Josh's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 03 May 2025 15:13:12 -0700 60 Josh's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities]]> 35835067 Istanbul has always been a place where stories and histories collide.

From the Koran to Shakespeare, this city with three names--Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul--resonates as an idea and a place, real and imagined. Standing as the gateway between East and West, it has been the capital city of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. For much of its history it was the very center of the world, known simply as "The City," but, as Bettany Hughes reveals, Istanbul is not just a city, but a story.

In this epic new biography, Hughes takes us on a dazzling historical journey through the many incarnations of one of the world's greatest cities. As the longest-lived political entity in Europe, over the last 6,000 years Istanbul has absorbed a mosaic of micro-cities and cultures all gathering around its core. At the latest count, archaeologists have measured forty-two human habitation layers. Phoenicians, Genoese, Venetians, Jews, Vikings, and Azeris all called a patch of this earth their home.

Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, this captivating portrait of the momentous life of Istanbul is visceral, immediate, and scholarly--narrative history at its finest.
]]> 689 Bettany Hughes Josh 0 currently-reading 4.04 2016 Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities
author: Bettany Hughes
name: Josh
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Habsburg Empire: A Very Short Introduction]]> 34665547 152 Martyn Rady 0192511351 Josh 0 3.73 2017 The Habsburg Empire: A Very Short Introduction
author: Martyn Rady
name: Josh
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Night Boat to Tangier 43832939 From the acclaimed author of the international sensations City of Bohane and Beatlebone, a striking and gorgeous new novel of two aging criminals at the butt ends of their damage-filled careers. A superbly melancholic melody of a novel full of beautiful phrases and terrible men.

In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen -- Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs -- sit at night, none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are expecting Maurice's estranged daughter (or is she?), Dilly, to either arrive on a boat coming from Tangier or depart on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals and serial exiles, rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today.]]> 272 Kevin Barry 0385540329 Josh 0 3.72 2019 Night Boat to Tangier
author: Kevin Barry
name: Josh
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)]]> 19201525 193 Helen Graham 019162229X Josh 0 3.97 2005 The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
author: Helen Graham
name: Josh
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Three Sisters 25330090 Chicago Tribune

"I've seen over a dozen Three Sisters, but never has the final scene . . . registered so hard. It's the cumulative effect of . . . searing truth-telling—from Letts, who knows family dysfunction as only the author of August: Osage County can, and Chekhov, the good doctor who diagnoses all our weaknesses that are so strong."�Chicago Theater Beat

When the champion of modern family drama takes on the genre's patriarch, the result is an energetic and vitalizing adaptation of one of Anton Chekhov's most beloved plays. A cruder, gruffer outline of the plight of the wistful Prozorov sisters serves to emphasize the anguish of their Chekhovian stagnation. This latest work from Letts envisions the revered classic through a fresh lens that revives the passionate characters and redoubles the tragic effect of their stunted dreams.

Tracy Letts was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play for August: Osage County. His other plays include Superior Donars; Pulitzer Prize-finalist Man from Nebraska; Killer Joe, which was adapted into a critically acclaimed film; and Bug, which has played in New York, Chicago and London and was adapted into a film. Letts garnered a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?]]> 96 Anton Chekhov 1559365056 Josh 0 3.89 1900 Three Sisters
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Josh
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1900
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens]]> 152034931 A rollicking historyÌýof England's earliest kings and queens, a story ofÌýnarcissists, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars,Ìýand more, fromÌýaward-winning British actor and comedian David Mitchell

Think you know the kings and queens of England? Think again.

In Unruly , David Mitchell explores how early England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects� destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky bastards who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

Taking us right back to King Arthur ( he didn’t exist), Mitchell tells the founding story of post-Roman England right up to the reign of Elizabeth I ( she dies), as the monarchy began to lose its power. It’s a tale of bizarre and curious ascensions, inadequate self-control, and at least one total Cnut, as the English evolved from having their crops stolen by the thug with the largest armed gang to bowing and paying taxes to a divinely anointed King.

How this happened, who it happened to, and why the hell it matters are all questions Mitchell answers with brilliance, wit, and the full erudition of a man who once studied history—and is damned if he’ll let it off the hook for the mess it’s made of everything.Ìý

A funny book that takes history seriously, Unruly is for anyone who has ever wondered how the monarchy came to be—and who is to blame.]]> 433 David Mitchell 0593728491 Josh 0 4.13 2023 Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens
author: David Mitchell
name: Josh
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance]]> 49247757 A stirring meditation on Black performance in America from the New York Times bestselling author of Go Ahead in the Rain

At the March on Washington in 1963, Josephine Baker was fifty-seven years old, well beyond her most prolific days. But in her speech she was in a mood to consider her life, her legacy, her departure from the country she was now triumphantly returning to. “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too,� she told the crowd. Inspired by these few words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds in “Gimme Shelter� in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder,� a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance.

Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain, infused with the lyricism and rhythm of the musicians he loves. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio.]]> 301 Hanif Abdurraqib 1984801198 Josh 0 4.60 2021 A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Josh
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:

]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Josh 0 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Josh
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI]]> 204927599 From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.]]> 528 Yuval Noah Harari 059373422X Josh 0 book-club 4.14 2024 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Josh
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Josh 0 3.86 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Josh
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1)]]> 18131
It was a dark and stormy night.

Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure—one that will threaten their lives and our universe.

A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L'Engle's classic Time Quintet.]]> 211 Madeleine L'Engle 0440498058 Josh 3 4.04 1962 A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1)
author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: Josh
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: summer-2024, waring-summer-reading
review:

]]> As I Lay Dying 77013 As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.]]> 288 William Faulkner Josh 5 joshbooks, summer-2024 3.71 1930 As I Lay Dying
author: William Faulkner
name: Josh
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1930
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: joshbooks, summer-2024
review:

]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Josh 0 summer-2024 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Josh
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves: summer-2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories: The Nose; The Carriage; The Overcoat; Taras Bulba]]> 708392 238 Nikolai Gogol 0451524039 Josh 4 joshbooks 4.11 1835 The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories: The Nose; The Carriage; The Overcoat; Taras Bulba
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Josh
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1835
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: joshbooks
review:

]]> Gilead (Gilead, #1) 68210 Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel "as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." GILEAD tells the story of America and will break your heart.]]> 247 Marilynne Robinson 031242440X Josh 0 summer-2024 3.84 2004 Gilead (Gilead, #1)
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Josh
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: summer-2024
review:

]]> Lysistrata and Other Plays 1567 Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of the long war with Sparta. In Lysistrata a band of women tap into the awesome power of sex in order to end a war. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged.

For this edition Alan Sommerstein has completely revised his translation of these three plays, bringing out the full nuances of Aristophanes� ribald humour and intricate word play, with a new introduction explaining the historical and cultural background to the plays.]]> 241 Aristophanes Josh 0 classical-shelf 3.94 -423 Lysistrata and Other Plays
author: Aristophanes
name: Josh
average rating: 3.94
book published: -423
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: classical-shelf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic]]> 129876 157 R.K. Narayan 0143039679 Josh 4 3.92 1957 The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic
author: R.K. Narayan
name: Josh
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1957
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:

]]> The Luminaries 17333230 The Luminaries is a brilliantly constructed, fiendishly clever ghost story and a gripping page-turner.]]> 848 Eleanor Catton 0316074314 Josh 0 summer-2024 3.73 2013 The Luminaries
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Josh
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: summer-2024
review:

]]> The Red Tent 4989 The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.]]> 324 Anita Diamant 0312353766 Josh 0 summer-2024 4.21 1997 The Red Tent
author: Anita Diamant
name: Josh
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: summer-2024
review:

]]> If We Were Villains 32874746
A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extras.

But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students� world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent.]]> 370 M.L. Rio Josh 0 summer-2024 4.00 2017 If We Were Villains
author: M.L. Rio
name: Josh
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: summer-2024
review:

]]> Tipping the Velvet 25104465 472 Sarah Waters Josh 0 summer-2024 4.12 1998 Tipping the Velvet
author: Sarah Waters
name: Josh
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: summer-2024
review:

]]> Hell of a Book 60142745
In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book , a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.

As these characters� stories build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America.

Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind? ÌýUnforgettably told, with characters who burn into your mind and an electrifying plot ideal for book club discussion, Hell of a Book is the novel Mott has been writing in his head for the last ten years. And in its final twists, it truly becomes its title.]]> 322 Jason Mott 0593330986 Josh 0 book-club, summer-2024 4.17 2021 Hell of a Book
author: Jason Mott
name: Josh
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: book-club, summer-2024
review:

]]> Birnam Wood 60784757 Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker--or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.]]> 432 Eleanor Catton 0374110336 Josh 0 3.79 2023 Birnam Wood
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Josh
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science]]> 6885204
When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system; of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry; and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science—an era whose consequences are with us still.]]> 608 Richard Holmes 1400031877 Josh 0 book-club 4.09 2008 The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
author: Richard Holmes
name: Josh
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> Genesis 379191

In Robert Alter's brilliant translation, these stories cohere in a powerful narrative of the tortuous relations between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, eldest and younger brothers, God and his chosen people, the people of Israel and their neighbors. Alter's translation honors the meanings and literary strategies of the ancient Hebrew and conveys them in fluent English prose. It recovers a Genesis with the continuity of theme and motif of a wholly conceived and fully realized book. His insightful, fully informed commentary illuminates the book in all its dimensions.]]> 324 Robert Alter 039331670X Josh 4 4.15 -800 Genesis
author: Robert Alter
name: Josh
average rating: 4.15
book published: -800
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/02/02
shelves: group-1-humanities, medieval-course
review:

