Chris's bookshelf: read en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:46:47 -0700 60 Chris's bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Don Camillo and Peppone 29434442 226 Giovannino Guareschi 1900064278 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.67 1948 Don Camillo and Peppone
author: Giovannino Guareschi
name: Chris
average rating: 4.67
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires]]> 200124367 A captivating history of civilization that reveals the central role of the horse in culture, commerce, and conquest.


No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating the horse allowed early humans to settle the vast Eurasian steppe; later, their horses enabled new forms of warfare, encouraged long-distance trade routes, and ended up acquiring deep cultural and religious significance.


Over time, horses came to power mighty empires in Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, and, later, Russia. Genghis Khan and the thirteenth-century Mongols offer the most famous example, but from ancient Assyria and Persia, to the seventeenth-century Mughals, to the high noon of colonialism in the early twentieth century, horse breeding was indispensable to conquest and statecraft.


Scholar of Asian history David Chaffetz tells the story of how the horse made rulers, raiders, and traders interchangeable, providing a novel explanation for the turbulent history of the “Silk Road,� which might be better called the Horse Road. Drawing on recent research in fields including genetics and forensic archeology, Chaffetz presents a lively history of the great horse empires that shaped civilization.]]> 441 David Chaffetz 1324051477 Chris 0 4.11 Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires
author: David Chaffetz
name: Chris
average rating: 4.11
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rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk]]> 19426528 The twentieth anniversary edition of the “utterly and shamelessly sensational� history of punk music—featuring new photos and an afterword by the authors (Newsday). A contemporary classic, Please Kill Me is the definitive oral history of the most nihilistic of all pop movements. Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Richard Hell, the Ramones, and scores of other punk figures lend their voices to this decisive account of that explosive era. Editors Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain—two of punk music’s greatest chroniclers—follow the movement from its roots in the 1960s underground of New York City, to its arrival in the UK with bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash, to its unlikely emergence as a global cultural force whose impact is still felt today.]]> 725 Legs McNeil 0802192769 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.25 1996 Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
author: Legs McNeil
name: Chris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants]]> 59959706
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings - asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass - offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.]]> 387 Robin Wall Kimmerer Chris 0 currently-reading 4.50 2013 Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Chris
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> This Is Happiness 49941485 A profound and enchanting new novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing.

You don't see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only: something has changed.

The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now--just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed.

This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity--a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries.

Niall Williams' latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs. Luminous and otherworldly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us.]]> 392 Niall Williams 1635574218 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.37 2019 This Is Happiness
author: Niall Williams
name: Chris
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/27
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]]> Last Bus to Wisdom 25015035 In the spirit of The Bartender’s Tale, a lively and poignant coming-of-age story about a boy and his great-uncle on a cross-country odyssey.

Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Doig’s beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an eleven-year-old’s imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for “female trouble� in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin. There Donal is in for a rude Aunt Kate–bossy, opinionated, argumentative, and tyrannical—is nothing like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured husband, Herman the German (as Donal discovers him to be), and Donal can’t seem to get on her good side either. After one contretemps too many, Kate decides to pack him back to the authorities in Montana on the next Greyhound.

But to Donal’s surprise, he’s not traveling Herman the German has decided to fly the coop with him. In the immortal American tradition, the pair light out for the territory together, meeting a classic Doigian ensemble of characters and having rollicking misadventures along the way. Charming, wise, and slyly funny, Last Bus to Wisdom is another treasure of a novel from the best storyteller of the West.]]> 464 Ivan Doig 1101634537 Chris 0 4.28 2015 Last Bus to Wisdom
author: Ivan Doig
name: Chris
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2024/10/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between]]> 30285063 From the author of In the Country of Men, a Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, comes a beautifully written, uplifting memoir of his journey home to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance.

When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime’s most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. “Hope,� as he writes, “is cunning and persistent.�

Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells are empty and there is no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returns with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he’d go back to again. The Return is the story of what he found there. It is at once an exquisite meditation on history, politics, and art, a brilliant portrait of a nation and a people on the cusp of change, and a disquieting depiction of the brutal legacy of absolute power. Above all, it is a universal tale of loss and love and of one family’s life. Hisham Matar asks the harrowing question: How does one go on living in the face of a loved one’s uncertain fate?

Advance praise for The Return

“What a brilliant book. Hisham Matar has the quality all historians—of the world and the self—most need: He knows how to stand back and let the past speak. In chronicling his quest for his father, his manner is fastidious, even detached, but his anger is raw and unreconciled; through his narrative art he bodies out the shape of loss and gives a universality to his very particular experience of desolation. The Return reads as easily as a thriller, but is a story that will stick: A person is lost, but gravity and resonance remain.�—Hilary Mantel

�The Return is a riveting book about love and hope, but it is also a moving meditation on grief and loss. It draws a memorable portrait of a family in exile and manages also to explore the politics of Libya with subtlety and steely intelligence. It is a quest for the truth in a dark time, constructed with a novelist's skill, written in tones that are both precise and passionate. It is likely to become a classic.�—Colm Tóibín

“A triumph of art over tyranny, structurally thrilling, intensely moving, The Return is a treasure for the ages.�—Peter Carey

�The Return is tremendously powerful. Although it filled me with rage again and again, I never lost sight of Matar’s beautiful intelligence as he tried to get to the heart of the mystery. I am so very grateful he has written this book.�—Nadeem Aslam


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 238 Hisham Matar 0812994833 Chris 0 4.21 2016 The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
author: Hisham Matar
name: Chris
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Eventide (Plainsong series Book 2)]]> 6429101 NATIONAL BESTSELLER� The award-winning, bestselling author of Plainsong returns to the high-plains town of Holt, Colorado, with a novel thatunveils the immemorial truths about human their fragility and resilience, their selfishness and goodness, and their ability to find family in one another. � "Storytelling at its best.� —Entertainment WeeklyThe aging McPheron brothers are learning to live without Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they took in and who has now left their ranch to start college. A lonely young boy stoically cares for his grandfather while a disabled couple tries to protect their a violent relative. As these lives unfold and intersect, Eventide reveals Kent Haruf as a novelist of masterful authority.“Stunning.... The dry, cold air of Colorado's high plains seems to intensify the light Kent Haruf shines on every character in his masterful novel.... A book of hope, hope as plain and hard-won as Haruf's keenly styled prose.� —O, The Oprah Magazine]]> 320 Kent Haruf Chris 0 4.34 2004 Eventide (Plainsong series Book 2)
author: Kent Haruf
name: Chris
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/08
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]]> Plainsong (Plainsong, #1) 6336901 320 Kent Haruf Chris 0 4.20 1999 Plainsong (Plainsong, #1)
author: Kent Haruf
name: Chris
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
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]]> Foster 61206869 An international bestseller and one of The Times' "Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century," Claire Keegan's piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household--where everything is so well tended to--and this summer must soon come to an end.

Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan's great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802160158 Chris 0 4.39 2010 Foster
author: Claire Keegan
name: Chris
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/29
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]]> Small Things Like These 59016923 "A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." --Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers

Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 70 Claire Keegan 0802158757 Chris 0 4.22 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Chris
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Sea Runners 19912162 In 1853, in the farthest outpost of the Czar’s empire, four Scandinavian indentured servants—seven-year men no better off than slaves—resolve to escape from Russian Alaska. They steal an Indian canoe and point it south toward Astoria, in Oregon, twelve hundred miles away.This novel of audacity is based on a historical incident discovered by the author, and transformed by his imagination into a sustained sweep of adventure. The four sea runners must weather the worst the ill-named Pacific can throw at them, and must weather their own fierce squalls, too, as day upon day, guided as much by instinct and determination as by map, they paddle through the magnificent maze of the Northwest Coast toward the mouth of the Columbia River.]]> 290 Ivan Doig 1476745161 Chris 0 4.16 1981 The Sea Runners
author: Ivan Doig
name: Chris
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Several Short Sentences About Writing]]> 18857379 226 Verlyn Klinkenborg Chris 0 4.08 2012 Several Short Sentences About Writing
author: Verlyn Klinkenborg
name: Chris
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/23
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]]> Orwell's Roses 58451566 Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionFinalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography“An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.� —Margaret Atwood “A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker.� —Claire Messud, Harper's“Nobody who reads it will ever think of Nineteen Eighty-Four in quite the same way.� —Vogue A lush exploration of politics, roses, and pleasure, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded by his passion for the natural world “In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.� So be-gins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a reflection on George Orwell’s passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and on the intertwined politics of nature and power. Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the roses he reportedly planted in 1936, Solnit’s account of this overlooked aspect of Orwell’s life journeys through his writing and his actions—from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left) to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism. Through Solnit’s celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers are drawn onward from Orwell‘s own work as a writer and gardener to encounter photographer Tina Modotti’s roses and her politics, agriculture and illusion in the USSR of his time with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell’s slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid’s examination of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market. The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes Solnit’s portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as offering a meditation on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.]]> 320 Rebecca Solnit 0593083385 Chris 0 4.16 2021 Orwell's Roses
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Chris
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave]]> 8532187 With grit, poetry, and humor, Peter Heller, acclaimed author of The River and The Whale Warriors recounts his remarkable journey of discovery—of surfing, an entirely new challenge; of the ocean’s beauty and power; of the strange surf subculture; of love; and, most of all, of how to seek adventure while crafting a meaningful life.Author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Dog Stars Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Literature Having resolved to master a big-hollow wave—that is, to go from kook (surfese for beginner) to shredder—in a single year, Heller travels from Southern California down the coast of Mexico in the company of his girlfriend and the eccentric surfers they meet. Exuberant and fearless, Heller explores the technique and science of surfing the secrets of its culture, and the environmental ravages to the stunning coastline he visits. As Heller plumbs the working of his own heart and finds joy in both love and surfing, he affords readers vivid insight into this fascinating world, with all of its perils and pleasures, its absurdity and wonder. Exhilarating, entertaining, and moving, Kook is a love story between a man and his surfboard, a man and his girlfriend, a not-so-old man and the sea.]]> 338 Peter Heller 1439171815 Chris 0 3.81 2010 Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave
author: Peter Heller
name: Chris
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2019/11/24
date added: 2024/09/13
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]]> How Asia Works 48549206 400 Joe Studwell 0802193471 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.40 2013 How Asia Works
author: Joe Studwell
name: Chris
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Horse 201562253 Award-winning author Willy Vlautin explores loneliness, art, regret, and hard-won empathy in this poignant novel—his most personal to date—that captures the life of a journeyman musician unable to escape the tragedies of his past.

Al Ward lives on an isolated mining claim in the high desert of central Nevada fifty miles from the nearest town. A grizzled man in his sixties, he survives on canned soup, instant coffee, and memories of his ex-wife, friends and family he’s lost, and his life as a touring musician. Hampered by insomnia, bouts of anxiety, and a chronic lethargy that keeps him from moving back to town, Al finds himself teetering on the edge of madness and running out of reasons to go on—until a horse arrives on his nameless, blind, and utterly helpless.

Al hopes the horse will vanish as mysteriously as he appeared. Yet the animal remains, leaving him in a conundrum. Is the animal real, or a phantom conjured from imagination? As Al contemplates the horse’s existence—and what, if anything, he can do—his thoughts are interspersed with memories, from the moment his mother’s part-time boyfriend gifts him a 1959 butterscotch blonde Telecaster, to the day his travels begin. He joins various bands—all who perform his songs once they discover his talent–playing casinos, truck stops, clubs, and bars. He falls in love, and finds pockets of companionship and minor success along the way. Never close to stardom or financial success, he continues as a journeyman for decades until alcoholism and a heartbreaking tragedy lead him to the solitude of the barren Nevada desert.

A poignant meditation on addiction, heartbreak, and the reality of life on the road in smalltime bands, The Horse is a beautiful, haunting tale from an author working at the height of his powers.]]> 204 Willy Vlautin 0063346605 Chris 0 4.22 2024 The Horse
author: Willy Vlautin
name: Chris
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/04
date added: 2024/09/04
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]]> Burn 202233753 From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence

Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania—a mania that has simultaneously spread across other states—Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worst-case scenario, folks in the capital.

But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find: a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road. Trying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, they set their sights on finding their way home, dragging a wagon across bumpy dirt roads, scavenging from boats left in lakes, and dodging armed men—secessionists or U.S. military, they cannot tell—as they seek a path to safety. Then, a startling discovery drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape.

Drenched in the beauty of the natural world and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Burn is both a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.]]> 304 Peter Heller 0593801636 Chris 0 3.93 2024 Burn
author: Peter Heller
name: Chris
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/27
date added: 2024/08/27
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]]> You Are Here 201205983 Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way . . .

Michael is coming undone. Adrift after his wife's departure, he has begun taking himself on long, solitary walks across the English countryside. Becoming ever more reclusive, he’ll do anything to avoid his empty house.

Marnie, on the other hand, is stuck. Hiding alone in her London flat, she avoids old friends and any reminders of her rotten, selfish ex-husband. Curled up with a good book, she’s battling the long afternoons of a life that feels like it’s passing her by.

When a persistent mutual friend and some very unpredictable weather conspire to toss Michael and Marnie together on the most epic of ten-day hikes, neither of them can think of anything worse. Until, of course, they discover exactly what they’ve been looking for.

Michael and Marnie are on the precipice of a bright future . . . if they can survive the journey.]]> 355 David Nicholls 0063394073 Chris 0 4.13 2024 You Are Here
author: David Nicholls
name: Chris
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language]]> 11980210
The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind

In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution.

The Language Instinctreceived the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language sinceThe Language Instinctwas first published.]]> 546 Steven Pinker 0062032526 Chris 0 4.08 1994 The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
author: Steven Pinker
name: Chris
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> You Dreamed of Empires 127463549 From a visionary Mexican author, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan.

One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan � today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.

Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma � who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods � the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire.

You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.]]> 240 Álvaro Enrigue Chris 0 3.82 2022 You Dreamed of Empires
author: Álvaro Enrigue
name: Chris
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Proper Study Of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays]]> 19186592 The Proper Study Of Mankind selects some of the best of his essays. The full (and enormous) range of his work is represented here, from the exposition of his most distinctive doctrine - pluralism - to studies of Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Churchill and Roosevelt. In these pages he encapsulates the principal movements that characterise the modern age: romanticism, historicism, Fascism, relativism, irrationalism and nationalism. His ideas are always tied to the people who conceived them, so that abstractions are brought alive. His insights both illuminate the past and offer a key to the burning issues of the today.]]> 705 Henry Hardy Chris 0 currently-reading 4.36 1997 The Proper Study Of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays
author: Henry Hardy
name: Chris
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Razor's Edge 10478202 262 W. Somerset Maugham Chris 0 4.30 1944 The Razor's Edge
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Chris
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1944
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Where I Was From: A Memoir (Vintage International)]]> 13035190 Fromthe bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical In this "arresting amalgam of memoir and historical timeline� (The Baltimore Sun), Didion—a native Californian—reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history, and ours.Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to California'sethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and this book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.]]> 199 Joan Didion Chris 0 4.13 2003 Where I Was From: A Memoir (Vintage International)
author: Joan Didion
name: Chris
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed]]> 37837773
In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not—and cannot—be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against "development theory" and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a "high-modernist ideology" that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.]]> 462 James C. Scott 0300128789 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.17 1998 Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
author: James C. Scott
name: Chris
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays]]> 36315211 Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, forty years after its first publication, the essential portrait of America� particularly California—in the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.]]> 256 Joan Didion Chris 0 4.18 1968 Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays
author: Joan Didion
name: Chris
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/10
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]]> Housekeeping 55071104 A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother.

