James's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 20 Jul 2023 23:11:45 -0700 60 James's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 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 James 4 4.24 2021 Cloud Cuckoo Land
author: Anthony Doerr
name: James
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/07/20
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]]> <![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 James 5 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: James
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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]]> Rashomon and Other Stories 672376 Rashomon, tells the chilling story of the killing of a samurai through the testimony of witnesses, including the spirit of the murdered man. The fable-like "Yam Gruel" is an account of desire and humiliation, but one in which the reader's sympathy is thoroughly unsettled. And in "The Martyr," a beloved orphan raised by Jesuit priests is exiled when he refuses to admit that he made a local girl pregnant. He regains their love and respect only at the price of his life. All six tales in the collection show Akutagawa as a master storyteller and an exciting voice of modern Japanese literature.]]> 110 Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 0871401738 James 4 4.04 1915 Rashomon and Other Stories
author: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
name: James
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1915
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/04/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Uncanny Magazine, Issue 36, September / October 2020]]> 55205706
Featuring new fiction by T. Kingfisher, Samantha Mills, Kenneth Schneyer, Lavie Tidhar, Marie Brennan, and James Yu. Reprint fiction by P. Djèlí Clark. Essays by Del Sandeen, Marissa Lingen, Nibedita Sen, and Christopher Mark Rose, poetry by Terese Mason Pierre, Beth Cato, Rita Chen, and Lora Gray, interviews with Kenneth Schneyer and Lavie Tidhar by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Christopher Jones, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Elsa Sjunneson.]]> 205 Lynne M. Thomas James 5 3.81 2020 Uncanny Magazine, Issue 36, September / October 2020
author: Lynne M. Thomas
name: James
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/11/09
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]]> The Archronology of Love 53429033 88 Caroline M. Yoachim 1933846968 James 0 to-read 3.77 The Archronology of Love
author: Caroline M. Yoachim
name: James
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells James 4 4.11 2017 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
author: Martha Wells
name: James
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/07/11
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]]> Dune (Dune, #1) 44767458
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.]]> 658 Frank Herbert 059309932X James 4 4.33 1965 Dune (Dune, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: James
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1965
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/07/04
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]]> Between the World and Me 25489625 “This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.�

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,� a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.]]> 152 Ta-Nehisi Coates James 5 4.40 2015 Between the World and Me
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: James
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/06/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Relive Box and Other Stories]]> 34121921
While T. C. Boyle is known as one of our greatest American novelists, he is also an acknowledged master of the short story. In The Relive Box, his first collection following two hugely influential collected volumes, Boyle’s crackling wit and thematic range combine with a penetrating social consciousness to produce his trademark “inventive and often crushingly comic� (NPR) short fiction.

From the title story, featuring a so-called relive box that allows users to experience anew almost any moment from their past, to “The Five-Pound Burrito,� the tale of a man aiming to build the biggest burrito in town, the twelve stories in this collection represent a whole new way of looking at the world from one of the best storytellers at work today.

The Relive Box is an exuberant, linguistically dazzling book from someone the Boston Globe has said is “such a good storyteller it will probably take, as in Alice Munro’s case, the Nobel Prize or retirement for us to realize what tremendous talent has lain right in front of our noses.”]]> 272 T. Coraghessan Boyle 0062673394 James 4 3.68 2014 The Relive Box and Other Stories
author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
name: James
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/06/03
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]]> Ball Lightning Sneak Peek 40122062 48 Liu Cixin 1250204879 James 3 3.60 Ball Lightning Sneak Peek
author: Liu Cixin
name: James
average rating: 3.60
book published:
rating: 3
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date added: 2020/04/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Working Futures: 14 Speculative Stories About The Future Of Work]]> 52214728
With stories by Keyan Bowes, Katharine Dow, Timothy Geigner, Liam Hogan, Christopher Alex Hooton, Andrew Dana Hudson, Randy Lubin, Mike Masnick, Ross Pruden, N. R. M. Roshak, Holly Schofield, and James Yu.]]> 316 Mike Masnick James 5 4.19 Working Futures: 14 Speculative Stories About The Future Of Work
author: Mike Masnick
name: James
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/03/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama]]> 74203 With a cultural range that encompasses Shakespeare, Brecht, and Ibsen, Death of a Salesman and Bad Day at Black Rock, Mamet shows us how to distinguish true drama from its false variants. He considers the impossibly difficult progression between one act and the next and the mysterious function of the soliloquy. The result, in Three Uses of the Knife, is an electrifying treatise on the playwright’s art that is also a strikingly original work of moral and aesthetic philosophy.
]]> 96 David Mamet 037570423X James 4 3.83 1991 Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama
author: David Mamet
name: James
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1991
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/02/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change]]> 18594475 A witty, insightful, and groundbreaking take on one of the most urgent questions of our time: Why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, do we still ignore climate change?

Most of us recognize that climate change is real yet we do nothing to stop it. What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall’s search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize–winning psychologists and Texas Tea Party activists; the world’s leading climate scientists and those who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake.

With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different, but rather in what we share: how our human brains are wired—our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, we can halt it if we make it our common purpose and common ground. In the end, Don’t Even Think About It is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced.]]> 272 George Marshall 1620401339 James 5 4.17 2014 Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change
author: George Marshall
name: James
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/02/25
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]]> The Memory Police 51159492
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath the floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her wiring as the last way of preserving the past.]]> 291 Yōko Ogawa 0375715339 James 4 3.78 1994 The Memory Police
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: James
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/02/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming]]> 41552709
This is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await--food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.

Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.]]> 310 David Wallace-Wells 0525576703 James 5 4.00 2019 The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
author: David Wallace-Wells
name: James
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/02/10
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]]> <![CDATA[On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born � a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam � and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 James 5 4.05 2019 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
author: Ocean Vuong
name: James
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness]]> 43306206
The Courage to Be Disliked shows you how to unlock the power within yourself to become your best and truest self, change your future and find lasting happiness. Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of 19th-century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, the authors explain how we are all free to determine our own future free of the shackles of past experiences, doubts and the expectations of others. It’s a philosophy that’s profoundly liberating, allowing us to develop the courage to change, and to ignore the limitations that we and those around us can place on ourselves.