]]> The Little Stranger 7234875 512 Sarah Waters Josh 0 3.59 2009 The Little Stranger
author: Sarah Waters
name: Josh
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cat Butt: An Off-Color Adult Coloring Book for Cat Lovers]]> 38105470 64 Honey Badger Coloring 1640011765 Josh 0 4.08 Cat Butt: An Off-Color Adult Coloring Book for Cat Lovers
author: Honey Badger Coloring
name: Josh
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Yellowface 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Josh 0 3.69 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Josh
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/01
date added: 2023/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> The Rachel Incident 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Josh 0 4.06 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Josh
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/01
date added: 2023/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> When We Were Very Young 1370171 102 A.A. Milne 0525425802 Josh 0 3.93 1924 When We Were Very Young
author: A.A. Milne
name: Josh
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/01
date added: 2023/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> The Paying Guests 24568234
'Frances had been picturing her lodgers in purely mercenary terms - as something like two great waddling shillings. But this, she thought, was what it really meant to have paying guests: this odd, unintimate proximity, this rather peeled-back moment, where the only thing between herself and a naked Mrs Barber was a few feet of kitchen and a thin scullery door. An image sprang into her head: that round flesh, crimsoning in the heat.'

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.

For with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.

This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. It is above all a wonderful, compelling story.]]> 599 Sarah Waters 0349004609 Josh 0 3.62 2014 The Paying Guests
author: Sarah Waters
name: Josh
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/01
date added: 2023/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Beowulf 41940267 Beowulf by the author of The Mere Wife.

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf � and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world � there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements never before translated into English.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment � of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child � but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation; her Beowulf is one for the twenty-first century.]]> 140 Unknown 0374110034 Josh 0 book-club 4.10 1000 Beowulf
author: Unknown
name: Josh
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> Go, Went, Gone 34390247 Go, Went, Gone is the masterful new novel by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, “one of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation� (The Millions). The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns to compassion and an inner transformation, as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European refugee crisis, but also a touching portrait of a man who finds he has more in common with the Africans than he realizes. Exquisitely translated by Susan Bernofsky, Go, Went, Gone addresses one of the most pivotal issues of our time, facing it head-on in a voice that is both nostalgic and frightening.]]> 286 Jenny Erpenbeck 0811225941 Josh 0 4.05 2015 Go, Went, Gone
author: Jenny Erpenbeck
name: Josh
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/06
shelves: summer-2019, modern-europe-course
review:

]]> Little Women 341288 Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth--four "little women" enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England

The charming story of the March sisters, Little Women has been adored for generations. Readers have rooted for Laurie in his pursuit of Jo's hand, cried over little Beth's untimely death, and dreamed of traveling through Europe with old Aunt March and Amy. Aspiring writers have found inspiration in Jo's devotion to her writing. In this simple, enthralling tale, Louisa May Alcott has created four of American literature's most beloved women.

In her enlightening, thoughtful introduction, Elaine Showalter discusses Louisa May Alcott's influences and her aspirations for Little Women, as well as the impact the novel has had on such women writers as Joyce Carol Oates and Cynthia Ozick.

]]> 504 Louisa May Alcott 0140390693 Josh 0 didn-t-finish 4.12 1868 Little Women
author: Louisa May Alcott
name: Josh
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1868
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/01
date added: 2023/08/23
shelves: didn-t-finish
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Her Body and Other Parties: Stories]]> 33375622 Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

The husband stitch --
Inventory --
Mothers --
Especially heinous --
Real women have bodies --
Eight bites --
The resident --
Difficult at parties]]> 248 Carmen Maria Machado 155597788X Josh 0 summer-2023 3.85 2017 Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Josh
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2023/08/23
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)]]> 37781 Things Fall Apart is written with remarkable economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.]]> 215 Chinua Achebe Josh 3 3.73 1958 Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)
author: Chinua Achebe
name: Josh
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2023/08/23
shelves: summer-2017, group-1-humanities, summer-2023, waring-summer-reading
review:

]]> The House of Mirth 822808
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 368 Edith Wharton Josh 5 joshbooks, summer-2023 3.93 1905 The House of Mirth
author: Edith Wharton
name: Josh
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1905
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2023/08/23
shelves: joshbooks, summer-2023
review:

]]> Station Eleven 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

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

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 Josh 0 summer-2023 4.05 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Josh
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> The Glass Hotel 51234248 A New York Times "20 Books We're Watching For in 2020"

An Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Bustle, Buzzfeed, GoodReads, Houston Chronicle, Writer's Digest, Medium, Washington Independent Review of Books, The Millions, Boston Globe, USA Today, and Women's Day Most Anticipated Book

From the award-winning author of Station Eleven , an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events-a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: "Why don't you swallow broken glass." High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients' accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan's wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.]]> 381 Emily St. John Mandel 059317173X Josh 0 summer-2023 3.67 2020 The Glass Hotel
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Josh
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Josh 0 summer-2023 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Josh
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> My Dark Vanessa 49659128 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780008342258

An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her teacher.

Vanessa Wye was fifteen years old when she first had sex with her English teacher.

She is now thirty-two and the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student of his. Vanessa is horrified by this news, because she is quite certain that the relationship she had with Strane wasn’t abuse. It was love. She’s sure of that. But now, in 2017, in the midst of allegations against powerful men, she is being asked to redefine the great love story of her life � her great sexual awakening � as rape.