The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere."

Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.]]> 349 Marilynne Robinson Chris 0 3.82 1980 Housekeeping
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Chris
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> Table for Two 195474002 From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories set in New York and Los Angeles. The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood� describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age. Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next. Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting historical fiction.]]> 452 Amor Towles 0593296389 Chris 0 4.36 2024 Table for Two
author: Amor Towles
name: Chris
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West]]> 8525468 Lasso the Wind. . . . The writing is simple and evocative." --The Economist]]> 290 Timothy Egan Chris 0 4.37 1998 Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West
author: Timothy Egan
name: Chris
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/19
date added: 2024/05/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization]]> 60052650 For readers of Steven Strogatz's Infinite Powers and The Joy of x comes this illuminating exploration of the ways in which math--and the people who have mastered its inherent power through the ages--has shaped our world.

In this captivating, sweeping history, Michael Brooks makes clear that mathematics was one of the foundational innovations that catapulted humanity from a nomadic existence to civilization, and that it has been instrumental in every subsequent great leap of humankind--from charting the movements of celestial bodies, to navigating the globe, to tracking the dissemination of viruses. And the trailblazing mathematicians who devoted their lives to taming numbers come to life in Brooks's telling. Here are ancient Egyptian priests, Babylonian tax officials, the Apollo astronauts, the hobbyist who cracked a mapmaking puzzle that had stumped both NASA and U.S. Geological Survey, and the MIT professor who invented the infrastructure of the online world. Their stories clearly demonstrate that the invention of mathematics is every bit as important to the human species as the discovery of fire. First page to last, The Art of More brings mathematics back into the heart of what it means to be human.]]> 326 Michael Brooks 1524749001 Chris 0 4.23 2021 The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization
author: Michael Brooks
name: Chris
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope]]> 74855285 The New York Times bestseller•One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023 � A New York Times Notable Book

“A book of big and bold ideas, Humanly Possible is humane in approach and, more important, readable and worth reading. . . Bakewell is wide-ranging, witty and compassionate.� �Wall Street Journal

“Sweeping . . . linking philosophical reflections with vibrant anecdotes.”� The New York Times

The bestselling author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Café explores seven hundred years of writers, thinkers, scientists, and artists, all seeking to understand what it means to be truly human

Humanism is an expansive tradition of thought that places shared humanity, cultural vibrancy, and moral responsibility at the center of our lives. For centuries, this worldview has inspired people to make their choices by principles of freethinking, intellectual inquiry, fellow feeling, and optimism. In this sweeping new history, Sarah Bakewell, herself a lifelong humanist, illuminates the very personal, individual, and, well, human matter of humanism and takes readers on a grand intellectual adventure.

Voyaging from the literary enthusiasts of the fourteenth century to the secular campaigners of our own time, from Voltaire to Zora Neale Hurston, Bakewell brings together extraordinary humanists across history. She explores their immense some sought to promote scientific and rationalist ideas, others put more emphasis on moral living, and still others were concerned with the cultural and literary studies known as “the humanities.”�Humanly Possible asks not only what unites all these meanings of humanism but why it has such enduring power, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics, and tyrants. A singular examination of this vital tradition as well as a dazzling contribution to its literature,Humanly Possibleserves as a recentering, a call to care for one another, and a reminder that we are all, together, only human.]]> 464 Sarah Bakewell 0735223386 Chris 0 4.29 2023 Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope
author: Sarah Bakewell
name: Chris
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/03/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Body: A Guide for Occupants]]> 43611499 Bill Bryson, bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything, takes us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body—with a new afterword for this edition.

Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body—how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Brysonesque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular.

As Bill Bryson writes, “We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted.� The Body will cure that indifference with generous doses of wondrous, compulsively readable facts and information. As addictive as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best, a must-read owner’s manual for every body.]]> 478 Bill Bryson Chris 0 currently-reading 4.41 2019 The Body: A Guide for Occupants
author: Bill Bryson
name: Chris
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities]]> 35835067 Istanbul has always been a place where stories and histories collide.

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

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

Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, this captivating portrait of the momentous life of Istanbul is visceral, immediate, and scholarly--narrative history at its finest.
]]> 689 Bettany Hughes Chris 0 4.04 2016 Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities
author: Bettany Hughes
name: Chris
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest]]> 61241469 The Price of Time explains our current global financial position and how we got here The tradition of charging interest on loans is one of man's oldest practices, going back at least to the Mesopotamian era in the third millennium B.C. From ancient times, usury or charging for the use of money, has attracted opprobrium--from philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, and from the religious authorities, whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. Yet as capitalism became established from the late Middle Ages onwards, denunciations of interest were tempered. It was gradually accepted that creditors had a right to charge for lending out their property and that credit was essential for trade. By the seventeenth century, the debate about interest shifted to what might be considered a fair price.




Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, interest rates have sunk lower than ever before. Central bankers and policymakers appear blithe to the unintended consequences of their actions, but easy money after the global financial crisis in 2007/2008 has produced several ill effects, including the appearance of multiple asset price bubbles, a reduction in productivity growth, discouraging savings and exacerbating inequality, and forcing yield-starved investors to take on excessive risk.


The financial world now finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place, and Edward Chancellor is here to tell us why. In this enriching volume, Chancellor explores the history of interest and its essential function in determining how capital is allocated and priced.
]]> 401 Edward Chancellor 0802160077 Chris 0 4.26 2022 The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
author: Edward Chancellor
name: Chris
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> North Woods 75569082
This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 320 Daniel Mason Chris 0 currently-reading 4.12 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: Chris
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/27
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]]> The Last Ranger 59070180 🎧9 hours

The best-selling author of The River returns with a lush and vivid mystery set in Yellowstone National Park where a skirmish between a local hunter and a wolf biologist turns violent, and a park ranger, facing his own personal demons, sets out to determine what really happened.


Ren is a park ranger, tasked with duties both mundane and thrilling: breaking up fights at campgrounds, saving tourists from moose attacks, and attempting to broker an uneasy peace between the wealthy vacationers who tromp around with cameras and the locals who want to carve out a meaningful living amid this western landscape.

When Ren discovers his friend Hilly, a biologist and wolf expert, nearly dead in the steel jaws of a wolf trap, he hopes it’s just an accident, but the small red ribbon tied to the stake makes him fairly certain that it wasn’t. What begins as an inquiry into a known poacher soon opens into the discovery of a local group of ranchers who have formed an alliance at odds with both the park and with Ren’s responsibility to protect it.