The result is a book that is both highly accessible and profound in its importance. Millions have already read and benefited from its wisdom. Now that The Courage to Be Disliked has been published for the first time in English, so can you.]]> 288 Ichiro Kishimi James 4 3.89 2013 The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
author: Ichiro Kishimi
name: James
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting]]> 48654 466 Robert McKee 0060391685 James 4 4.27 1997 Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
author: Robert McKee
name: James
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/11/21
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]]> Mrs Fox 20937445
Mrs Fox is the story of a husband who is shocked out of his complacency when his wife undergoes a remarkable transformation.]]> Sarah Hall 0571315682 James 4 3.71 2014 Mrs Fox
author: Sarah Hall
name: James
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/08/28
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]]> Exhalation 41160292
In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.]]> 368 Ted Chiang James 5 4.27 2019 Exhalation
author: Ted Chiang
name: James
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/05/29
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]]> Norwegian Wood 11297
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student's romantic coming of age, Norwegian Wood brilliantly recaptures a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]> 296 Haruki Murakami 0375704027 James 4 4.01 1987 Norwegian Wood
author: Haruki Murakami
name: James
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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]]> The Lathe of Heaven 59924
In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George's dreams for his own purposes.

The Lathe of Heaven is an eerily prescient novel from award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin that masterfully addresses the dangers of power and humanity's self-destructiveness, questioning the nature of reality itself. It is a classic of the science fiction genre.]]> 176 Ursula K. Le Guin 0060512741 James 5 4.12 1971 The Lathe of Heaven
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: James
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1971
rating: 5
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]]> Here and Now and Then 36630924
Kin Stewart is an everyday family man: working in I.T., trying to keep the spark in his marriage, and struggling to connect with his teenage daughter, Miranda. But his current life is a far cry from his previous career as a time-traveling secret agent from 2142.

Stranded in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s after a botched mission, Kin has kept his past hidden from everyone around him, despite the increasing blackouts and memory loss affecting his time-traveler's brain. Until one afternoon, his “rescue� team arrives—eighteen years too late.

Their mission: return Kin to 2142 where he's only been gone weeks, not years, and where another family is waiting for him. A family he can’t remember.

Torn between two lives, Kin is desperate for a way to stay connected to both. But when his best efforts threaten to destroy the agency and even history itself, his daughter’s very existence is at risk. It'll take one final trip across time to save Miranda—even if it means breaking all the rules of time travel in the process.

A uniquely emotional genre-bending debut, Here and Now and Then captures the perfect balance of heart, playfulness, and imagination, offering an intimate glimpse into the crevices of a father’s heart, and its capacity to stretch across both space and time to protect the people that mean the most.]]> 347 Mike Chen 1488099588 James 4 3.80 2019 Here and Now and Then
author: Mike Chen
name: James
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/03/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)]]> 43587154 JADE CITY is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu.

The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.

The Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion--but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection.

When the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself.]]> 540 Fonda Lee 0316440884 James 5 4.06 2017 Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)
author: Fonda Lee
name: James
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/02/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Worlds Enough & Time: Five Tales of Speculative Fiction]]> 3975

Human colonists seeking something other than godhood encounter their long-lost "cousins"...and an ancient scourge.



A devastated man in suicide's embrace is caught up in a bizarre cat-and-mouse game with a young woman possessing a world-ending power.

The distant descendants of a once-oppressed people learn a chilling lesson about the persistence of the past.

A terrifying ascent up the frigid, snow-swept slopes of K2 shatters preconceptions and reveals the true natures of four climbers, one of whom is not human.

At the intersection of a grand past and a threadbare present, an aging American in Russia confronts his own mortality as he glimpses a wondrous future.]]> 272 Dan Simmons 0060506040 James 4 3.70 2002 Worlds Enough & Time: Five Tales of Speculative Fiction
author: Dan Simmons
name: James
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/01/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ocean at the End of the Lane]]> 15783514
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.]]> 181 Neil Gaiman 0062255657 James 4 4.00 2013 The Ocean at the End of the Lane
author: Neil Gaiman
name: James
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/01/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive]]> 8884400
Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing, the Tur­ing Test convenes a panel of judges who pose questions—ranging anywhere from celebrity gossip to moral conundrums—to hidden contestants in an attempt to discern which is human and which is a computer. The machine that most often fools the panel wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also a prize, bizarre and intriguing, for the Most Human Human.

In 2008, the top AI program came short of passing the Turing Test by just one astonishing vote. In 2009, Brian Christian was chosen to participate, and he set out to make sure Homo sapiens would prevail.

The author’s quest to be deemed more human than a com­puter opens a window onto our own nature. Interweaving modern phenomena like customer service “chatbots� and men using programmed dialogue to pick up women in bars with insights from fields as diverse as chess, psychiatry, and the law, Brian Christian examines the philosophical, bio­logical, and moral issues raised by the Turing Test.

One central definition of human has been “a being that could reason.� If computers can reason, what does that mean for the special place we reserve for humanity?]]> 303 Brian Christian 0385533063 James 5 3.94 2011 The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
author: Brian Christian
name: James
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/12/24
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]]> Art and Fear 187633 122 David Bayles 0961454733 James 4 3.77 1994 Art and Fear
author: David Bayles
name: James
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/12/19
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]]> The Wasp Factory 567678
The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.]]> 184 Iain Banks 0684853159 James 4 3.78 1984 The Wasp Factory
author: Iain Banks
name: James
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1984
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/12/13
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]]> Demagoguery and Democracy 34747907 A clear-eyed guide to demagoguery—and how we can defeat it What is demagoguery? Some demagogues are easy to They rise to power through pandering, charisma, and prejudice. But, as professor Patricia Roberts-Miller explains, a demagogue is anyone who reduces all questions to us vs. them.Why is it dangerous? Demagoguery is democracy’s greatest threat. It erodes rational debate, so that intelligent policymaking grinds to a halt. The idea that we never fall for it—that all the blame lies with them—is equally dangerous.How can we stop it? Demagogues follow predictable patterns in what they say and do to gain power. The key to resisting demagoguery is to name it when you see it—and to know where it leads.]]> 145 Patricia Roberts-Miller James 4 4.28 2017 Demagoguery and Democracy
author: Patricia Roberts-Miller
name: James
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/12/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Across the Border: A Short Story]]> 43124436
"Matthew lifted his foot off the gas pedal, inching the car forward. The re-entry point was only a few hundred feet away, but at this pace it would take upwards of an hour. Past the border it was just another five hours until he would be home and asleep in his own bed.

But for now, Matthew was an uncomfortable combination of tired and restless. His car’s self-driving functionality would be disabled until he crossed the border, so he couldn’t take a nap or disappear into a vid. He was also out of signal range, and sick of every song saved locally. So he waited in silence, crawling forward, just a few dozen cars to go.

Your connection has been restored, his car spoke to him, while text flashed on the windshield to accompany it. Please verify your identity.

Matthew hesitated..."]]> 8 Sahil Lavingia James 5 4.52 Across the Border: A Short Story
author: Sahil Lavingia
name: James
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2018/12/04
date added: 2018/12/04
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]]> Unflattening 23503006 Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking. Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge.