Nuanced, uncomfortable, bold and powerful, and as riveting as it is disturbing, My Dark Vanessa goes straight to the heart of some of the most complex issues our age is grappling with.]]> 372 Kate Elizabeth Russell Josh 0 summer-2023 4.17 2020 My Dark Vanessa
author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
name: Josh
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> Big Swiss 138539153
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship�

A fantastic, weird-as-hell, funny novel, Big Swiss is both a love story and a deft examination of infidelity, mental health, sexual stereotypes, and more—from an amazingly talented, singular voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 352 Jen Beagin 1982153091 Josh 0 summer-2023 3.70 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Josh
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> Macbeth 8852
This shocking tragedy - a violent caution to those seeking power for its own sake - is, to this day, one of Shakespeare’s most popular and influential masterpieces.]]> 249 William Shakespeare 0743477103 Josh 4 3.90 1623 Macbeth
author: William Shakespeare
name: Josh
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1623
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: joshbooks, group-1-humanities, shakespeare, summer-2023
review:

]]> Slaughterhouse-Five 168646 Ìý
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Ìý
Slaughterhouse-Five , an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.� George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.�

More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 215 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0440180295 Josh 0 summer-2017, summer-2023 4.08 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Josh
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2017, summer-2023
review:

]]> Hang the Moon 61272702
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who’d amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans.

Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her father’s daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his mother’s son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out.

Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That’s a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.

You will fall in love with Sallie Kincaid, a feisty and fearless, terrified and damaged young woman who refuses to be corralled.]]> 368 Jeannette Walls 1501117297 Josh 0 summer-2023 3.67 2023 Hang the Moon
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Josh
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II]]> 62120824 A riveting, immersive account of the agonizing decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan--a crucial turning point in World War II and geopolitical history--with you-are-there immediacy by the New York Times bestselling author of Ike's Bluff and Sea of Thunder.

At 9:20 a.m. on the morning of May 30, General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war "at once." Stimson is waiting for him. He wants to know: has Groves selected the targets yet?

So begins this suspenseful, impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with America's decision to drop the atomic bomb--and Japan's decision to surrender. They are Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, who had overall responsibility for decisions about the atom bomb; Gen. Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs; and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, the only one in Emperor Hirohito's Supreme War Council who believed even before the bombs were dropped that Japan should surrender.

Henry Stimson had served in the administrations of five presidents, but as the U.S. nuclear program progressed, he found himself tasked with the unimaginable decision of determining whether to deploy the bomb. The new president, Harry S. Truman, thus far a peripheral figure in the momentous decision, accepted Stimson's recommendation to drop the bomb. Army Air Force Commander Gen. Spaatz ordered the planes to take off. Like Stimson, Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war. After the bombs were dropped, Foreign Minister Togo was finally able to convince the emperor to surrender.

To bring these critical events to vivid life, bestselling author Evan Thomas draws on the diaries of Stimson, Togo and Spaatz, contemplating the immense weight of their historic decision. In Road to Surrender, an immersive, surprising, moving account, Thomas lays out the behind-the-scenes thoughts, feelings, motivations, and decision-making of three people who changed history.]]> 336 Evan Thomas 0399589252 Josh 0 summer-2023 4.30 2023 Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II
author: Evan Thomas
name: Josh
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> I Have Some Questions for You 61053829
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.]]> 438 Rebecca Makkai 0593490142 Josh 0 summer-2023 3.57 2023 I Have Some Questions for You
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: Josh
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: summer-2023
review:

]]> Pineapple Street 61246258
Shot through with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is an addictive, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, lovable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class.]]> 304 Jenny Jackson 059349069X Josh 5 3.49 2023 Pineapple Street
author: Jenny Jackson
name: Josh
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/01
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?]]> 6452731
Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, the moral limits of markets―Sandel relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.

Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise―an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.]]> 308 Michael J. Sandel 0374180652 Josh 4 joshbooks, summer-2016 4.30 2007 Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
author: Michael J. Sandel
name: Josh
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/31
shelves: joshbooks, summer-2016
review:

]]> The Remains of the Day 274186 here.

The Remains of the Day is a profoundly compelling portrait of the perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world postwar England. At the end of his three decades of service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a country drive, during which he looks back over his career to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving “a great gentleman.� But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington’s “greatness� and graver doubts about his own faith in the man he served.]]> 245 Kazuo Ishiguro 0679731725 Josh 5 joshbooks 4.17 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Josh
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2007/07/01
date added: 2023/05/16
shelves: joshbooks
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Sick Day for Amos McGee (Caldecott Medal Winner)]]> 7268995
But one day�"Ah-choo!"—he woke up with the sniffles and the sneezes. Though he didn't make it into the zoo that day, he did receive some unexpected guests.