Rife with surprising humor, populated by a cast of extraordinary characters, each drawn to Yellowstone for their own reasons, Peter Heller once again mines the rich vein where our very human impulses play out against the stunning beauty of the natural world.]]> 272 Peter Heller 059353512X Chris 0 4.10 2023 The Last Ranger
author: Peter Heller
name: Chris
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/19
date added: 2023/11/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Dancing at the Rascal Fair (Montana Trilogy Book 2)]]> 18995283 The central volume in Ivan Doig's acclaimed Montana trilogy, Dancing at the Rascal Fair is an authentic saga of the American experience at the turn of this century and a passionate, portrayal of the immigrants who dared to try new lives in the imposing Rocky Mountains.Ivan Doig's supple tale of landseekers unfolds into a fateful contest of the heart between Anna Ramsay and Angus McCaskill, walled apart by their obligations as they and their stormy kith and kin vie to tame the brutal, beautiful Two Medicine country.]]> 418 Ivan Doig 1439124949 Chris 0 4.42 1987 Dancing at the Rascal Fair (Montana Trilogy Book 2)
author: Ivan Doig
name: Chris
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/07
date added: 2023/11/07
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]]> Just Kids 32315914 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 320 Patti Smith Chris 0 4.22 2010 Just Kids
author: Patti Smith
name: Chris
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Short Nights Of The Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis]]> 18923578 A New York Times Notable Book A Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionNew York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Timothy Egan reveals the life story of the man determined to preserve a people and culture in Short Nights of the Shadow The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. “A vivid exploration of one man's lifelong obsession with an idea . . . Egan’s spirited biography might just bring [Curtis] the recognition that eluded him in life.” ​— ​The Washington Post Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous portrait photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, leading thinkers. But when he was thirty-two years old, in 1900, he gave it all up to pursue his Great to capture on film the continent’s original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared. Curtis spent the next three decades documenting the stories and rituals of more than eighty North American tribes. It took tremendous perseverance  ​— � ten years alone to persuade the Hopi to allow him to observe their Snake Dance ceremony. And the undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate. Curtis would amass more than 40,000 photographs and 10,000 audio recordings, and he is credited with making the first narrative documentary film. In the process, the charming rogue with the grade school education created the most definitive archive of the American Indian.]]> 389 Timothy Egan Chris 0 4.45 2011 Short Nights Of The Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
author: Timothy Egan
name: Chris
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 85148114
As these characters� stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.]]> 400 James McBride 0593422961 Chris 0 4.25 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Chris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/09/19
date added: 2023/09/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us]]> 60637598 New from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs ("A masterpiece of science writing." --Washington Post) and "one of the stars of modern paleontology" (National Geographic), a sweeping and revelatory history of mammals, illuminating the lost story of the extraordinary family tree that led to us.

National Bestseller - Top 10 Nonfiction of 2022: Kirkus - Best Science Books of 2022: The Times UK

We humans are the inheritors of a dynasty that has reigned over the planet for nearly 66 million years, through fiery cataclysm and ice the mammals. Our lineage includes saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, cave bears three times the weight of a grizzly, clever scurriers that outlasted Tyrannosaurus rex, and even other types of humans, like Neanderthals. Indeed humankind and many of the beloved fellow mammals we share the planet with today--lions, whales, dogs--represent only the few survivors of a sprawling and astonishing family tree that has been pruned by time and mass extinctions. How did we get here?

In his acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs--hailed as "the ultimate dinosaur biography" by Scientific American--American paleontologist Steve Brusatte enchanted readers with his definitive history of the dinosaurs. Now, picking up the narrative in the ashes of the extinction event that doomed T-rex and its kind, Brusatte explores the remarkable story of the family of animals that inherited the Earth--mammals-- and brilliantly reveals that their story is every bit as fascinating and complex as that of the dinosaurs.

Beginning with the earliest days of our lineage some 325 million years ago, Brusatte charts how mammals survived the asteroid that claimed the dinosaurs and made the world their own, becoming the astonishingly diverse range of animals that dominate today's Earth. Brusatte also brings alive the lost worlds mammals inhabited through time, from ice ages to volcanic catastrophes. Entwined in this story is the detective work he and other scientists have done to piece together our understanding using fossil clues and cutting-edge technology.

A sterling example of scientific storytelling by one of our finest young researchers, The Rise and Reign of the Mammals illustrates how this incredible history laid the foundation for today's world, for us, and our future.]]> 528 Steve Brusatte 0062951521 Chris 0 4.50 2022 The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us
author: Steve Brusatte
name: Chris
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Tom Lake 63256933 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

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

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 310 Ann Patchett 0063327546 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.12 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Chris
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/31
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]]> The Personal Librarian 55556786 The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian--who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. Pierpont Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white--her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go--for the protection of her family and her legacy--to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.]]> 347 Marie Benedict 0593101553 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.31 2021 The Personal Librarian
author: Marie Benedict
name: Chris
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/05
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]]> The Latecomer 57833152 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Latecomer is a layered and immersive literary novel about three siblings, desperate to escape one another, and the upending of their family by the late arrival of a fourth.

The Latecomer follows the story of the wealthy, New York City-based Oppenheimer family, from the first meeting of parents Salo and Johanna, under tragic circumstances, to their triplets born during the early days of IVF. As children, the three siblings � Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally � feel no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, even as their father becomes more distanced and their mother more desperate. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna, faced with being truly alone, makes the decision to have a fourth child. What role will the “latecomer� play in this fractured family?

A complex novel that builds slowly and deliberately, The Latecomer touches on the topics of grief and guilt, generational trauma, privilege and race, traditions and religion, and family dynamics. It is a profound and witty family story from an accomplished author, known for the depth of her character studies, expertly woven storylines, and plot twists.]]> 441 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250790778 Chris 5 4.24 2022 The Latecomer
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Chris
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/07
date added: 2023/06/07
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]]> Bad Actors (Slough House #8) 57979490
Over at Slough House, with Shirley Dander in rehab, Roddy Ho in dress rehearsal, and new recruit Ashley Khan turning up the heat, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation . . .

There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned.]]> 360 Mick Herron Chris 0 4.52 2022 Bad Actors (Slough House #8)
author: Mick Herron
name: Chris
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/05/21
date added: 2023/05/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Slough House (Slough House #7)]]> 54005223 Brexit is in full swing. And due to mysterious accidents, the Slough Houses ranks continue to thin. The seventh entry to the Slough House series is as thrilling and bleeding-edge relevant as ever.

A year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead from novichok poisoning, Diana Taverner is on the warpath. What seems a gutless response from the government has pushed the Service's First Desk into mounting her own counter-offensive—but she's had to make a deal with the devil first. And given that the devil in question is arch-manipulator Peter Judd, she could be about to lose control of everything she's fought for.

Meanwhile, still reeling from recent losses, the slow horses are worried they've been pushed further into the cold. Slough House has been wiped from Service records, and fatal accidents keep happening. No wonder Jackson Lamb's crew are feeling paranoid. But have they actually been targeted? With a new populist movement taking a grip on London's streets, and the old order ensuring that everything's for sale to the highest bidder, the world's an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass.

But the slow horses aren't famed for making wise decisions. And with enemies on all sides, not even Jackson Lamb can keep his crew from harm.]]> 247 Mick Herron Chris 0 4.53 2021 Slough House (Slough House #7)
author: Mick Herron
name: Chris
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2023/05/08
date added: 2023/05/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Joe Country (Slough House, #6)]]> 59336988 If Spook Street is where spies live, Joe Country is where they go to die.

Like the ringing of a dead man’s phone, or an unwelcome guest at a funeral . . . In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him an outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears himself apart in the process.

Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . . And with winter taking its grip, Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.]]> 361 Mick Herron Chris 0 currently-reading 4.42 2019 Joe Country (Slough House, #6)
author: Mick Herron
name: Chris
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/05
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[London Rules (Slough House, #5)]]> 59336985 The fifth entry in CWA Gold dagger-winning Slough House series.

London Rules might not be written down, but everyone knows rule one: Cover your arse.

At MI5 headquarters Regent's Park, First Desk Claude Whelan is learning this the hard way. Tasked with protecting a beleaguered prime minister, he's facing attack from all directions himself: from the showboating MP who orchestrated the Brexit vote, and now has his sights set on Number Ten; from the showboat's wife, a tabloid columnist, who's crucifying Whelan in print; from the PM's favorite Muslim, who's about to be elected mayor of the West Midlands, despite the dark secret he's hiding; and especially from his own deputy, Lady Di Taverner, who's alert for Claude's every stumble. Meanwhile, the country's being rocked by an apparently random string of terror attacks.