Unflattening is an insurrection against the fixed viewpoint. Weaving together diverse ways of seeing drawn from science, philosophy, art, literature, and mythology, it uses the collage-like capacity of comics to show that perception is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. While its vibrant, constantly morphing images occasionally serve as illustrations of text, they more often connect in nonlinear fashion to other visual references throughout the book. They become allusions, allegories, and motifs, pitting realism against abstraction and making us aware that more meets the eye than is presented on the page.

In its graphic innovations and restless shape-shifting, Unflattening is meant to counteract the type of narrow, rigid thinking that Sousanis calls “flatness.� Just as the two-dimensional inhabitants of Edwin A. Abbott’s novella Flatland could not fathom the concept of “upwards,� Sousanis says, we are often unable to see past the boundaries of our current frame of mind. Fusing words and images to produce new forms of knowledge, Unflattening teaches us how to access modes of understanding beyond what we normally apprehend.]]> 208 Nick Sousanis 0674744438 James 5 4.07 2015 Unflattening
author: Nick Sousanis
name: James
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/12/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom]]> 29587 On The Skids In The Transhuman Future

Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies...and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.

Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the keeping of a network of "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.

Now, though, the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents, and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself.

Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war....]]> 208 Cory Doctorow 076530953X James 3 3.57 2003 Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
author: Cory Doctorow
name: James
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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date added: 2018/11/27
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]]> The Souls of Yellow Folk 38212099 The Souls of Yellow Folk, does more than collect a decade’s worth of cult-reputation essays—it corrals new American herds of pickup artists, school shooters, mandarin zombies, and immigrant strivers, and exposes them to scrutiny, empathy, and polemical force.


In his celebrated and prescient essay “The Face of Seung-Hui Cho,� Yang explores the deranged logic of the Virginia Tech shooter. In his National Magazine Award–winning “Paper Tigers,� he explores the intersection of Asian values and the American dream, and the inner torment of the child exposed to “tiger mother� parenting. And in his close reading of New York Magazine’s popular Sex Diaries, he was among the first critics to take seriously today’s Internet-mediated dating lives.


Yang catches these ugly trends early because he has felt at various times implicated in them, and he does not exempt himself from his radical honesty. His essays retain the thrill of discovery, the wary eye of the first explorer, and the rueful admission of the first exposed.]]> 215 Wesley Yang 0393241742 James 4 3.33 2018 The Souls of Yellow Folk
author: Wesley Yang
name: James
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/11/26
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]]> No Country for Old Men 12497 Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN 9780375706677

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones.

One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law–in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell–can contain.

As Moss tries to evade his pursuers–in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives–McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.
No Country for Old Men is a triumph.]]> 309 Cormac McCarthy James 4 4.15 2005 No Country for Old Men
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: James
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/11/21
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]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro James 4 4.14 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: James
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/11/12
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]]> On Trails: An Exploration 27276431 How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own?

Over the course of the next seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds, from the miniscule to the massive. He learned the tricks of master trail-builders, hunted down long-lost Cherokee trails, and traced the origins of our road networks and the Internet. In each chapter, Moor interweaves his adventures with findings from science, history, philosophy, and nature writing—combining the nomadic joys of Peter Matthiessen with the eclectic wisdom of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.

Throughout, Moor reveals how this single topic—the oft-overlooked trail—sheds new light on a wealth of age-old questions: How does order emerge out of chaos? How did animals first crawl forth from the seas and spread across continents? How has humanity’s relationship with nature and technology shaped world around us? And, ultimately, how does each of us pick a path through life?

Moor has the essayist’s gift for making new connections, the adventurer’s love for paths untaken, and the philosopher’s knack for asking big questions. With a breathtaking arc that spans from the dawn of animal life to the digital era, On Trails is a book that makes us see our world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew.]]> 352 Robert Moor 1476739218 James 4 3.95 2016 On Trails: An Exploration
author: Robert Moor
name: James
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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]]> Mediated 304001 Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. He teaches at the Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University.
"Reading Thomas de Zengotita's Mediated is like spending time with a wild, wired friend-the kind who keeps you up late and lures you outside of your comfort zone with a speed rap full of brilliant notions."- O magazine
"A fine roar of a lecture about how the American mind is shaped by (too much) media...."- Washington Post
"Deceptively colloquial, intellectually dense...This provocative, extreme and compelling work is a must-read for philosophers of every stripe."- Publishers Weekly]]> 304 Thomas de Zengotita 1596910321 James 4 3.80 2004 Mediated
author: Thomas de Zengotita
name: James
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/10/26
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari James 5 4.33 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: James
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/10/24
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]]> The Buried Giant 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X James 3 3.56 2015 The Buried Giant
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: James
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/10/11
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]]> Convenience Store Woman 38357895
A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata James 4 3.70 2016 Convenience Store Woman
author: Sayaka Murata
name: James
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/09/22
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]]> Never Let Me Go 6334 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 James 4 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: James
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/09/13
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]]> Everything I Never Told You 18693763
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.

Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.

Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.]]> 297 Celeste Ng 159420571X James 4 3.81 2014 Everything I Never Told You
author: Celeste Ng
name: James
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/09/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 James 5 3.80 2014 Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: James
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/08/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)]]> 19161852
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.]]> 468 N.K. Jemisin James 5 4.29 2015 The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: James
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/08/20
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]]> Fahrenheit 451 4381 158 Ray Bradbury 0307347974 James 4 3.96 1953 Fahrenheit 451
author: Ray Bradbury
name: James
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1953
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/08/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)]]> 13538873
Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is.

A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out� obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.

