New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott, an eerie and prescient novel about a family outing that takes a terrifying turn.

Honey, I just want you to have everything you ever wanted. That’s what Jacy’s mom always told her.

And Jacy felt like she finally did. Newly married and with a baby on the way, Jacy and her new husband Jed embark on their first road trip together to visit his father, Doctor Ash, in Michigan’s far-flung Upper Peninsula. The moment they arrive in the cozy cottage in the lush woods, Jacy feels bathed in love by the warm and hospitable Doctor Ash, if less so by his house manager, the enigmatic Mrs. Brandt.

But their Edenic first days take a turn when Jacy has a health scare. Swiftly, vacation activities are scrapped, and all eyes are on Jacy’s condition. At the same time, whispers about Jed’s long-dead mother and complicated family history seem eerily to be impeding upon the present. As the days pass, Jacy begins to feel trapped in the cottage, her every move surveilled, her body under the looking glass. But are her fears founded or is it paranoia, or cabin fever, or—as is suggested to her—a stubborn refusal to take necessary precautions? The dense woods surrounding the cottage are full of dangers, but are the greater ones inside?]]> 320 Megan Abbott Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.50 2023 Beware the Woman
author: Megan Abbott
name: Danny
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Juno Loves Legs 58090794 304 Karl Geary 1646221133 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.12 2023 Juno Loves Legs
author: Karl Geary
name: Danny
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Sam 59722217 What happens to a girl’s exuberance and wonder as she becomes a woman? This unforgettable portrait of coming-of-age offers a powerful reflection on class, addiction, parenthood, longing, and ambition.

There is a girl, and her name is Sam. She adores her father, though he isn’t around much. Her mother, Courtney, struggles to make ends meet, and never fails to remind her daughter that her life should be different. Sam doesn’t fit in at school, where the other girls have the right shade of blue jeans and don’t question the rules. Sam doesn’t care about jeans or rules. She just loves to climb--trees, fences, walls, the side of a building. When she’s climbing, she discovers a place she belongs: she can turn off her brain, pain has a purpose, and it’s okay if you want to win.

As Sam grows into her teens, she grapples with self-doubt and insecurity. She yearns for her climbing coach to notice her, but his attention crosses boundaries she doesn't know how to resist. She wishes her father would leave for good, instead of always coming and going, but once he’s gone, she realizes how much she’s lost. She rages against her mother’s constant pressure to plan for a more secure future. Wrestling with who she wants to be in the face of what she’s expected to do, Sam comes to understand that she alone can make her dreams come true.

Allegra Goodman’s beautiful and wise novel Sam is deceptively simple: it is about a girl who becomes a woman. But underneath its straightforward chronology and spare sentences lie layers of extraordinary depth, sensitivity, and tenderness. This unforgettable ode to girlhood asks, What happens to a child's sense of joy and belonging--her belief in herself--as she grows up? The answer will break your heart, but will also leave you full of hope.]]> 336 Allegra Goodman 0593447816 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.68 2023 Sam
author: Allegra Goodman
name: Danny
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> The Wife of Willesden 61153772 Zadie Smith's first time writing for the stage, a riotous twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic The Wife of Bath

"Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aunt. Friend.
She plays many roles round here. And never
Scared to tell the whole of her truth, whether
Or not anyone wants to hear it. Wife
Of Willesden: pissed enough to tell her life
Story to whoever has ears and eyes . . ."

In her stage-writing debut, celebrated novelist and essayist Zadie Smith brings to life a comedic and cutting twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic The Wife of Bath. The Wife of Willesden follows Alvita, a Jamaican-born British woman in her mid-50s, as she tells her life story to a band of strangers in a small pub on the Kilburn High Road. Wearing fake gold chains, dressed in knock-off designer clothes, and speaking in a mixture of London slang and patois, Alvita recalls her five marriages in outrageous, bawdy detail, rewrites her mistakes as triumphs, and shares her beliefs on femininity, sexuality, and misogyny with anyone willing to listen.