Over at Slough House, the MI5 satellite office for outcast and demoted spies, the agents are struggling with personal problems: repressed grief, various addictions, retail paralysis, and the nagging suspicion that their newest colleague is a psychopath. Plus someone is trying to kill Roddy Ho. But collectively, they're about to rediscover their greatest strength - that of making a bad situation much, much worse.]]> 383 Mick Herron Chris 0 4.36 2018 London Rules (Slough House, #5)
author: Mick Herron
name: Chris
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/05
date added: 2023/04/05
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]]> Ohio 39024902 “Extraordinary...beautifully precise...[an] earnestly ambitious debut.� —The New York Times Book Review “A wild, angry, and devastating masterpiece of a book.� —NPR “[A] descendent of the Dickensian ‘social novel� by way of Jonathan epic fiction that lays bare contemporary culture clashes, showing us who we are and how we got here.� —O, The Oprah Magazine “A book that has stayed with me ever since I put it down.� —Seth Meyers, host of Late Night with Seth MeyersOne sweltering night in 2013, four former high school classmates converge on their hometown in northeastern Ohio. There’s Bill Ashcraft, a passionate, drug-abusing young activist whose flailing ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park to post-BP New Orleans, and now back home with a mysterious package strapped to the undercarriage of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting her family and the mother of her best friend and first love, whose disappearance spurs the mystery at the heart of the novel; Dan Eaton, a shy veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he’s tried desperately to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the washed-up captain of the football team triggers the novel’s shocking climax. Set over the course of a single evening, Ohio toggles between the perspectives of these unforgettable characters as they unearth dark secrets, revisit old regrets and uncover—and compound—bitter betrayals. Before the evening is through, these narratives converge masterfully to reveal a mystery so dark and shocking it will take your breath away.]]> 514 Stephen Markley Chris 0 4.02 2018 Ohio
author: Stephen Markley
name: Chris
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2023/03/27
date added: 2023/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge]]> 23829634 The Wall Street Journal

One of our greatest living scientists--and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes forOn Human NatureandThe Ants--gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. InConsilience(a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities.

Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole,Consilienceis science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.]]> 382 Edward O. Wilson 0804154066 Chris 0 4.25 1998 Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
author: Edward O. Wilson
name: Chris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2023/03/16
date added: 2023/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Spook Street (Slough House, #4)]]> 30282181
But River has other things to worry about. A bomb goes off in the middle of a busy shopping center and kills forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.]]> 307 Mick Herron Chris 0 4.36 2017 Spook Street (Slough House, #4)
author: Mick Herron
name: Chris
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/26
date added: 2023/02/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Six Months, Three Days, Five Others]]> 35997916 Before the success of her debut SF-and-fantasy novel All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders was a rising star in SF and fantasy short fiction. Collected in a mini-book format, here—for the first time in print—are six of her quirky, wry, engaging best:

In "The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model," aliens reveal the terrible truth about how humans were created—and why we'll never discover aliens.

"As Good as New" is a brilliant twist on the tale of three wishes, set after the end of the world.

"Intestate" is about a family reunion in which some attendees aren't quite human anymore—but they're still family.

"The Cartography of Sudden Death" demonstrates that when you try to solve a problem with time travel, you now have two problems.

"Six Months, Three Days" is the story of the love affair between a man who can see the one true foreordained future, and a woman who can see all the possible futures. They're both right, and the story won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

And "Clover," exclusively written for this collection, is a coda to All the Birds in the Sky, answering the burning question of what happened to Patricia's cat.]]> 179 Charlie Jane Anders 1250191769 Chris 0 4.29 2017 Six Months, Three Days, Five Others
author: Charlie Jane Anders
name: Chris
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/26
date added: 2023/02/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Real Tigers (Slough House, #3)]]> 59336857
What she doesn't know is why anyone would target her.

So whoever's holding her hostage, it can't be personal. It must be about Slough House. Most likely, it's about Jackson Lamb. And say what you like about Lamb, he'll never leave a joe in the lurch.

He might even be someone you could trust with your life.]]> 369 Mick Herron Chris 0 4.40 2016 Real Tigers (Slough House, #3)
author: Mick Herron
name: Chris
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/09
date added: 2023/02/09
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]]> Dead Lions (Slough House, #2) 59336849
The disgruntled agents of Slough House, the MI5 branch where washed-up spies are sent to finish their failed careers on desk duty, are called into action to protect a visiting Russian oligarch whom MI5 hopes to recruit to British intelligence. While two agents are dispatched on that babysitting job, though, an old Cold War-era spy named Dickie Bow is found dead, ostensibly of a heart attack, on a bus outside of Oxford, far from his usual haunts.

But the head of Slough House, the irascible Jackson Lamb, is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered.As the agents dig into their fallen comrade's circumstances, they uncover a shadowy tangle of ancient Cold War secrets that seem to lead back to a man named Alexander Popov, who is either a Soviet bogeyman or the most dangerous man in the world. How many more people will have to die to keep those secrets buried?]]> 300 Mick Herron Chris 0 4.35 2013 Dead Lions (Slough House, #2)
author: Mick Herron
name: Chris
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/02
date added: 2023/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann]]> 58790871
The smartphonesin our pockets and computerslikebrains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology.Nuclear weaponsand self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largelyoverlooked, John von Neumann.

Born in Budapest at the turn of the century,von Neumannisone ofthe most influential scientists to have ever lived.A child prodigy, he mastered calculus by the age of eight,andin high schoolmade lasting contributions to mathematics.InGermany, where he helped lay the foundations of quantum mechanics,and laterat Princeton, von Neumann’scolleagues believed he had the fastest brain on the planet—bar none.Hewas instrumental in the Manhattan Projectand the design of the atom bomb; hehelped formulate the bedrock of Cold War geopolitics and modern economic theory; he created the first ever programmable digital computer; heprophesized the potential of nanotechnology; and, from his deathbed,heexpounded on the limits of brains and computers—and how they might be overcome.

Taking us on an astonishing journey,AnanyoBhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep througha stunninglydiverse array offields, sparking revolutions wherever he went.The Man from the Futureis an insightful and thrillingintellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century.]]> 355 Ananyo Bhattacharya 1324004002 Chris 0 4.31 2021 The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann
author: Ananyo Bhattacharya
name: Chris
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/29
date added: 2023/01/29
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]]> The Candy House 58939642 From one of the most dazzling and iconic writers of our time and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity, privacy, and meaning in a world where our memories are no longer our own—featuring characters from A Visit from the Goon Squad.

It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing� memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters� who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,� those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.

Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.� Egan takes her “deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture� (Vogue) to stunning new heights and delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.]]> 342 Jennifer Egan 1476716781 Chris 0 3.80 2022 The Candy House
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Chris
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/15
date added: 2023/01/15
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]]> Horizon 42737995 From the National Book Award-winning author of the now-classic Arctic Dreams, a vivid, poetic, capacious work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters--human, animal, and natural--that have shaped an extraordinary life.

Taking us nearly from pole to pole–from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on the earth–and across decades of lived experience, Barry Lopez, hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "one of our finest writers," gives us his most far-ranging yet personal work to date, in a book that moves indelibly, immersively, through his travels to six regions of the from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica.

As he takes us on these myriad travels, Lopez also probes the long history of humanity’s quests and explorations, including the prehistoric peoples who trekked across Skraeling Island in northern Canada, the colonialists who plundered Central Africa, an enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific, a Native American emissary who found his way into isolationist Japan, and today’s ecotourists in the tropics. Throughout his journeys–to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on the globe–and via friendships he forges along the way with scientists, archaeologists, artists and local residents, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world.

Horizon is a revelatory, epic work that voices concern and frustration along with humanity and hope–a book that makes you see the world differently, and that is the crowning achievement by one of America’s great thinkers and most humane voices.]]> 592 Barry Lopez 0525656219 Chris 0 4.29 2019 Horizon
author: Barry Lopez
name: Chris
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/08
date added: 2023/01/08
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]]> The Lessons of History 18936229 A concise survey of the culture and civilization of mankind, The Lessons of History is the result of a lifetime of research from Pulitzer Prize–winning historians Will and Ariel Durant.With their accessible compendium of philosophy and social progress, the Durants take us on a journey through history, exploring the possibilities and limitations of humanity over time. Juxtaposing the great lives, ideas, and accomplishments with cycles of war and conquest, the Durants reveal the towering themes of history and give meaning to our own.]]> 132 Will Durant Chris 0 4.22 The Lessons of History
author: Will Durant
name: Chris
average rating: 4.22
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rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Slow Horses (Slough House, #1)]]> 59336841
London, England: Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what's left of their failed careers. The "slow horses," as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly and can't be trusted anymore. Maybe they got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug yanked out from under them. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing they all have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. And most of them would do anything to get there─even if it means having to collaborate with one another.