Philip C. Stead's gently humorous tale of friendship and dedication is illustrated by his wife Erin E. Stead's elegant drawings, embellished with subtle hints of color.]]> 32 Philip C. Stead 1596434023 Josh 0 4.26 2010 A Sick Day for Amos McGee (Caldecott Medal Winner)
author: Philip C. Stead
name: Josh
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Juliet Takes a Breath 28648863 Inga Muscio, author of Cunt

Juliet Milagros Palante is leaving the Bronx and headed to Portland, Oregon. She just came out to her family and isn’t sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that’s going to help her figure out this whole “Puerto Rican lesbian� thing. She’s interning with the author of her favorite Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women’s bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff.

Will Juliet be able to figure out her life over the course of one magical summer? Is that even possible? Or is she running away from all the problems that seem too big to handle?

With more questions than answers, Juliet takes on Portland, Harlowe, and most importantly, herself.]]> 276 Gabby Rivera 1626012504 Josh 0 4.16 2016 Juliet Takes a Breath
author: Gabby Rivera
name: Josh
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Border Districts 35259552 A bittersweet farewell to the world and the word by the Australian master

"The mind is a place best viewed from borderlands . . ."

Border Districts, purportedly the Australian master Gerald Murnane's final work of fiction, is a hypnotic, precise, and self-lacerating "report" on a life led as an avid reader, fumbling lover, "student of mental imagery," and devout believer--but a believer not in the commonplaces of religion, but rather in the luminescence of memory and its handmaiden, literature.

In Border Districts, a man moves from a capital city to a remote town in the border country, where he intends to spend the last years of his life. It is time, he thinks, to review the spoils of a lifetime of seeing, a lifetime of reading. Which sights, which people, which books, fictional characters, turns of phrase, and lines of verse will survive into the twilight? A dark-haired woman with a wistful expression? An ancestral house in the grasslands? The colors in translucent panes of glass, in marbles and goldfish and racing silks? Feeling an increasing urgency to put his mental landscape in order, the man sets to work cataloging this treasure, little knowing where his "report" will lead and what secrets will be brought to light.

Border Districts is a jewel of a farewell from one of the greatest living writers of English prose.]]> 132 Gerald Murnane 0374115753 Josh 0 3.62 2017 Border Districts
author: Gerald Murnane
name: Josh
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Hamnet 43890641 Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

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

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

A New York Times Notable Book (2020), Best Book of 2020: Guardian, Financial Times, Literary Hub, and NPR.]]> 372 Maggie O'Farrell 1472223799 Josh 0 4.16 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Josh
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Josh 0 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Josh
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/02
shelves:
review:

]]> The Glass Hotel 45754981 From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events–a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients� accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.]]> 307 Emily St. John Mandel 0525521143 Josh 0 3.66 2020 The Glass Hotel
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Josh
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari Josh 0 book-club, summer-2022 4.33 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Josh
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: book-club, summer-2022
review:

]]> The Awakening 58345 The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the confines of her domestic situation.

Aside from its unusually frank treatment of a then-controversial subject, the novel is widely admired today for its literary qualities. Edmund Wilson characterized it as a work "quite uninhibited and beautifully written, which anticipates D. H. Lawrence in its treatment of infidelity." Although the theme of marital infidelity no longer shocks, few novels have plumbed the psychology of a woman involved in an illicit relationship with the perception, artistry, and honesty that Kate Chopin brought to The Awakening.]]> 195 Kate Chopin 0543898083 Josh 0 summer-2022 3.69 1899 The Awakening
author: Kate Chopin
name: Josh
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1899
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: summer-2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World]]> 10235 Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity"—a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners in Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.]]> 333 Tracy Kidder 0812973011 Josh 0 4.19 2003 Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
author: Tracy Kidder
name: Josh
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: summer-2022, waring-summer-reading
review:

]]> The Left Hand of Darkness 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 304 Ursula K. Le Guin Josh 4 joshbooks, summer-2022 4.11 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Josh
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2007/12/08
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: joshbooks, summer-2022
review:

]]> Happy-Go-Lucky 58989873 Ìý
But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.
Ìý
As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.
Ìý
In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.]]> 272 David Sedaris 0316392456 Josh 0 summer-2022 4.15 2022 Happy-Go-Lucky
author: David Sedaris
name: Josh
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: summer-2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Chosen (Reuven Malther, #1)]]> 187181 304 Chaim Potok 0449213447 Josh 0 medieval-course, summer-2022 4.06 1966 The Chosen (Reuven Malther, #1)
author: Chaim Potok
name: Josh
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at: 2012/12/16
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: medieval-course, summer-2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)]]> 13507212 9780805090031)

Though he battled for years to marry her, Henry VIII has become disenchanted with the audacious Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son, and her sharp intelligence and strong will have alienated his old friends and the noble families of England.