A thoughtful reimagining of an unforgettable narrative of female sexual power, written with singular verve and wit, The Wife of Willesden shows why Zadie Smith is one of the sharpest and most versatile writers working today.]]> 208 Zadie Smith 0593653734 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.65 2021 The Wife of Willesden
author: Zadie Smith
name: Danny
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Guest Lecture 59070298
Yet as she wanders with increasing alarm through the rooms of her own consciousness, Abby finds herself straying from her prepared remarks on economic history, utopia, and Keynes's pragmatic optimism. A lapsed optimist herself, she has been struggling under the burden of supporting a family in an increasingly hostile America after being denied tenure at the university where she teaches. Confronting her own future at a time of global darkness, Abby undertakes a quest through her memories to ideas hidden in the corners of her mind as she asks what a better world would look like if we told our stories with more honest and more hopeful imaginations.

With warm intellect, playful curiosity, and an infectious voice, Martin Riker acutely animates the novel of ideas with a beating heart and turns one woman's midnight crisis into the performance of a lifetime.]]> 256 Martin Riker 0802160417 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.49 2023 The Guest Lecture
author: Martin Riker
name: Danny
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Curse of the Marquis de Sade: A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History]]> 61195290 The captivating, deeply reported true story of how one of the most notorious novels ever written—Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom—landed at the heart of one of the biggest scams in modern literary history.

Described as both “one of the most important novels ever written� and “the gospel of evil,� 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade, a notorious eighteenth-century aristocrat who waged a campaign of mayhem and debauchery across France, evaded execution, and inspired the word “sadism,� which came to mean receiving pleasure from pain. Despite all his crimes, Sade considered this work to be his greatest transgression.

The original manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom, a tiny scroll penned in the bowels of the Bastille in Paris, would embark on a centuries-spanning odyssey across Europe, passing from nineteenth-century banned book collectors to pioneering sex researchers to avant-garde artists before being hidden away from Nazi book burnings. In 2014, the world heralded its return to France when the scroll was purchased for millions by Gérard Lhéritier, the self-made son of a plumber who had used his savvy business skills to upend France’s renowned rare-book market. But the sale opened the door to vendettas by the government, feuds among antiquarian booksellers, manuscript sales derailed by sabotage, a record-breaking lottery jackpot, and allegations of a decade-long billion-euro con, the specifics of which, if true, would make the scroll part of France’s largest-ever Ponzi scheme.

Told with gripping reporting and flush with deceit and scandal, The Curse of the Marquis de Sade weaves together the sweeping odyssey of 120 Days of Sodom and the spectacular rise and fall of Lhéritier, once the “king of manuscripts� and now known to many as the Bernie Madoff of France. At its center is an urgent question for all those who cherish the written word: As the age of handwriting comes to an end, what do we owe the original texts left behind?]]> 304 Joel Warner 0593135687 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.55 2023 The Curse of the Marquis de Sade: A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History
author: Joel Warner
name: Danny
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.83 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Danny
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World]]> 62850110
"Wondrous . . . captivating.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of An Immense World

Christian Cooper is a self-described “Blerd� (Black nerd), an avid comics fan and expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. Whilein thepark one morning in May 2020,Cooperwas engaged in thebirdwatchingritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years oldwhen what might have beena routine encounter with a dog walkerexplodedage-old racialtensions.Cooper’sviralvideo of the incident wouldsend shock waves through the nation.

In Better Living Through Birding , Cooper tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous incident in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in America today. From sharpened senses that work just as well at a protest as in a park to what a bird like the Common Grackle can teach us about self-acceptance, Better Living Through Birding exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover them yourself.

Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and primer on the art of birding, this is Cooper’s story of learning to claim and defend space for himself and others like him, from his days at Marvel Comics introducing the first gay storylines to vivid and life-changing birding expeditions through Africa, Australia, the Americas, and the Himalayas. Better Living Through Birding recounts Cooper’s journey through the wonderful world of birds and what they can teach us about life, if only we would look and listen.]]> 304 Christian Cooper 0593242386 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.21 2023 Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
author: Christian Cooper
name: Danny
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Homebodies 62558851 Urgent, propulsive, and strikingly insightful, Homebodies is a thrilling debut novel about a young Black writer whose world is turned upside down when she loses her coveted job in media and pens a searing manifesto about racism in the industry.

Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter. She has a flashy media job that makes her feel successful and a devoted girlfriend who takes care of her when she comes home exhausted and demoralized. It’s not all A-list parties and steamy romance, but Mickey’s on her way, and it’s far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Despite being overlooked and mistreated at work, it seems like she might finally get the chance to prove herself—until she finds out she’s being replaced.