River Cartwright, one such “slow horse,� is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. But is the victim who he first appears to be? And what’s the kidnappers� connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.]]> 336 Mick Herron Chris 0 4.29 2010 Slow Horses (Slough House, #1)
author: Mick Herron
name: Chris
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/13
date added: 2022/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58916147 A newer cover edition can be found here.

In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry 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.]]> 418 Gabrielle Zevin Chris 0 4.26 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Chris
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/04
date added: 2022/12/04
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]]> <![CDATA[English Creek (Montana Trilogy)]]> 19360175 In this prize-winning portrait of a time and place—Montana in the 1930s—that at once inspires and fulfills a longing for an explicable past, Ivan Doig has created one of the most captivating families in American fiction, the McCaskills.The witty and haunting narration, a masterpiece of vernacular in the tradition of Twain, follows the events of the Two Medicine country's the tide of sheep moving into the high country, the capering Fourth of July rodeo and community dance, and an end-of-August forest fire high in the Rockies that brings the book, as well as the McCaskill family's struggle within itself, to a stunning climax. It is a season of escapade as well as drama, during which fourteen-year-old Jick comes of age. Through his eyes we see those nearest and dearest to him at a turning point—“where all four of our lives made their bend”—and discover along with him his own connection to the land, to history, and to the deep-fathomed mysteries of one’s kin and one’s self.]]> 354 Ivan Doig 1476745145 Chris 5 4.25 1984 English Creek (Montana Trilogy)
author: Ivan Doig
name: Chris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/16
date added: 2022/11/16
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]]> <![CDATA[A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life]]> 53487237 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?� He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.]]> 403 George Saunders 1984856049 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.55 2021 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
author: George Saunders
name: Chris
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The History of Bones: A Memoir]]> 58305244 The quintessential depiction of 1980s New York and the downtown scene from the artist, actor, musician, and composer John Lurie“A picaresque roller coaster of a story, with staggering amounts of sex and drugs and the perpetual quest to retain some kind of artistic integrity.”—The New York Times In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he developed his artistic soul over the course of the decade and came into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place, including Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Boris Policeband, and, especially, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the enigmatic prodigy who spent a year sleeping on the floor of Lurie’s East Third Street apartment. It may feel like Disney World now, but in The History of Bones,the East Village, through Lurie’s clear-eyed reminiscence, comes to teeming, gritty life. The book is full of grime and frank humor—Lurie holds nothing back in this journey to one of the most significant moments in our cultural history, one whose reverberations are still strongly felt today. History may repeat itself, but the way downtown New York happened in the 1980s will never happen again. Luckily, through this beautiful memoir, we all have a front-row seat.]]> 439 John Lurie 0399592997 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.29 2021 The History of Bones: A Memoir
author: John Lurie
name: Chris
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/18
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Orchard 55776191 “Like Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, Peter Heller has a rare talent that hooks both literary and commercial readers.� –Elle magazine

From the bestselling author of The Dog Stars and The River, The Orchard is an unforgettable coming of age tale reminding us that, even during the hardest of times, love, friendship, and the enduring power of nature will prevail.

Hayley and her seven-year-old daughter, Frith, live in a rustic cabin with no electricity in the foothills of Vermont’s Green Mountains. One of the world’s most renowned translators of poetry from China’s Tang dynasty, Hayley walked away from her career and her drug-addicted husband to raise Frith alone in a land populated not by ambition-fueled academics but by hawks, beavers, and other wild things—including their exuberant Bernese mountain mutt, Bear. They get by on what little they earn from their overgrown apple orchard and the syrup they make from their maple trees. Frith—precocious, homeschooled, and a voracious reader—considers herself queen of this backwoods paradise. She is too young to understand the pain and regret that have followed her mother here.

Season after season, it is the three of them—mother, daughter, and dog—until the sunny spring day when Rose Lattimore appears at their door. Rose is an artist and kindred spirit whose unexpected friendship upends Hayley and Frith’s solitary existence. Rosie takes the edge off the worries of day-to-day survival and encourages the playful aspects of living in fishing, picnics, swimming in a quarry. Frith thrives under the loving care of Hayley and Rosie and, with a child’s innocence, assumes their happiness will last forever. Instead, their lives are shattered by unexpected tragedy and Frith must come to terms with heartbreak and fear.

Peter Heller is unique in his ability to capture the beauty and nuance of the natural world and its pull on women and men. In The Orchard, he pairs evocative storytelling with jewel-like poems—Hayley’s translations of her most beloved Tang poet, Li Xue—that echo Hayley and Frith’s life in the wilderness and tell their own tale of mother and daughter. By turns joyful and searing, The Orchard examines the fragility of childhood, motherhood, romantic love, and friendship, and celebrates the enduring solace of nature. At a time when so many of us are gripped by fear and uncertainty, Heller’s story is like a calming deep breath.]]> 229 Peter Heller Chris 5 4.54 2019 The Orchard
author: Peter Heller
name: Chris
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/18
date added: 2022/09/18
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]]> This Time Tomorrow 61427060 What if you could take a vacation to your past?

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

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?]]> 320 Emma Straub Chris 0 3.97 2022 This Time Tomorrow
author: Emma Straub
name: Chris
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/07/24
date added: 2022/09/18
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]]> <![CDATA[This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race]]> 54144854
Zero days are the blood diamonds of the security trade, pursued by nation states, defense contractors, cybercriminals, and security defenders alike. In this market, governments aren't regulators; they are clients - paying huge sums to hackers willing to turn over gaps in the Internet, and stay silent about them.

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth's discovery, unpacked. A intrepid journalist unravels an opaque, code-driven market from the outside in - encountering spies, hackers, arms dealers, mercenaries and a few unsung heroes along the way. As the stakes get higher and higher in the rush to push the world's critical infrastructure online, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is the urgent and alarming discovery of one of the world's most extreme threats.

Nicole Perlroth covers cybersecurity for the New York Times. She is the recipient of several journalism awards including best technology reporting by the Society of Business Editors and Writers. Her 2014 Times profile of security blogger Brian Krebs was optioned by Sony Pictures and a 2016 story of Chinese hackers in a welding shop server was optioned for a television series. Prior to joining the New York Times in 2011, she covered venture capital and start-ups for Forbes Magazine. She is a guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and lives in Los Angeles.]]> 505 Nicole Perlroth 1635576067 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.37 2021 This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race
author: Nicole Perlroth
name: Chris
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/11
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]]> Klara and the Sun 54250259 A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick!

A magnificent new novel from the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro—author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day.

Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.

Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 418 Kazuo Ishiguro Chris 4 3.99 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Chris
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/05/13
date added: 2022/09/11
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]]> The Dutch House 44569767 The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades,The Dutch Houseis a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

]]> 353 Ann Patchett 0062963694 Chris 5 4.25 2019 The Dutch House
author: Ann Patchett
name: Chris
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/11
date added: 2022/09/11
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]]> Lessons in Chemistry 57684325
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride�) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.]]> 400 Bonnie Garmus Chris 5 4.47 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Chris
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/18
date added: 2022/09/11
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]]> The Luminaries 17333230 The Luminaries is a brilliantly constructed, fiendishly clever ghost story and a gripping page-turner.]]> 848 Eleanor Catton 0316074314 Chris 0 to-read 3.73 2013 The Luminaries
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Chris
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind]]> 55751595 The scuba-diving philosopher who wrote Other Minds explores the origins of animal consciousness

Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom—the Metazoa—they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.