When the discarded Katherine, Henry's first wife, dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice, setting in motion a dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over a few terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally himself with his enemies. What price will he pay for Annie's head?]]> 412 Hilary Mantel Josh 0 summer-2022 4.26 2012 Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Josh
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: summer-2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]> 653 Hilary Mantel Josh 0 summer-2022 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Josh
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: summer-2022
review:

]]> Little Fires Everywhere 44177149 From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.]]> 338 Celeste Ng 0735224315 Josh 0 summer-2020 4.07 2017 Little Fires Everywhere
author: Celeste Ng
name: Josh
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/29
shelves: summer-2020
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity]]> 56269264
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.]]> 692 David Graeber 0374157359 Josh 0 didn-t-finish 4.20 2021 The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
author: David Graeber
name: Josh
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2022/04/29
date added: 2022/04/29
shelves: didn-t-finish
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother's Letter to Her Son]]> 52037427 A People Book of the Week & a Kirkus Best Nonfiction of the Year

An exquisite and inspiring memoir about one mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions.ÌýWith the city and the military on edge,Ìýit was not uncommon forÌýan armed soldierÌýtoÌýpoint his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain,Ìýshe was onceÌýforced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life.

No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society.

Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story—and that of Afghan women—Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.]]> 224 Homeira Qaderi 0062970313 Josh 0 4.31 2020 Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother's Letter to Her Son
author: Homeira Qaderi
name: Josh
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Fingersmith 25584834
One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, they all will share in Maud’s vast inheritance.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to regret her decision.]]> 582 Sarah Waters 1573229725 Josh 0 4.03 2002 Fingersmith
author: Sarah Waters
name: Josh
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Anxious People 53799686
Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.

First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else until tragedy changed her life. Now, she’s obsessed with visiting open houses to see how ordinary people live—and, perhaps, to set an old wrong to right. Then there’s Roger and Anna-Lena, an Ikea-addicted retired couple who are on a never-ending hunt for fixer-uppers to hide the fact that they don’t know how to fix their own failing marriage. Julia and Ro are a young lesbian couple and soon-to-be parents who are nervous about their chances for a successful life together since they can’t agree on anything. And there’s Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by a masked bank robber waving a gun in her face. And despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car.

As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.

Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature� (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People’s whimsical plot serves up unforgettable insights into the human condition and a gentle reminder to be compassionate to all the anxious people we encounter every day.]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 1982121602 Josh 0 4.12 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Josh
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> The Silent Patient 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]> 336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Josh 0 4.17 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Josh
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Piranesi 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Josh 0 4.22 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Josh
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Cloud Cuckoo Land 56783258 When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:
An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:
An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:
With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.]]> 626 Anthony Doerr 1982168439 Josh 0 4.24 2021 Cloud Cuckoo Land
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Josh
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Where the Crawdads Sing 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Josh 0 4.35 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
author: Delia Owens
name: Josh
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/25
shelves:
review:

]]> The Anomaly 56920684
In June 2021, a senseless event upends the lives of hundreds of men and women, all passengers on a flight from Paris to New York. Among them: Blake, a respectable family man, though he works as a contract killer; Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star tired of living a lie; Joanna, a formidable lawyer whose flaws have caught up with her; and Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet commercially unsuccessful writer who suddenly becomes a cult hit. All of them believed they had double lives. None imagined just how true that was.

This witty variation on the doppelgänger theme, which takes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House, is Hervé Le Tellier's most ambitious work yet.]]> 391 Hervé Le Tellier 1635421691 Josh 0 book-club 3.80 2020 The Anomaly
author: Hervé Le Tellier
name: Josh
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/25
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse]]> 43708884
Here, you will find them together in this book of Charlie's most-loved drawings, adventuring into the Wild and exploring the thoughts and feelings that unite us all.]]> 128 Charlie Mackesy 1529105102 Josh 0 4.56 2019 The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
author: Charlie Mackesy
name: Josh
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Invisible Cities 9809 165 Italo Calvino 0156453800 Josh 0 4.16 1972 Invisible Cities
author: Italo Calvino
name: Josh
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beautiful World, Where Are You]]> 56597885 356 Sally Rooney 0374602603 Josh 0 3.53 2021 Beautiful World, Where Are You
author: Sally Rooney
name: Josh
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> The Heroine with 1001 Faces 56769530 The Heroine with 1,001 Faces dismantles the cult of warrior heroes, revealing a secret history of heroinism at the very heart of our collective cultural imagination. Maria Tatar, a leading authority on fairy tales and folklore, explores how heroines, rarely wielding a sword and often deprived of a pen, have flown beneath the radar even as they have been bent on redemptive missions. Deploying the domestic crafts and using words as weapons, they have found ways to survive assaults and rescue others from harm, all while repairing the fraying edges in the fabric of their social worlds. Like the tongueless Philomela, who spins the tale of her rape into a tapestry, or Arachne, who portrays the misdeeds of the gods, they have discovered instruments for securing fairness in the storytelling circles where so-called women’s work—spinning, mending, and weaving—is carried out.

Tatar challenges the canonical models of heroism in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, with their male-centric emphases on achieving glory and immortality. Finding the women missing from his account and defining their own heroic trajectories is no easy task, for Campbell created the playbook for Hollywood directors. Audiences around the world have willingly surrendered to the lure of quest narratives and charismatic heroes. Whether in the form of Frodo, Luke Skywalker, or Harry Potter, Campbell’s archetypical hero has dominated more than the box office.