He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers� behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward.]]> 288 Robin Sloan 0374214913 James 3 3.71 2012 Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
author: Robin Sloan
name: James
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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date added: 2018/08/03
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]]> The Illustrated Man 24830 The Illustrated Man has remained in print since being published in 1951 is fair testimony to the universal appeal of Ray Bradbury's work. Only his second collection (the first was Dark Carnival, later reworked into The October Country), it is a marvelous, if mostly dark, quilt of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. In an ingenious framework to open and close the book, Bradbury presents himself as a nameless narrator who meets the Illustrated Man--a wanderer whose entire body is a living canvas of exotic tattoos. What's even more remarkable, and increasingly disturbing, is that the illustrations are themselves magically alive, and each proceeds to unfold its own story, such as "The Veldt," wherein rowdy children take a game of virtual reality way over the edge. Or "Kaleidoscope," a heartbreaking portrait of stranded astronauts about to reenter our atmosphere--without the benefit of a spaceship. Or "Zero Hour," in which invading aliens have discovered a most logical ally--our own children. Even though most were written in the 1940s and 1950s, these 18 classic stories will be just as chillingly effective 50 years from now. --Stanley Wiater

Contents:

· Prologue: The Illustrated Man · ss *
· The Veldt [“The World the Children Made”] · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 23 �50
· Kaleidoscope · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct �49
· The Other Foot · ss New Story Magazine Mar �51
· The Highway [as by Leonard Spalding] · ss Copy Spr �50
· The Man · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb �49
· The Long Rain [“Death-by-Rain”] · ss Planet Stories Sum �50
· The Rocket Man · ss Maclean’s Mar 1 �51
· The Fire Balloons [“‘In This Sign...’”] · ss Imagination Apr �51
· The Last Night of the World · ss Esquire Feb �51
· The Exiles [“The Mad Wizards of Mars”] · ss Maclean’s Sep 15 �49; F&SF Win �50
· No Particular Night or Morning · ss *
· The Fox and the Forest [“To the Future”] · ss Colliers May 13 �50
· The Visitor · ss Startling Stories Nov �48
· The Concrete Mixer · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr �49
· Marionettes, Inc. [Marionettes, Inc.] · ss Startling Stories Mar �49
· The City [“Purpose”] · ss Startling Stories Jul �50
· Zero Hour · ss Planet Stories Fll �47
· The Rocket [“Outcast of the Stars”] · ss Super Science Stories Mar �50
· Epilogue · aw *]]> 186 Ray Bradbury 000712774X James 4 4.14 1951 The Illustrated Man
author: Ray Bradbury
name: James
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1951
rating: 4
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]]> Refuting the External World 23263703
This isn't the first work that tackles this subject. But others have left it at “we can’t really know whether there’s anything beyond our experience�, while I go all the way and say that we can know � and in this book I’ll show you exactly how and why this idea of an objective, physical universe of time and space beyond our perceptions is nothing but a figment of our imagination.

But it’s a book unlike all others on the contemporary non-dual awakening scene. You won’t find any ‘pointers� in it. What you’ll find is stone cold logic hacking away at the very foundation of existence itself. And in its wake; when the dust finally settles; you’ll recognize that, not only were the words of the sages true all along, but they've gone from being a remote possibility to being the light and guiding principle of your life. What words?

"Consciousness is all."]]> 43 Göran Backlund James 5 4.44 2014 Refuting the External World
author: Göran Backlund
name: James
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/08/02
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]]> Legoland 29478799 Many of Legoland's fifteen stories begin with Woodward's sharp and unflinching eye alighting upon an apparently everyday detail or situation, but then a sudden twist takes them to an unsettling place where life's normal rules no longer apply.

Whether he's writing about domestic subjects - such as in 'The Unloved', when a woman in a dysfunctional marriage finally leaves home after decades of misery; or tackling large issues on a global stage - the tyranny of dictators in 'The Fall of Mr and Mrs Nicholson'; or the invasion of an unnamed country in 'The Flag', each story is full of Woodward's blacker-than-black humour, fearless surrealism, and gift for phrase-making.

The collection also includes Woodward's brilliant story 'The Family Whistle', shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, in which a woman's husband returns home from war, only to discover his wife thinks he's been back for years because another man has already claimed his place.

Legoland celebrates Woodward's gift for clarity, wit and surprise: his lithe prose and willingness to ignore convention carrying us from comedy to tragedy and back again, sometimes in a single story; it confirms him as one of the most gifted and original writers of our time.

]]> 320 Gerard Woodward 144728867X James 4 3.66 Legoland
author: Gerard Woodward
name: James
average rating: 3.66
book published:
rating: 4
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]]> The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 James 5 3.99 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: James
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2017/11/15
date added: 2017/11/15
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]]> Chinese Playground: A Memoir 231088 277 Bill Lee 0967002303 James 4 4.08 1999 Chinese Playground: A Memoir
author: Bill Lee
name: James
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2017/10/27
date added: 2017/10/27
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Great account of the dark underbelly of Chinese gangs in SF. Something that is invisible to most transplants these days.
]]> <![CDATA[Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)]]> 8855321
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.]]> 592 James S.A. Corey 1841499889 James 4 4.30 2011 Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)
author: James S.A. Corey
name: James
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2017/10/25
date added: 2017/10/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Emperor's Soul (The Cosmere)]]> 13578175 Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection.

A heretic thief is the empire’s only hope in this fascinating tale that inhabits the same world as the popular novel, Elantris.

Shai is a Forger, a foreigner who can flawlessly copy and re-create any item by rewriting its history with skillful magic. Condemned to death after trying to steal the emperor’s scepter, she is given one opportunity to save herself. Though her skill as a Forger is considered an abomination by her captors, Shai will attempt to create a new soul for the emperor, who is almost dead.

Probing deeply into his life, she discovers Emperor Ashravan’s truest nature—and the opportunity to exploit it. Her only possible ally is one who is truly loyal to the emperor, but councilor Gaotona must overcome his prejudices to understand that Shai’s forgery is as much artistry as it is deception.

Brimming with magic and political intrigue, this deftly woven fantasy delves into the essence of a living spirit.]]> 192 Brandon Sanderson 1616960922 James 5 4.38 2012 The Emperor's Soul (The Cosmere)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: James
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/24
date added: 2017/09/24
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]]> <![CDATA[American Gods (American Gods, #1)]]> 4407
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...

This is the author's preferred text, never before published in the UK, and is about 12,000 words longer than the previous UK edition.

]]> 635 Neil Gaiman James 5 4.10 2001 American Gods (American Gods, #1)
author: Neil Gaiman
name: James
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/18
date added: 2017/09/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Creating Short Fiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction]]> 263357 Creating Short Fiction is a popular and widely trusted guide to writing short stories of originality, durability, and quality. Celebrated short-story author and writing instructor Knight also includes many examples and exercises that have been effective in classrooms and workshops everywhere.]]> 209 Damon Knight 0312150946 James 5 4.04 1981 Creating Short Fiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction
author: Damon Knight
name: James
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2017/08/21
date added: 2017/08/21
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A concise book about writing short stories. Focuses on very practical advice. I especially liked the section on how to diagnose issues in a story, and how to go about fixing them.
]]> Description 139603
Monica Wood helps you squeeze the greatest flavor from the language. She segments description like an orange, separating its slices to let you sample each one.