Distraught and enraged, Mickey fires back with a detailed letter outlining the racism and sexism she’s endured as a Black woman in media, certain it will change the world for the better. But when her letter is met with overwhelming silence, Mickey is sent into a tailspin of self-doubt. Forced to reckon with just how fragile her life is—including the uncertainty of her relationship—she flees to the last place she ever dreamed she would run to, her hometown, desperate for a break from her troubles.

Back home, Mickey is seduced by the simplicity of her old life—and the flirtation of a former flame—but her life in New York refuses to be forgotten. When a media scandal catapults Mickey’s forgotten letter into the public zeitgeist, suddenly everyone wants to hear what Mickey has to say. It’s what she’s always wanted—isn’t it? Intimate, witty, and deeply sexy, Homebodies is a testament to those trying to be heard and loved in a world that refuses to make space, and introduces a standout new writer.]]> 320 Tembe Denton-Hurst 0063274280 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.28 2023 Homebodies
author: Tembe Denton-Hurst
name: Danny
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar]]> 60321468
The Black Guy Dies First explores the Black journey in modern horror cinema, from the fodder epitomized by Spider Baby to the Oscar-​winning cinematic heights of Get Out and beyond. This eye-opening book delves into the themes, tropes, and traits that have come to characterize Black roles in horror since 1968, a year in which race made national headlines in iconic moments from the enactment of the 1968 Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April. This timely book is a must-read for cinema and horror fans alike.]]> 336 Robin R. Means Coleman 1982186534 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.05 2023 The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar
author: Robin R. Means Coleman
name: Danny
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Uncle of the Year: And Other Debatable Triumphs]]> 61928015 Candid, hilarious essays from the star of The Book of Mormon, Girls, and Big Mouth on anxiety, ambition, and the uncertain path to adulthood, which ask, how will we know when we get there?

In Uncle of the Year, Andrew Rannells wonders: If he, now in his early forties, has everything he’s supposed to need to be a true adult–a career, property, a well-tailored suit–why does he still feel like an anxious twenty-year-old climbing his way toward security? Is it because he hasn’t won a Tony, or found a husband, or had a child? And what if he doesn’t want those things? (A husband and a child, that is. He wants a Tony.)

In essays drawn from his life and career, Rannells argues that we all pretend we are constantly winning. And with each success, we act like we’ve reached the pinnacle of happiness (for our parents), maturity (for our friends), success (for our bosses), and devotion (for our partners). But if “adulting� is just a pantomime that’s leaving us unmoored, then we need new markers of time, new milestones, new expectations of what adulthood is–and can be.

Along the way, Rannells looks back, reevaluating whether his triumphs were actually failures–and his failures, triumphs–and exploring what it will take to ever, ever feel like he has enough. In essays like “Uncle of the Year,� he explores the role that children play in his life, as a man who never thought having kids was necessary or even possible—until his siblings have kids and he falls in love with a man with two of his own. “It’s an Honor to Be Eligible� reveals the thrills and absurdities of the awards circuit (and the desire to be recognized for your work). And in “Horses, Not Zebras,� he shares the piece of wisdom that helped him finally come to terms with crippling anxiety and perfectionism.

Filled with witty and honest insights and observations, and a sharp sense of humor, Uncle of the Year challenges us to take a long look at who we're pretending to be, who we know we are, and who we want to become.]]> 272 Andrew Rannells 0593443438 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 4.05 2023 Uncle of the Year: And Other Debatable Triumphs
author: Andrew Rannells
name: Danny
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Your Driver Is Waiting 61239463 In this electrifyingly fierce and funny social satire-- a gender-flipped reboot of the iconic 1970's film "Taxi Driver"--a ride share driver is barely holding it together on the hunt for love, dignity and financial security . . . until she decides she's done waiting.

"A ferocious new voice. A fierce and immersive debut."
--Weike Wang

Damani is tired. Her father just died on the job at a fast food joint, and now she lives paycheck to paycheck in a basement, caring for her mom and driving for an app that is constantly cutting her take. The city is roiling in protests --everybody's in solidarity with somebody-- but while she keeps hearing that they're fighting for change on behalf of people like her, she literally can't afford to pay attention.