In a broad-ranging volume that moves with ease from the local to the global, Tatar demonstrates how our new heroines wear their curiosity as a badge of honor rather than a mark of shame, and how their “mischief making� evidences compassion and concern. From Bluebeard’s wife to Nancy Drew, and from Jane Eyre to Janie Crawford, women have long crafted stories to broadcast offenses in the pursuit of social justice. Girls, too, have now precociously stepped up to the plate, with Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen, and Starr Carter as trickster figures enacting their own forms of extrajudicial justice. Their quests may not take the traditional form of a “hero’s journey,� but they reveal the value of courage, defiance, and, above all, care.

“By turns dazzling and chilling� (Ruth Franklin), The Heroine with 1,001 Faces creates a luminous arc that takes us from ancient times to the present day. It casts an unusually wide net, expanding the canon and thinking capaciously in global terms, breaking down the boundaries of genre, and displaying a sovereign command of cultural context. This, then, is a historic volume that informs our present and its newfound investment in empathy and social justice like no other work of recent cultural history.]]> 368 Maria Tatar 1631498819 Josh 0 book-club 3.92 2021 The Heroine with 1001 Faces
author: Maria Tatar
name: Josh
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/26
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> The Portable Edgar Allan Poe 6626338
A fully revised collection of Poe's work

The first new edition of this landmark anthology since 1945 presents a more complicated, perverse, and culturally engaged Poe. Along with the author's familiar masterworks in poetry and fiction, this new Portable Poe includes satirical tales that reflect his critique of American culture.


]]> 672 Edgar Allan Poe 144062724X Josh 4 joshbooks 4.08 1945 The Portable Edgar Allan Poe
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Josh
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1945
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/11/15
shelves: joshbooks
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3)]]> 18687705
In these three books, which form one continuous narrative, Tolkien created the saga of the Hobbits of Middle-earth and the great War of the Rings. Praised by such writers and poets as W. H. Auden, Richard Hughes and C. S. Lewis, “The Lord of the Rings� � that special world of beauty and terror and meaning � holds a secure place among the books that will live.
--back cover]]> 432 J.R.R. Tolkien Josh 0 4.70 1955 The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3)
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Josh
average rating: 4.70
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/14
shelves:
review:

]]> The Grapes of Wrath 18114322
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 496 John Steinbeck 067001690X Josh 0 4.06 1939 The Grapes of Wrath
author: John Steinbeck
name: Josh
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves: summer-2019, summer-2021, group-1-humanities
review:

]]> <![CDATA[World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments]]> 48615751
As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance.

"What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts.

Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.]]> 165 Aimee Nezhukumatathil 1571313656 Josh 0 4.05 2020 World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
author: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
name: Josh
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves: summer-2021, waring-summer-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings #2)]]> 13356707 THE LORD OF THE RINGS

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord by destroying it in the Cracks of Doom. They have lost the wizard, Gandalf, in a battle in the Mines of Moria. And Boromir, seduced by the power of the Ring, tried to seize it by force. While Frodo and Sam made their escape, the rest of the company was attacked by Orcs. Now they continue the journey alone down the great River Anduin—alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go.

“Among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century. The book presents us with the richest profusion of new lands and creatures, from the beauty of Lothlórien to the horror of Mordor.� � Sunday Telegraph]]> 323 J.R.R. Tolkien 0547928203 Josh 0 summer-2021 4.46 1954 The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings #2)
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Josh
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves: summer-2021
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)]]> 13356706 THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Ìý
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

--back cover]]> 407 J.R.R. Tolkien 0547928211 Josh 0 summer-2021 4.45 1954 The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Josh
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves: summer-2021
review:

]]> The Hobbit 26098210
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey ‘there and back again�. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon�

The prelude to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit has sold many millions of copies since its publication in 1937, establishing itself as one of the most beloved and influential books of the twentieth century.]]> 305 J.R.R. Tolkien Josh 0 summer-2021 4.30 1937 The Hobbit
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Josh
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1937
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/30
shelves: summer-2021
review:

]]> 1984 40961427 Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.]]> 298 George Orwell Josh 0 4.24 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Josh
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/30
shelves: summer-2021, modern-europe-course
review:

]]> Luster 51541496
Razor-sharp, provocatively page-turning and surprisingly tender, Luster by Raven Leilani is a painfully funny debut about what it means to be young now.]]> 227 Raven Leilani 0374194327 Josh 0 summer-2021 3.51 2020 Luster
author: Raven Leilani
name: Josh
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/30
shelves: summer-2021
review:

]]> The Great Gatsby 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Josh 5 joshbooks, summer-2021 3.93 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Josh
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/07/09
shelves: joshbooks, summer-2021
review:

]]> The Chosen and the Beautiful 55169019
Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She's also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Nghi Vo's debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.]]> 260 Nghi Vo 1250784786 Josh 0 summer-2021 3.53 2021 The Chosen and the Beautiful
author: Nghi Vo
name: Josh
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/09
shelves: summer-2021
review:

]]> Rabbits (Rabbits, #1) 55481226 Conspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller in which a deadly underground alternate reality game might just be altering reality itself, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast.