You'll learn about:


Detail, and how you can use description to awaken the reader's senses of touch, taste, hearing, smell and sight
Plot, from advancing story using only relevant description--and how to edit out sluggish, reader-stopping writing
Style, and the use of description to create a mood that matches your story's content
Point of view, how selecting omniscient, first person or third person limited narrative influences the descriptive freedom you have
Creating original word depictions of people, animals, places, weather and movement
Wood teaches by example, developing stories with characters in various situations, to show you how you can apply description techniques.You'll also see samples of work by such noted writers as Mark Helprin, Anne Tyler and Raymond Carver. And you'll find the dos and don'ts, lists and descriptive alternatives to common verbs and nouns, and tips for editing your work.]]> 171 Monica Wood 0898799082 James 4 4.04 1995 Description
author: Monica Wood
name: James
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2017/08/11
date added: 2017/08/11
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]]> The Algebraist 12009 434 Iain M. Banks 1597800449 James 3
Usually, Banks does a good job creating strong character arcs coupled with a dizzyingly good world. But I felt the characters were flat.

The ending did not have the payoff I was expecting. The answer to the riddle of the algebra was Zero. It essentially boiled down to nothing. Also, the buildup to an extraordinary space battle ended in nothing. ]]> 4.04 2004 The Algebraist
author: Iain M. Banks
name: James
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2017/08/01
date added: 2017/08/01
shelves:
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Not a strong Banks book, but contains some interesting ideas, like the Dwellers who are an anarchist society residing in gas giants.

Usually, Banks does a good job creating strong character arcs coupled with a dizzyingly good world. But I felt the characters were flat.

The ending did not have the payoff I was expecting. The answer to the riddle of the algebra was Zero. It essentially boiled down to nothing. Also, the buildup to an extraordinary space battle ended in nothing.
]]> Death: A Philosophy Course 11918814
This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 50 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Spring 2007.]]> Shelly Kagan James 5 4.08 1997 Death: A Philosophy Course
author: Shelly Kagan
name: James
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2017/07/07
date added: 2017/07/06
shelves:
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This was my first serious philosophy book and I was quite pleased. Shelly forced me to think in ways I hadn't before, and was rigorous without being overly pedantic. With Death, he strikes a good balance. This also made me question my belief that immortality is always good. Any book that can make me question deep beliefs is a good book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Big Front Yard and Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak #2)]]> 26548060 Tales of the unknown in which a fix-it man crosses into another dimension—and more

Hiram Taine is a handyman who can fix anything. When he isn’t fiddling with his tools, he is roaming through the woods with his dog, Towser, as he has done for as long as he can remember. He likes things that he can understand. But when a new ceiling appears in his basement—a ceiling that appears to have the ability to repair television sets so they’re better than before—he knows he has come up against a mystery that no man can solve.

Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, “The Big Front Yard� is a powerful story about what happens when an ordinary man finds reality coming apart around him. Along with the other stories in this collection, it is some of the most lyrical science fiction ever published.

Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this ebook.]]> 332 Clifford D. Simak 1504012836 James 5 4.24 2015 The Big Front Yard and Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak #2)
author: Clifford D. Simak
name: James
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2017/06/26
date added: 2017/06/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]]> 29890212 277 J.D. Vance James 5 4.10 2016 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
author: J.D. Vance
name: James
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2017/06/02
date added: 2017/06/02
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]]> Bird by Bird 12543 A newer edition of this title can be found here.

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

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

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

]]> 238 Anne Lamott James 4 4.24 1994 Bird by Bird
author: Anne Lamott
name: James
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2017/05/17
date added: 2017/05/22
shelves:
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]]> 1984 5470 328 George Orwell James 4 4.15 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: James
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2017/05/22
date added: 2017/05/22
shelves:
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]]> After Dark 17803 In After Dark—a gripping novel of late night encounters—Murakami’s trademark humor and psychological insight are distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery.

Nineteen-year-old Mari is waiting out the night in an anonymous Denny’s when she meets a young man who insists he knows her older sister, thus setting her on an odyssey through the sleeping city. In the space of a single night, the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents—models, prostitutes, mobsters, and musicians—collide in a world suspended between fantasy and reality. Utterly enchanting and infused with surrealism, After Dark is a thrilling account of the magical hours separating midnight from dawn.]]> 191 Haruki Murakami 0307265838 James 4 3.75 2004 After Dark
author: Haruki Murakami
name: James
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X James 5 4.15 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: James
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2017/04/23
date added: 2017/04/23
shelves:
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Atwood's first person narrative is rich and evocative, and I felt the pacing was just right.
]]> The Martian Chronicles 76778
The Martian Chronicles tells the story of humanity’s repeated attempts to colonize the red planet. The first men were few. Most succumbed to a disease they called the Great Loneliness when they saw their home planet dwindle to the size of a fist. They felt they had never been born. Those few that survived found no welcome on Mars. The shape-changing Martians thought they were native lunatics and duly locked them up.

But more rockets arrived from Earth, and more, piercing the hallucinations projected by the Martians. People brought their old prejudices with them � and their desires and fantasies, tainted dreams. These were soon inhabited by the strange native beings, with their caged flowers and birds of flame.

Contents:
Rocket Summer
Ylla
The Summer Night
The Earth Men
The Taxpayer
The Third Expedition
-And the Moon Be Still As Bright
The Settlers
The Green Morning
The Locusts
Night Meeting
The Shore
Interim
The Musicians
Way in the Middle of the Air
The Naming of Names
Usher II
The Old Ones
The Martian
The Luggage Store
The Off Season
The Watchers
The Silent Towns
The Long Years
There Will Come Soft Rains
The Million Year Picnic]]> 182 Ray Bradbury 0553278223 James 4
I liked the first few stories the best. I felt that the last third of the book was the weakest. ]]> 4.16 1950 The Martian Chronicles
author: Ray Bradbury
name: James
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1950
rating: 4
read at: 2017/04/05
date added: 2017/04/05
shelves:
review:
As usual, Bradbury does a wonderful job using spare language to evoke a rich world populated by interesting and sometimes neurotic people. This is a collection of short stories revolving around the colonization of mars, but not like what you'd expect. He used mars as a device to delve into human desires and faults.

I liked the first few stories the best. I felt that the last third of the book was the weakest.
]]> <![CDATA[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]> 7082 244 Philip K. Dick James 5 4.08 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
author: Philip K. Dick
name: James
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/16
date added: 2017/03/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Conflict and Suspense (Elements of Fiction Writing)]]> 11301101 Conflict pulls readers into a story and suspense carries them along until its conclusion. Expert author of over 15 thrillers, James Scott Bell offers proven techniques that help writers craft fiction that their readers won?t be able to put down. Learn how to believably weave conflict and suspense into a story, how to pace your story and keep the pressure on throughout, and how to bring it all to a gripping conclusion.