In his acclaimed 2016 book, Other Minds, the philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus—the closest thing to an intelligent alien on Earth. In Metazoa, Godfrey-Smith expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of subjective experience with the assistance of far-flung species. As he delves into what it feels like to perceive and interact with the world as other life-forms do, Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the animal body well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path. In accessible, riveting prose, he charts the ways that subsequent evolutionary developments—eyes that track, for example, and bodies that move through and manipulate the environment—shaped the subjective lives of animals. Following the evolutionary paths of a glass sponge, soft coral, banded shrimp, octopus, and fish, then moving onto land and the world of insects, birds, and primates like ourselves, Metazoa gathers their stories together in a way that bridges the gap between mind and matter, addressing one of the most vexing philosophical problems: that of consciousness.

Combining vivid animal encounters with philosophical reflections and the latest news from biology, Metazoa reveals that even in our high-tech, AI-driven times, there is no understanding our minds without understanding nerves, muscles, and active bodies. The story that results is as rich and vibrant as life itself.]]> 354 Peter Godfrey-Smith 0374720185 Chris 0 3.98 2020 Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind
author: Peter Godfrey-Smith
name: Chris
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Small World 57976053 480 Jonathan Evison 0593184149 Chris 0 4.17 2022 Small World
author: Jonathan Evison
name: Chris
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/09/11
date added: 2022/09/11
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]]> <![CDATA[How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America]]> 56003994 This compelling #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America—and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted. Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be. Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

Winner of the Stowe Prize

Winner of 2022 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism

PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist

A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021

A Time 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2021

Named a Best Book of 2021 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Smithsonian, Esquire, Entropy, The Christian Science Monitor, WBEZ's Nerdette Podcast, TeenVogue, GoodReads, SheReads, BookPage, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Fathom Magazine, the New York Public Library, and the Chicago Public Library

One of GQ’s 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century

Longlisted for the National Book Award Los Angeles Times, Best Nonfiction Gift

One of President Obama's Favorite Books of 2021]]> 336 Clint Smith 0316492914 Chris 0 4.73 2021 How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
author: Clint Smith
name: Chris
average rating: 4.73
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2022/09/11
date added: 2022/09/11
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]]> The Ministry for the Future 51342031 The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.]]> 577 Kim Stanley Robinson Chris 0 4.03 2020 The Ministry for the Future
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Chris
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/09/11
date added: 2022/09/11
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]]> The Guide 56578893
Safe from viruses that have plagued America for years, Kingfisher offers a respite for wealthy clients - and a return to normality for fishing guide Jack, battling the demons of a recent, devastating loss.

But when a human scream pierces the night, Jack soon realises that the idyllic retreat may be merely a cover for a far more sinister operation.]]> 272 Peter Heller 0525657770 Chris 0 3.92 2021 The Guide
author: Peter Heller
name: Chris
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2022/08/02
date added: 2022/08/02
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]]> Sea of Tranquility 58601245 The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

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

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

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

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 226 Emily St. John Mandel Chris 0 4.19 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Chris
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/05/02
date added: 2022/05/02
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]]> Axiomatic 18883653 Axiomatic is a collection of Greg Egan's short stories that appeared in various science fiction magazines (mostly Interzone and Asimov's) between 1989 and 1992.

Contents:
The Infinite Assassin (1991)
The Hundred Light-Year Diary (1992)
Eugene (1990)
The Caress (1990)
Blood Sisters (1991)
Axiomatic (1990)
The Safe-Deposit Box (1990)
Seeing (1995)
A Kidnapping (1995)
Learning to Be Me (1990)
The Moat (1991)
The Walk (1992)
The Cutie (1989)
Into Darkness (1992)
Appropriate Love (1991)
The Moral Virologist (1990)
Closer (1992)
Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies (1992)]]> 272 Greg Egan 1922240095 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.30 1995 Axiomatic
author: Greg Egan
name: Chris
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/04/01
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[When We Cease to Understand the World]]> 57141034
Galerie d'anecdotes extraordinaires � parfois trop belles pour être vraies, souvent trop vraies pour être belles � et de portraits saisissants des plus grands esprits du siècle passé, Lumières aveugles avance sur la ligne trouble qui sépare le génie de la folie, nous entraînant avec verve, passion et suspense dans les coulisses de la science.]]> 192 Benjamín Labatut Chris 0 4.19 2020 When We Cease to Understand the World
author: Benjamín Labatut
name: Chris
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/03/26
date added: 2022/03/26
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]]> The Anomaly 57726637 399 Hervé Le Tellier 1635421764 Chris 0 currently-reading 3.94 2020 The Anomaly
author: Hervé Le Tellier
name: Chris
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/03/26
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom]]> 43794067 THIRD Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. FIRST Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones. Pericles, Prince of Tyre A classic work of political theory and practise, this book makes available an account of the modern Machiavellians, a remarkable group who have been influential in Europe and practically unknown in the United Gaetano Mosca, Georges Sorel, Robert Michels and Vilfredo Pareto. In addition, there is a long section on Machiavelli himself. James Burnham contends that the writings of these men hold the key both to the truth about politics and to the preservation of political liberty. Praise for James 'The stoic, detached, empirical, hard-boiled, penetrating, realist mind of James Burnham is something to behold, to admire, to emulate' - National Review 'James Burnham was an astonishing writer. Subtle, passionate, and irritatingly well-read' - New Criterion 'The immense significance of Burnham’s approach is potential. We can ignore it only at the risk of being disarmed by the future course of events' - Irving Kristol James Burnham was an American popular political theorist. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years, as his thinking developed, he left Marxism and turned to conservatism, serving as a public intellectual of the conservative movement. He also wrote regularly for the conservative publication National Review on a variety of topics.]]> 293 James Burnham Chris 0 4.33 1943 The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom
author: James Burnham
name: Chris
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation]]> 20213065 172 Thich Nhat Hanh Chris 0 4.22 1975 The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
author: Thich Nhat Hanh
name: Chris
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/28
date added: 2022/02/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous]]> 51710349 Harvard University’s Joseph Henrich, Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, delivers a bold, epic investigation into the development of the Western mind, global psychological diversity, and its impact on the world

Perhaps you are raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar.

Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? Did these differences have an impact on the development of the laws, economic systems, and governments that now dominate the world?

In W.E.I.R.D. Minds, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world.

Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, W.E.I.R.D. Minds explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history.]]> 706 Joseph Henrich 0374710457 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.12 2020 The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
author: Joseph Henrich
name: Chris
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/02/28
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]]> These Precious Days: Essays 57382052
"The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly

“Any story that starts will also end.� As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart.

At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.� When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks� short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both.

A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be.

From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.]]> 336 Ann Patchett Chris 0 4.59 2021 These Precious Days: Essays
author: Ann Patchett
name: Chris
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Shadow King 45018589

In this extraordinary, beautifully told epic, Hirut overcomes rape, violence, and imprisonment, finding the strength to fight for her country’s freedom and her own. Maaza Mengiste breathes life into complicated characters on both sides of the battle line, shaping a searing story of ordinary women and the advanced army they courageously opposed. Set against the first real conflict of World War II, The Shadow King is a heartrending, indelible exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.]]> 429 Maaza Mengiste 0393651096 Chris 0 currently-reading 3.97 2019 The Shadow King
author: Maaza Mengiste
name: Chris
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/08
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Project Hail Mary 54906250 An impossible mission.
An ally he never imagined.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

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

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

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

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

Or does he?]]> 549 Andy Weir Chris 0 4.57 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Chris
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2022/01/08
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]]> Rules of Civility 54102615 The New York Times bestselling novel that "enchants on first reading and only improves on the second" (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

This sophisticated and entertaining first novel presents the story of a young woman whose life is on the brink of transformation. On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.