Then she gives a ride to Jolene (5 stars, obviously). Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend - attentive, attractive, an ally - and their chemistry is off the charts. Jolene's done the reading, she goes to every protest, and she says all the right things. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that's holding her back: She's never dated anyone with money before, not to mention a white girl with money. But just as their romance intensifies and Damani finally lets her guard down, Jolene does something unforgivable, setting off an explosive chain of events.



A wild, one-sitting read brimming with dark comedy, and piercing social commentary and announcing Priya Guns' feverishly original voice, Your Driver Is Waiting is a crackling send-up of our culture of modern alienation.]]> 320 Priya Guns 038554930X Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.22 2023 Your Driver Is Waiting
author: Priya Guns
name: Danny
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> You & Me 60695252
We're a puzzle made of two pieces.

Landon Larsen is the envy of all the dads in Last Waters, Texas. He's cool, confident, and put together. He and his son—the high school's all-star quarterback—have the perfect father-son relationship. He’s such a Super Dad, it's almost sickening.

I'm not cool, or confident, and my relationship with my son couldn't be worse. He's barely speaking to me, and a year after my wife died, we're both clinging to the wreckage of our family.

Landon's son and mine are best friends and—of course—Landon is the football Team Dad. And though I know nothing about football, Landon convinces me to volunteer to be closer to my son. Volunteering might give him and me a chance to rebuild what's broken between us. Now I'm spending all my free time with the team—and with Landon—and the more we're together, the deeper our friendship grows. My son is opening up, too, little by little. I think I’m getting him back.

There's just one giant problem.

I'm head over heels for Landon.

I've never been attracted to men in my life� until him. Landon draws me in without even trying, and the harder I fight this, the deeper I fall.

Crushing on my son's best friend's father must be my biggest parenting failure ever, but I can't get enough of Landon. Falling for him puts each fragile moment I've rebuilt with my son at risk. What would he think if he knew I craved his best friend's dad? I'm playing with fire, but I can't turn off these feelings Landon has unlocked inside of me.

Of course, a guy like Landon could never fall for someone like me. It's pointless to even imagine we could be something together.
So why did I just kiss him?

***

You & Me is a single dads, friends-to-lovers, bi awakening MM romance, full of dads and their exasperating teenage sons, high school sports shenanigans, and #FoundFamily. Come for the epic love, stay for the forever feels.]]> 384 Tal Bauer Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-need 4.47 2022 You & Me
author: Tal Bauer
name: Danny
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/10
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review:

]]> Work for It 52054712 For men like us, trust doesn't come easy.

In this village, I’m an outcast: Griffin Everett, the scowling giant who prefers plants to people. Then I meet Keynes, a stranger from the city who’s everything I’m not: sharp-tongued, sophisticated, beautiful. Free. For a few precious moments in a dark alleyway, he’s also mine, hot and sweet under the stars� until he crushes me like dirt beneath his designer boot.

When the prettiest man I’ve ever hated shows up at my job the next day, I’m not sure if I want to strangle him or drag him into bed. Actually—I think I want both. But Keynes isn’t here for the likes of me: he makes that painfully clear. With everyone else at work, he’s all gorgeous, glittering charm—but when I get too close, he turns vicious.

And yet, I can’t stay away. Because there’s something about this ice king that sets me on fire, a secret vulnerability that makes my chest ache. I’ll do whatever it takes to sneak past his walls and see the real man again.

The last thing I expect is for that man to ruin me.]]> 284 Talia Hibbert Danny 0 lgbt, currently-reading 4.06 2019 Work for It
author: Talia Hibbert
name: Danny
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/09
shelves: lgbt, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Golden Spoon 61273344
The author of numerous best-selling cookbooks and hailed as “America’s Grandmother,� Betsy Martin isn’t as warm off-screen as on, although no one needs to know that but her. She has always demanded perfection, and gotten it with a smile, but this year something is off. Things go awry as the baking competition begins. At first, it’s merely sabotage—sugar replaced with salt, a burner turned too high—but when a body is discovered, everyone is a suspect.]]> 288 Jessa Maxwell 1668008009 Danny 4 3.44 2023 The Golden Spoon
author: Jessa Maxwell
name: Danny
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/07
date added: 2023/01/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In Danger: A Pasolini Anthology]]> 7016278

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922�1975) was a major cultural figure in post-WWII Italy, well-known as a poet, novelist, communist intellectual, and filmmaker. In Danger is the first anthology in English devoted to his political and literary essays, with a generous selection of his poetry. Against the backdrop of post-war Italy, and through the mid-'70s, Pasolini's writings provide a fascinating portrait of a Europe in which fascists and communists violently clashed for power and where journalists ran great risks. The controversial and openly gay Pasolini was murdered at the age of fifty-three; In Danger includes his final interview, conducted hours before his death.