]]> 273 James Scott Bell 159963273X James 5
I really enjoyed Bell's "questions to ask" about your scene at the end of each section. If you collate all these together, it's a good list of tools to heighten the conflict and interest in your scenes.]]> 4.25 2011 Conflict and Suspense (Elements of Fiction Writing)
author: James Scott Bell
name: James
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/23
date added: 2017/03/23
shelves:
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This was another great book in the Elements on Fiction Writing series. It has considerable breadth, and could arguably stand alone as a good primer on fiction writing. This is because conflict and suspense are at the core of good fiction: you'll fail if your story doesn't make the reader want to turn the page.

I really enjoyed Bell's "questions to ask" about your scene at the end of each section. If you collate all these together, it's a good list of tools to heighten the conflict and interest in your scenes.
]]> <![CDATA[Scene & Structure (Elements of Fiction Writing)]]> 190209
And the reader is hooked. But whether or not readers will stay on for the entire wild ride will depend on how well the writer structures the story, scene by scene.

This book is your game plan for success. Using dozens of examples from his own work - including "Dropshot," "Tiebreaker" and other popular novels - Jack M. Bickham will guide you in building a sturdy framework for your novel, whatever its form or length. You'll learn how to:
-"worry" your readers into following your story to the end
-prolong your main character's struggle while moving the story ahead
-juggle cause and effect to serve your story action
As you work on crafting compelling scenes that move the reader, moment by moment, toward the story's resolution, you'll see why believable fiction must make more sense than real life.
Every scene should end in disastersome scenes should be condensed, and others built big.
Whatever your story, this book can help you arrive at a happy ending in the company of satisfied readers.]]> 176 Jack M. Bickham 0898799066 James 5
Other books tend to take a top down approach to crafting a novel. This book takes a bottoms up approach, which really helped to fill in some of my knowledge gaps. Bickham talks about how to construct a beat within a scene, and ultimately how to create scenes that have good forward momentum. The foundation of stimulus-internalization-reaction and scene-sequel was enlightening to me, as it is the structure that most readers subconsciously come to expect. With this, I feel like I now have a solid canvas to paint on, whereas before, I was writing things mostly based on feeling, which was inconsistent.

The examples he gives are rather dry, but that's okay. The important part is learning about the structure.]]> 4.09 1993 Scene & Structure (Elements of Fiction Writing)
author: Jack M. Bickham
name: James
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/09
date added: 2017/03/09
shelves:
review:
I found this book quite useful as a novice fiction writer.

Other books tend to take a top down approach to crafting a novel. This book takes a bottoms up approach, which really helped to fill in some of my knowledge gaps. Bickham talks about how to construct a beat within a scene, and ultimately how to create scenes that have good forward momentum. The foundation of stimulus-internalization-reaction and scene-sequel was enlightening to me, as it is the structure that most readers subconsciously come to expect. With this, I feel like I now have a solid canvas to paint on, whereas before, I was writing things mostly based on feeling, which was inconsistent.

The examples he gives are rather dry, but that's okay. The important part is learning about the structure.
]]> <![CDATA[Pandora's Star (Commonwealth Saga #1)]]> 45252 Second Chance, is dispatched to learn what has occurred and whether it represents a threat. In command is Wilson Kime, a five-time rejuvenated ex-NASA pilot whose glory days are centuries behind him.

Opposed to the mission are the Guardians of Selfhood, a cult that believes the human race is being manipulated by an alien entity they call the Starflyer. Bradley Johansson, leader of the Guardians, warns of sabotage, fearing the Starflyer means to use the starship's mission for its own ends.

Pursued by a Commonwealth special agent convinced the Guardians are crazy but dangerous, Johansson flees. But the danger is not averted. Aboard the Second Chance, Kime wonders if his crew has been infiltrated. Soon enough, he will have other worries. A thousand light-years away, something truly incredible is waiting: a deadly discovery whose unleashing will threaten to destroy the Commonwealth... and humanity itself. Could it be that Johansson was right?]]> 768 Peter F. Hamilton 0345461622 James 4
However, I felt that the main plot resolution with the Primes at the end was weak. Humans simply stopped them with EM interference, and there wasn't any try-fail cycles that led them to that. I haven't yet read Judas Unchained, so perhaps the resolution is better there. I felt like he could have done more to have a satisfying resolve in this first book.

In addition, there were numerous times where I felt the descriptions went overboard--sometime multiple pages would be dedicated to describing one small setting. I think he could have been more succinct while still capturing the essence of the world.]]> 4.23 2004 Pandora's Star (Commonwealth Saga #1)
author: Peter F. Hamilton
name: James
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2017/03/06
date added: 2017/03/06
shelves:
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Pandora's Star is a sweeping epic with a wealth of subplots and characters. Hamilton does a pretty good job of intertwining the various threads together, and the main characters are reasonably strong.

However, I felt that the main plot resolution with the Primes at the end was weak. Humans simply stopped them with EM interference, and there wasn't any try-fail cycles that led them to that. I haven't yet read Judas Unchained, so perhaps the resolution is better there. I felt like he could have done more to have a satisfying resolve in this first book.

In addition, there were numerous times where I felt the descriptions went overboard--sometime multiple pages would be dedicated to describing one small setting. I think he could have been more succinct while still capturing the essence of the world.
]]> Characters & Viewpoint 7963
This book is a set of tools: literary crowbars, chisels, mallets, pliers and tongs. Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your memory, your imagination and your soul.

Award-winning author Orson Scott Card explains in depth the techniques of inventing, developing and presenting characters, plus handling viewpoint in novels and short stories. With specific examples, he spells out your narrative options–the choices you'll make in creating fictional people so "real" that readers will feel they know them like members of their own families.

You'll learn how to:
-Draw the characters from a variety of sources, including a story's basic idea, real life–even a character's social circumstances.
-Make characters show who they are by the things they do and say, and by their individual "style".
-Develop characters readers will love–or love to hate.
-Distinguish among major characters, minor characters and walk-ons, and develop each one appropriately.
-Choose the most effective viewpoint to reveal the characters and move the storytelling.
-Decide how deeply you should explore your characters' thoughts, emotions and attitudes.]]> 182 Orson Scott Card 0898799279 James 5 4.03 1988 Characters & Viewpoint
author: Orson Scott Card
name: James
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/03
date added: 2017/03/03
shelves:
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Card does a great job of showing exactly what makes good characters in fiction, and the tools you can use to make them great. He provides a ton of example passages that illustrate these tools and aspects of fiction writing. I found it to be thorough and very applicable.
]]> <![CDATA[How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy]]> 31363
Here, science fiction great Orson Scott Card shares his expertise in these genres. You'll learn:

- What is and isn't science fiction and fantasy, and by whose standards -- and where your work fits in.
- How to build, populate, and dramatize a credible, inviting world your readers will want to explore.
- How to use the MICE quotient -- milieu, idea, character, event -- to structure a successful story.
- Where the markets are and how to reach them to get published.