It's an average work day. You've been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air�4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th�4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past—and the body count is rising.

And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K—a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.

Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.]]> 422 Terry Miles 1984819658 Josh 0 summer-2021 3.60 2021 Rabbits (Rabbits, #1)
author: Terry Miles
name: Josh
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/09
shelves: summer-2021
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents]]> 51152447 The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

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

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

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.]]> 544 Isabel Wilkerson 0593230256 Josh 0 book-club 4.52 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Josh
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/14
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> A Thousand Ships 53487148 This is the women’s war, just as much as it is the men’s. They have waited long enough for their turn . . .

This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of them all . . .

In the middle of the night, a woman wakes to find her beloved city engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over. Troy has fallen.

From the Trojan women whose fates now lie in the hands of the Greeks, to the Amazon princess who fought Achilles on their behalf, to Penelope awaiting the return of Odysseus, to the three goddesses whose feud started it all, these are the stories of the women whose lives, loves, and rivalries were forever altered by this long and tragic war.

A woman’s epic, powerfully imbued with new life, A Thousand Ships puts the women, girls and goddesses at the center of the Western world’s great tale ever told.]]> 368 Natalie Haynes 0063065398 Josh 0 4.05 2019 A Thousand Ships
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Josh
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]> 40163119
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.]]> 441 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385521316 Josh 0 book-club 4.47 2018 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Josh
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2021/03/28
date added: 2021/03/28
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> The Song of Achilles 13623848 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]> 408 Madeline Miller Josh 0 4.30 2011 The Song of Achilles
author: Madeline Miller
name: Josh
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/11
shelves:
review:

]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Josh 0 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: Josh
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future]]> 49512631 From leading scholar James Shapiro, a timely exploration of what Shakespeare's plays reveal about our divided land, from Revolutionary times to the present day

Read at school by almost every student, staged in theaters across the land, and long highly valued by both conservatives and liberals alike, Shakespeare's plays are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries now, Americans of all stripes--presidents and activists, writers and soldiers--have turned to Shakespeare's works to address the nation's political fault lines, such as manifest destiny, race, gender, immigration, and free speech. In a narrative arching across the centuries, James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare's 400-year-old tragedies and comedies in making sense of so many of these issues on which American identity has turned. Reflecting on how Shakespeare has been invoked--and at times weaponized--at pivotal moments in our past, Shapiro takes us from President John Quincy Adams's disgust with Desdemona's interracial marriage to Othello, to Abraham Lincoln's and his assassin John Wilkes Booth's competing obsessions with the plays, up through the fraught debates over marriage and same-sex love at the heart of the celebrated adaptations Kiss Me Kate and Shakespeare in Love. His narrative culminates in the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated.

Extraordinarily researched, Shakespeare in a Divided America shows that no writer has been more closely embraced by Americans, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history. Indeed, it is by better understanding Shakespeare's role in American life, Shapiro argues, that we might begin to mend our bitterly divided land.]]> 286 James Shapiro 0525522298 Josh 0 book-club, shakespeare 4.09 2020 Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future
author: James Shapiro
name: Josh
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: book-club, shakespeare
review:

]]> Wuthering Heights 348914 Alternate cover edition for ISBN: 9780141439556.

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before; of the intense relationship between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw; and how Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.]]> 359 Emily Brontë Josh 3 3.84 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: Josh
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1847
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/12/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Broken Earth Trilogy (The Broken Earth, #1-3)]]> 38496769 This boxed set edition includes all three books in N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy.

This complete collection includes The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky.

This is the way the world ends for the last time...
A season of endings has begun. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.

This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.]]> 1424 N.K. Jemisin 031652719X Josh 0 4.56 2018 The Broken Earth Trilogy (The Broken Earth, #1-3)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Josh
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Missing Piece Meets the Big O]]> 30125 From Shel Silverstein, the celebrated author of The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, comes The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, a charming fable that gently probes the nature of individuality and self-fulfillment.

"The missing piece sat alone
waiting for someone
to come along
and take it somewhere..."

The different ones it encounters � and what it discovers in its helplessness � are portrayed with simplicity and compassion in the words and drawings of Shel Silverstein.

And don't miss Runny Babbit Returns (2017), the new sequel and book from Shel Silverstein!]]> 104 Shel Silverstein 0060256575 Josh 0 4.39 1981 The Missing Piece Meets the Big O
author: Shel Silverstein
name: Josh
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer]]> 10628824
How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger How do you live? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, considered by many to be the first truly modern individual. He wrote free-roaming explorations of his thoughts and experience, unlike anything written before. More than four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom, and entertainment —and in search of themselves. Just as they will to this spirited and singular biography.]]> 416 Sarah Bakewell 1590514831 Josh 0 book-club 4.20 2010 How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
author: Sarah Bakewell
name: Josh
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/13
shelves: book-club
review:

]]>