]]> 250 Pier Paolo Pasolini 087286507X Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-need 4.16 2010 In Danger: A Pasolini Anthology
author: Pier Paolo Pasolini
name: Danny
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/06
shelves: to-read, lgbt, to-read-need
review:

]]> Rose Royal: A Love Story 60425137 96 Nicolas Mathieu 1635421969 Danny 0 to-read 3.21 2019 Rose Royal: A Love Story
author: Nicolas Mathieu
name: Danny
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Scorched Grace (Sister Holiday Mystery #1)]]> 60610668 Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, puts her amateur sleuthing skills to the test in this debut crime novel.

When Saint Sebastian's School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding community are thrust into chaos. Unsatisfied with the officials' response, sardonic and headstrong Sister Holiday becomes determined to unveil the mysterious attacker herself and return her home and sanctuary to its former peace. Her investigation leads down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets in the sticky, oppressive New Orleans heat, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way.

Sister Holiday is more faithful than most, but she's no saint. To piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must first reckon with the sins of her checkered past-and neither task will be easy.

An exciting start to Margot Douaihy's bold series for Gillian Flynn Books that breathes new life into the hard-boiled genre, Scorched Grace is a fast-paced and punchy whodunnit that will keep readers guessing until the very end.]]> 320 Margot Douaihy 1638930244 Danny 0 to-read-own 3.16 2023 Scorched Grace (Sister Holiday Mystery #1)
author: Margot Douaihy
name: Danny
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/04
date added: 2023/01/04
shelves: to-read-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home]]> 61606722 Lorrie Moore's first novel since A Gate at the Stairs--a daring, meditative exploration of love and death, passion and grief, and what it means to be haunted by the past, both by history and the human heart

From "one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation" (Caryn James; The New York Times)--a ghost story set in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, an elegiac consideration of grief, devotion (filial and romantic), and the vanishing and persistence of all things--seen and unseen.

A teacher visiting his dying brother in the Bronx. A mysterious journal from the nineteenth century stolen from a boarding house. A therapy clown and an assassin, both presumed dead, but perhaps not dead at all . . .

With her distinctive, irresistible wordplay and singular wry humor and wisdom, Lorrie Moore has given us a magic box of longing and surprise as she writes about love and rebirth and the pull towards life. Bold, meditative, theatrical, this new novel is an inventive, poetic portrait of lovers and siblings as it questions the stories we have been told which may or may not be true. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home takes us through a trap door, into a windswept, imagined journey to the tragic-comic landscape that is, unmistakably, the world of Lorrie Moore.]]> 208 Lorrie Moore 0593536843 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.60 2023 I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home
author: Lorrie Moore
name: Danny
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again]]> 61980300 A piercing blend of memoir, criticism, and biography examining how women writers across the centuries carved out intellectual freedom for themselves--and how others might do the same

I took off my wedding ring off for the last time--a gold band with half a line of "Morning Song" by Sylvia Plath etched inside--and for weeks afterwards, my thumb would involuntarily reach across my palm for the warm bright circle that had gone. I didn't fling the ring into the long grass, like women do in the movies, but a feeling began bubbling up nevertheless, from my stomach to my throat: it could fling my arms out. I was free. . . .

A few years into her marriage and feeling societal pressure to surrender to domesticity, Joanna Biggs found herself longing for a different kind of existence. Was this all there was? She divorced without knowing what would come next.

Newly untethered, Joanna returned to the free-spirited writers of her youth and was soon reading in a fever--desperately searching for evidence of lives that looked more like her own, for the messiness and freedom, for a possible blueprint for intellectual fulfillment.

In A Life of One's Own, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and Elena Ferrante are all taken down from their pedestals, their work and lives seen in a new light. Joanna wanted to learn more about the conditions these women needed to write their best work, and how they addressed the questions she herself was struggling with: Is domesticity a trap? Is life worth living if you have lost faith in the traditional goals of a woman? Why is it so important for women to read one another?