The knowledge and skills you gain through this book will help you effectively lead your readers into the strangeness you create -- one tantalizing step at a time.]]> 144 Orson Scott Card 158297103X James 4 3.92 1990 How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy
author: Orson Scott Card
name: James
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2017/02/19
date added: 2017/02/19
shelves:
review:
A succinct book on the particulars of writing speculative fiction. Card keeps it straightforward, and there were a few tips that were new, at least to me. For example, good sf writers understand how space travel tech changes society. A society with FTL vs. slow going multi-generational ships can dramatically change how your story is told.
]]> When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 James 5 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: James
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/02/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You]]> 103761 "Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!"

Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft—everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style—as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays.

Zen in the Art of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.]]> 158 Ray Bradbury 0553296345 James 5 4.10 1973 Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You
author: Ray Bradbury
name: James
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1973
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/01/16
shelves:
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]]> The Man in the High Castle 216363
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.]]> 259 Philip K. Dick 0679740678 James 4 3.64 1962 The Man in the High Castle
author: Philip K. Dick
name: James
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/01/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories]]> 24885533
With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie. This mesmerizing collection features all of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary� (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware� (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves� (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species� (Nebula and Sturgeon award finalists), “All the Flavors� (Nebula award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King� (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie� (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).

A must-have for every science fiction and fantasy fan, this beautiful book is an anthology to savor.]]> 450 Ken Liu 1481442546 James 4 4.36 2016 The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
author: Ken Liu
name: James
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/01/08
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)]]> 70535
So great are the implications of this discovery that for the first time men are sent out deep into our solar system.

But long before their destination is reached, things begin to go horribly, inexplicably wrong...

One of the greatest-selling science fiction novels of our time, this classic book will grip you to the very end.]]> 297 Arthur C. Clarke James 4 4.17 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)
author: Arthur C. Clarke
name: James
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/01/02
shelves:
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]]> The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 11275
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]> 607 Haruki Murakami 0965341984 James 5 4.16 1994 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
author: Haruki Murakami
name: James
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2016/12/21
date added: 2016/12/21
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World]]> 10374 Lord Jim.

Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.]]> 400 Haruki Murakami James 5 4.14 1985 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
author: Haruki Murakami
name: James
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/11/22
shelves:
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]]> Excession (Culture, #5) 12013 Excession, the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section orders Diplomat Byr Gen-Hofoen to steal the soul of a long-dead starship captain. By accepting the mission, Byr irrevocably plunges himself into a conspiracy: one that could either lead the universe into an age of peace or to the brink of annihilation.]]> 500 Iain M. Banks 0553575376 James 2 4.20 1996 Excession (Culture, #5)
author: Iain M. Banks
name: James
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1996
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2016/08/28
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)]]> 25451264
Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death's End. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?]]> 604 Liu Cixin 0765377101 James 5 4.40 2010 Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)
author: Liu Cixin
name: James
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/07/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World]]> 25744928 One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.

In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.]]> 296 Cal Newport 1455586692 James 3 4.16 2016 Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
author: Cal Newport
name: James
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/05/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work]]> 15798078 〶
Research in psychology has revealed that our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities: We’re overconfident. We seek out information that supports us and downplay information that doesn’t. We get distracted by short-term emotions. When it comes to making choices, it seems, our brains are flawed instruments. Unfortunately, merely being aware of these shortcomings doesn’t fix the problem, any more than knowing that we are nearsighted helps us to see. The real question is: How can we do better?

In Decisive, the Heaths, based on an exhaustive study of the decision-making literature, introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these biases. Written in an engaging and compulsively readable style, Decisive takes readers on an unforgettable journey, from a rock star’s ingenious decision-making trick to a CEO’s disastrous acquisition, to a single question that can often resolve thorny personal decisions.

Along the way, we learn the answers to critical questions like these: How can we stop the cycle of agonizing over our decisions? How can we make group decisions without destructive politics? And how can we ensure that we don’t overlook precious opportunities to change our course?〶

Decisive is the Heath brothers� most powerful—and important—book yet, offering fresh strategies and practical tools enabling us to make better choices. Because the right decision, at the right moment, can make all the difference.]]> 336 Chip Heath 0307956393 James 4 3.94 2013 Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
author: Chip Heath
name: James
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/05/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation]]> 29893117
Transportation dominates our daily existence. Thousands, even millions, of miles are embedded in everything we do and touch. We live in a door-to-door universe that works so well most Americans are scarcely aware of it. The grand ballet in which we move ourselves and our stuff is equivalent to building the Great Pyramid, the Hoover Dam, and the Empire State Building all in a day. Every day. And yet, in the one highly visible part of the transportation world—the part we drive—we suffer grinding commutes, a violent death every fifteen minutes, a dire injury every twelve seconds, and crumbling infrastructure.

Now, the way we move ourselves and our stuff is on the brink of great change, as a new mobility revolution upends the car culture that, for better and worse, built modern America. This unfolding revolution will disrupt lives and global trade, transforming our commutes, our vehicles, our cities, our jobs, and every aspect of culture, commerce, and the environment. We are, quite literally, at a fork in the road, though whether it will lead us to Carmageddon or Carmaheaven has yet to be determined.

Using interviews, data and deep exploration of the hidden world of ports, traffic control centers, and the research labs defining our transportation future, acclaimed journalist Edward Humes breaks down the complex movements of humans, goods, and machines as never before, from increasingly car-less citizens to the distance UPS goes to deliver a leopard-printed phone case. Tracking one day in the life of his family in Southern California, Humes uses their commutes, traffic jams, grocery stops, and online shopping excursions as a springboard to explore the paradoxes and challenges inherent in our system. He ultimately makes clear that transportation is one of the few big things we can change—our personal choices do have a profound impact, and that fork in the road is coming up fast.

Door to Dooris a fascinating detective story, investigating the worldwide cast of supporting characters and technologies that have enabled us to move from here to there—past, present, and future.]]> 384 Edward Humes 0062372092 James 4 4.00 2016 Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation
author: Edward Humes
name: James
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2016/05/03
date added: 2016/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> A Short Guide to a Long Life 17571574 New York Times bestselling book of simple rules everyone should follow in order to live a long, healthy life, featuring illustrations throughout, from the author of The End of Illness.

In his international bestseller, The End of Illness, Dr. David B. Agus shared what he has learned from his work as a pioneering cancer doctor, revealing the innovative steps he takes to prolong the lives of not only cancer patients, but all those who want to enjoy a vigorous, lengthy life. Now Dr. Agus has turned his research into a practical and concise illustrated handbook for everyday living.
A Short Guide to a Long Life is divided into three sections (What to Do, What to Avoid, and Doctor's Orders) that provide the definitive answers to many common and not-so-common questions: Who should take a baby aspirin daily? Are flu shots safe? What constitutes "healthy" foods? Are airport scanners hazardous? Dr. Agus believes optimal health begins with our daily routines. His book will help you develop new patterns of personal health care, using inexpensive and widely available tools that are based on the latest and most reliable science.]]> 208 David B. Agus 1476730954 James 4 3.54 2014 A Short Guide to a Long Life
author: David B. Agus
name: James
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/01/07
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]]> <![CDATA[A Short History of Nearly Everything]]> 21 544 Bill Bryson 076790818X James 4 4.21 2003 A Short History of Nearly Everything
author: Bill Bryson
name: James
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/01/07
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review:

]]> Foundation (Foundation, #1) 29579 The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.]]> 244 Isaac Asimov 0553803719 James 3 4.18 1951 Foundation (Foundation, #1)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: James
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1951
rating: 3
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date added: 2016/01/07
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]]> The Black Cloud 1246118 200 Fred Hoyle 0899683444 James 5 3.90 1957 The Black Cloud
author: Fred Hoyle
name: James
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1957
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/01/01
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]]> The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty 23590710 Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers comes a tensely drawn, spellbinding literary thriller that gets to the heart of what defines us as human beings—the singular identity we create for ourselves in the world and the myriad alternative identities that lie just below the surface.

In Vendela Vida’s taut and mesmerizing novel of ideas, a woman travels to Casablanca, Morocco, on mysterious business. Almost immediately, while checking into her hotel, she is robbed, her passport and all identification stolen. The crime is investigated by the police, but the woman feels there is a strange complicity between the hotel staff and the authorities—she knows she’ll never see her possessions again.

Stripped of her identity, she feels both burdened by the crime and liberated by her sudden freedom to be anyone at all. Then, a chance encounter with a film crew provides an intriguing opportunity: A producer sizes her up and asks, would she be willing to be the body-double for a movie star filming in the city? And so begins a strange journey in which she’ll become a stand-in—both on-set and off—for a reclusive celebrity who can no longer circulate freely in society while gradually moving further away from the person she was when she arrived in Morocco.

Infused with vibrant, lush detail and enveloped in an intoxicating atmosphere—while barely pausing to catch its breath�The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty is a riveting, entrancing novel that explores freedom, power and the mutability of identity.]]> 224 Vendela Vida 144340974X James 4 3.44 2015 The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty
author: Vendela Vida
name: James
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/12/04
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]]> The New World 22663945 If you could send a message to the future what would it be?
Why do you deserve, not desire, to live forever?

Acclaimed author Chris Adrian (The Children’s Hospital, The Great Night) joins the award-winning creators of The Silent History � Eli Horowitz and Russell Quinn to create an innovative digital novel about memory, grief and love.

The New World is the story of a marriage. Dr. Jane Cotton is a pediatric her husband, Jim, is a humanist chaplain. They are about to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary when Jim suddenly collapses and dies. When Jane arrives at the hospital she is horrified to find that her husband’s head has been removed from his body. Only then does she discover that he has secretly enrolled with a shadowy cryogenics company called Polaris.

Furious and grieving, Jane fights to reclaim Jim from Polaris. Revived, in the future, Jim learns he must sacrifice every memory of Jane if he wants to stay alive in the new world. Separated by centuries, each of them is challenged to choose between love and fear, intimacy and solitude, life and grief, and each will find an answer to the challenge that is surprising, harrowing, and ultimately beautiful.]]> 224 Chris Adrian 1937894320 James 3 3.09 2014 The New World
author: Chris Adrian
name: James
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2015/11/28
date added: 2015/11/29
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The first half was great but I feel that they didn't really know how to complete the plotline in the second half.
]]> <![CDATA[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]]> 10569 (back cover)]]> 320 Stephen King 0743455967 James 5 4.33 2000 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
author: Stephen King
name: James
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/11/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Stories of Your Life and Others]]> 223380 ]]> 281 Ted Chiang 0330426648 James 5 4.28 2002 Stories of Your Life and Others
author: Ted Chiang
name: James
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/11/01
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Prefect (Prefect Dreyfus Emergency, #1)]]> 89195
A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case—until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder...]]> 410 Alastair Reynolds 0575077166 James 4 4.15 2007 The Prefect (Prefect Dreyfus Emergency, #1)
author: Alastair Reynolds
name: James
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/10/21
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]]> Pushing Ice 89186 Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. But when Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, inexplicably leaves its natural orbit and heads out of the solar system at high speed, Bella is ordered to shadow it for the few vital days before it falls forever out of reach.

In accepting this mission she sets her ship and her crew on a collision course with destiny—for Janus has many surprises in store, and not all of them are welcome...]]> 458 Alastair Reynolds 0441014011 James 4 4.06 2005 Pushing Ice
author: Alastair Reynolds
name: James
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/10/12
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]]> Snow Crash 830 Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous� you'll recognize it immediately.]]> 438 Neal Stephenson 0553380958 James 4 4.02 1992 Snow Crash
author: Neal Stephenson
name: James
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/10/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)]]> 23168817 512 Liu Cixin James 5 4.39 2008 The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
author: Liu Cixin
name: James
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/09/24
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin James 5 4.08 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: James
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/09/22
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review:

]]> House of Suns 1126719 512 Alastair Reynolds 0575099127 James 5 4.21 2008 House of Suns
author: Alastair Reynolds
name: James
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/07/12
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review:

]]> Glasshouse 17866
On the run from a ruthless pursuer and searching for a place to hide, he volunteers to participate in a unique experimental polity, the Glasshouse, constructed to simulate a pre-accelerated culture. Participants are assigned anonymized identities: It looks like the ideal hiding place for a posthuman on the run. But in this escape-proof environment, Robin will undergo an even more radical change, placing him at the mercy of the experimenters—and at the mercy of his own unbalanced psyche...]]> 335 Charles Stross 0441014038 James 4 3.87 2006 Glasshouse
author: Charles Stross
name: James
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/07/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Redemption Ark (Revelation Space, #2)]]> 89190 694 Alastair Reynolds 044101173X James 4 4.15 2002 Redemption Ark (Revelation Space, #2)
author: Alastair Reynolds
name: James
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/06/21
shelves:
review:

]]>