This is a radical and intimate examination of the unconventional paths these women took--their pursuits and achievements but also their disappointments and hardships. And in exploring the things that gave their lives the most meaning, we find fuel for our own singular intellectual paths.]]> 265 Joanna Biggs 0063073137 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 4.19 2023 A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again
author: Joanna Biggs
name: Danny
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> New Adult (Boy Meets Boy, #3) 62928977 Nolan Baker longs to be "thirty, flirty and thriving" in this charmingly quirky LGBTQIA+ romance that's one part 13 Going on 30 and one part One Last Stop.

WHY CAN'T WE SKIP TO THE GOOD PART?

Twenty-three-year-old Nolan Baker wants it all by the time he's thirty. Too bad he's single, barely able to cover his own expenses, and still paying his dues at a prominent NYC comedy club. When faced with his perfect sister's wedding, Nolan takes it as a wakeup call. It's time to quit comedy and make good on his practical dreams—most importantly, asking Drew Techler, his best friend, to be his date.

But right as Nolan is about to give it all up, he's asked to fill a last-minute spot for a famous comedian. Score! He crushes his set, but stands Drew up, misses his sister's big day, and disappoints his entire family. After major blowouts with everyone he loves, Nolan desperately wishes on a set of gift "magical healing crystals" to skip to the good part of life. When he wakes the next morning, it's seven years later, he's a successful comedian, and he has everything he always thought he wanted. Everything, that is, except his friends and family, none of whom are taking his future self's calls.

With nowhere else to turn, Nolan sets out to find the only person he trusts to help. Except Drew is all grown up now, too. He's hot, successful...and hates Nolan's guts. As Nolan works to get back to his younger self—and the life he so carelessly threw away—he'll have to prove he's not the man everyone thinks they know in order to regain Drew's trust, friendship, and maybe, ultimately, his heart.

While part of a series, this book stands alone.]]> 368 Timothy Janovsky 1728264286 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 4.13 2023 New Adult (Boy Meets Boy, #3)
author: Timothy Janovsky
name: Danny
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/29
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diary of a Bookseller (The Diary of a Bookseller, #1)]]> 38731087
In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.]]> 310 Shaun Bythell 1781258635 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.75 2017 The Diary of a Bookseller (The Diary of a Bookseller, #1)
author: Shaun Bythell
name: Danny
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/28
shelves: to-read, to-read-need
review:

]]> Rent Boy 61273505
It's New York City, 1981, and everyone wants to be at the Emerson Club, from Cindy Crawford to Cindy Adams; from Famous Roger, one-time lion of the talk shows, to Sandy Miller, the “downtown� writer with the tattoos and the leather; from Lauren Hutton to the art star who does the thing with the broken plates. Everyone, that is, except Danny. Danny just works there, waiting tables to put himself through architecture school, turning tricks on the side. And when he’s not on the clock, he’s recording the sexual, aesthetic, and financial transactions that make up his life, in gruesome detail. But even a clever boy like Danny can wind up on the menu. Blinded by love for his fellow rent boy, Chip—as gorgeous as he is reckless—Danny is about to learn that there’s more than one way to turn your body into cash, and that cynicism is no defense when the real scalpels come out. A gimlet-eyed crime novel with an inventively filthy mind, Rent Boy is Gary Indiana at his most outrageous—and his best.]]> 128 Gary Indiana 1946022527 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.61 1993 Rent Boy
author: Gary Indiana
name: Danny
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/27
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review:

]]> Walk the Darkness Down 62039152 From the author George Saunders hailed as “an exciting new presence in American writing,� a stunning novel about a couple trying to rebuild their lives in their deteriorating coastal town.

Up all night, Marlene drives the highways and back roads near her home in hopes that some landmark will spark an image of her daughter, one untainted by years of grief. Her husband Les steams out to sea in his effort to cope. He is a commercial fisherman on a boat staffed up with desperate loners and shape-shifting friends obliterating their bodies in two-week shifts of crushing labor. The couple keep their pain hidden from each other, and most of their lives separate.

But as Les comes under threat on the trawler and Marlene's drives lead her into a tangled friendship with a local sex worker whom she becomes determined to protect, the couple is forced to acknowledge that they can no longer face their troubles alone.

A powerful descent into an ink-black whirlpool of obsession and isolation on the turbulent eastern seaboard, Walk the Darkness Down is an unflinching portrayal of love in the margins of twenty-first century America. It is a fierce, beautiful testimonial to a couple's struggle to survive both the past and the present, and to chart a new path into the future.]]> 224 Daniel Magariel 1635578140 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need 3.95 Walk the Darkness Down
author: Daniel Magariel
name: Danny
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/25
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]]> Different for Boys 61084889 Friendship, masculinity, sex—Anthony Stevenson has a lot of questions. Is it different for boys who like boys? A poignant and frank story filled with meta-humor by renowned author Patrick Ness.

Anthony “Ant� Stevenson isn’t sure when he stopped being a virgin. Or even if he has. The rules aren’t always very clear when it comes to boys who like boys. In fact, relationships of all kinds feel complicated, even with Ant’s oldest friends. There’s Charlie, who’s both virulently homophobic and in a secret physical relationship with Ant. Then there’s drama kid Jack, who may be gay and has become the target of Charlie’s rage. And, of course, there’s big, beautiful Freddie, who wants Ant to ditch soccer, Charlie’s sport, and try out for the rugby team instead. Ant’s story of loneliness and intimacy, of unexpected support and heart-ripping betrayal, is told forthrightly with tongue-in-cheek black-bar redactions over the language that teenagers would actually use if, you know, they weren’t in a story. Award-winning author Patrick Ness explores teen sexuality, friendship, and romance with a deft hand in this structurally daring, illustrated short novel.]]> 97 Patrick Ness 1536228893 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.79 2023 Different for Boys
author: Patrick Ness
name: Danny
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
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review:

]]> Confidence 57580217 Two lifelong friends, occasional lovers, and constant conmen find themselves on top of the world after founding a company that promises instant enlightenment to its users in this thrilling, brainy caper about scams, schemes, and the absurdity of the American Dream.

At seventeen, Ezra Green doesn’t have a lot going for him. He is shorter than average, gap-toothed, internet-addicted, and halfway to being legally blind. He’s also on his way to Last Chance Camp, the final stop before juvie.

Ezra's summer at Last Chance turns life-changing when he meets Orson, brilliant and Adonis-like, with a mind for hustling. Together, the two embark upon what promises to be a fruitful career of scam artistry. But when they try to pull off their biggest scam yet--NuLife, a corporation that promises its consumers a lifetime of bliss--things start to spin wildly out of control. Searing and charming, Confidence is a story for anyone who knows that the American Dream is just another pyramid scheme.]]> 320 Rafael Frumkin 1982189738 Danny 0 to-read, to-read-need, lgbt 3.58 2023 Confidence
author: Rafael Frumkin
name: Danny
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
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review:

]]> The Sea Elephants 61884840 For fans of Shuggie Bain and A Burning, a queer coming-of-age novel set in 1990s India, about a young man who joins a traveling theater troupe

Shagun knows he will never be the kind of son his father demands. After the sudden deaths of his beloved twin sisters, Shagun flees his own guilt, his mother’s grief, and his father’s violent disapproval by enrolling at an all-boys boarding school. But he doesn’t find true belonging until he encounters a traveling theater troupe performing the Hindu myths of his childhood.

Welcomed by the other storytellers, Shagun thrives, easily embodying mortals and gods, men and women, and living on the road, where his father can’t catch him. When Shagun meets Marc, a charming photographer, he seems to have found the love he always longed for, too. But not even Marc can save him from his lingering shame, nor his father’s ever-present threat to send him to a conversion center. As Shagun’s past begins to engulf him once again, he must decide if he is strong enough to face what he fears most, and to boldly claim his own happiness.

Utterly immersive and spellbinding, The Sea Elephants is both dark and beautiful, harrowing and triumphant. An ode to the redemptive joys of art, Shastri Akella’s debut novel is a celebration of hard-won love—of others and for ourselves.]]> 384 Shastri Akella 1250867053 Danny 0 to-read, lgbt, to-read-need 3.77 2023 The Sea Elephants
author: Shastri Akella
name: Danny
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
shelves: to-read, lgbt, to-read-need
review:

]]>