]]> 348 Amor Towles Chris 5 4.30 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Chris
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/15
date added: 2021/11/29
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]]> The Lincoln Highway 57139780 The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.]]> 576 Amor Towles 0735222371 Chris 0 4.36 2021 The Lincoln Highway
author: Amor Towles
name: Chris
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2021/10/29
date added: 2021/11/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Form and Emptiness]]> 57150885 A boy who hears the voices of objects all around him; a mother drowning in her possessions; and a Book that might hold the secret to saving them both—the brilliantly inventive new novel from the Booker Prize-finalist Ruth Ozeki.

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki—bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.]]> 560 Ruth Ozeki 0399563652 Chris 0 4.23 2021 The Book of Form and Emptiness
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: Chris
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2021/10/20
date added: 2021/10/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Geniuses at War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age]]> 57539057 The dramatic, untold story of the brilliant team whose feats of innovation and engineering created the world’s first digital electronic computer—decrypting the Nazis� toughest code, helping bring an end to WWII, and ushering in the information age.� Winner, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Middleton Award for "a book ... that both exemplifies exceptional scholarship and reaches beyond academic communities toward a broad public audience."� A Kirkus Best Book of 2022�Planning the invasion of Normandy, the Allies knew that decoding the communications of the Nazi high command was imperative for its success. But standing in their way was an encryption machine they called Tunny (British English for “tuna�), which was vastly more difficult to crack than the infamous Enigma cipher.To surmount this seemingly impossible challenge, Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker, brought in a maverick English working-class engineer named Tommy Flowers who devised the ingenious, daring, and controversial plan to build a machine that would calculate at breathtaking speed and break the code in nearly real time. Together with the pioneering mathematician Max Newman, Flowers and his team produced—against the odds, the clock, and a resistant leadership—Colossus, the world’s first digital electronic computer, the machine that would help bring the war to an end.Drawing upon recently declassified sources, David A. Price’s Geniuses at War tells, for the first time, the full mesmerizing story of the great minds behind Colossus and chronicles the remarkable feats of engineering genius that marked the dawn of the digital age.]]> 257 David A. Price 0525521550 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.37 2021 Geniuses at War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age
author: David A. Price
name: Chris
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/09/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood]]> 49200093 By the bestselling author of American Nations, the story of how the myth of U.S. national unity was created and fought over in the nineteenth century--a myth that continues to affect us todayUnion tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood. On one hand, a small group of individuals--historians, political leaders, and novelists--fashioned and promoted the idea of America as nation that had a God-given mission to lead humanity toward freedom, equality, and self-government. But this emerging narrative was swiftly contested by another set of intellectuals and firebrands who argued that the United States was instead the homeland of the allegedly superior "Anglo-Saxon" race, upon whom divine and Darwinian favor shined.Colin Woodard tells the story of the genesis and epic confrontations between these visions of our nation's path and purpose through the lives of the key figures who created them, a cast of characters whose personal quirks and virtues, gifts and demons shaped the destiny of millions.]]> 431 Colin Woodard 0525560165 Chris 0 4.41 2020 Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood
author: Colin Woodard
name: Chris
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2021/09/15
date added: 2021/09/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1)]]> 58111375 The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,� a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.]]> 445 Viet Thanh Nguyen Chris 0 4.16 2015 The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1)
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Chris
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2021/09/15
date added: 2021/09/15
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]]> Deacon King Kong 50888243 From James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, comes a wise and witty novel about what happens to the witnesses of a shooting.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .45 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range.

The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters--caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York--overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.

Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.]]> 384 James McBride 0735216746 Chris 0 4.35 2020 Deacon King Kong
author: James McBride
name: Chris
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2021/08/09
date added: 2021/08/09
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]]> The Windup Girl 41735504 378 Paolo Bacigalupi Chris 0 3.93 2009 The Windup Girl
author: Paolo Bacigalupi
name: Chris
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2021/07/14
date added: 2021/07/14
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]]> Hamnet 49856101 A thrilling departure: A short, piercing, deeply moving new novel from the acclaimed author of I Am, I Am, I Am, about the death of Shakespeare's eleven-year-old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in fifteenth-century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play.

England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman: a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague.

A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing and seductive, an impossible-to-put-down novel from one of our most gifted writers.]]> 310 Maggie O'Farrell Chris 0 4.32 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Chris
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2021/06/16
date added: 2021/06/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation]]> 50643983 An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials—the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change

Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.

While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform� our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over eight million reads since its publication in January 2019.

Can’t Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.
]]> 246 Anne Helen Petersen 0358316596 Chris 0 4.01 2020 Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
author: Anne Helen Petersen
name: Chris
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2021/05/31
date added: 2021/05/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell]]> 42764751
Bill Campbell played an instrumental role in the growth of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit, fostering deep relationships with Silicon Valley visionaries, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. In addition, this business genius mentored dozens of other important leaders on both coasts, from entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to educators to football players, leaving behind a legacy of growing companies, successful people, respect, friendship, and love after his death in 2016.

Leaders at Google for over a decade, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle experienced firsthand how the man fondly known as Coach Bill built trusting relationships, fostered personal growth—even in those at the pinnacle of their careers—inspired courage, and identified and resolved simmering tensions that inevitably arise in fast-moving environments. To honor their mentor and inspire and teach future generations, they have codified his wisdom in this essential guide.

Based on interviews with over eighty people who knew and loved Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach explains the Coach’s principles and illustrates them with stories from the many great people and companies with which he worked. The result is a blueprint for forward-thinking business leaders and managers that will help them create higher performing and faster moving cultures, teams, and companies.]]> 238 Eric Schmidt 006283925X Chris 0 currently-reading 4.18 2019 Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell
author: Eric Schmidt
name: Chris
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
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date added: 2021/05/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Geometry of Wealth: How to shape a life of money and meaning]]> 40135029
This journey memorably contours along three basic A circle, triangle and square help us to visualize how we adapt to evolving circumstances, set clear priorities, and find empowerment in simplicity. In this accessible and entertaining book, Portnoy reveals that true wealth is achievable for many - including those who despair it is out of reach - but only in the context of a life in which purpose and practice are thoughtfully calibrated.]]> 246 Brian Portnoy 0857196723 Chris 0 currently-reading 3.79 The Geometry of Wealth: How to shape a life of money and meaning
author: Brian Portnoy
name: Chris
average rating: 3.79
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date added: 2021/05/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies]]> 34113939 490 Geoffrey West 1101621508 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.28 2017 Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
author: Geoffrey West
name: Chris
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/16
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]]> <![CDATA[No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention]]> 49195924 Shortlisted for the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year

Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings reveals for the first time the unorthodox culture behind one of the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies

There's never before been a company like Netflix. Not only because it has led a revolution in the entertainment industries; or because it generates billions of dollars in annual revenue; or even because it is watched by hundreds of millions of people in nearly 200 countries. When Reed Hastings co-founded Netflix, he developed a set of counterintuitive and radical management principles, defying all tradition and expectation, which would allow the company to reinvent itself over and over on the way to becoming one of the most loved brands in the world.

Rejecting the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate, Reed set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance and hard work is irrelevant. At Netflix, you don't try to please your boss, you practice radical candor instead. At Netflix, employees never need approval, and the company always pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these principles, the implications were unknown and untested, but over just a short period of time they have led to unprecedented flexibility, speed, and boldness. The culture of freedom and responsibility has allowed the company to constantly grow and change as the world, and its members' needs, have also transformed.

Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of The Culture Map and one of the world's most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial philosophies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from his own career, No Rules Rules is the full, fascinating, and untold story of a unique company making its mark on the world.]]> 320 Reed Hastings 1984877879 Chris 0 currently-reading 4.42 2020 No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
author: Reed Hastings
name: Chris
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2020
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date added: 2021/04/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz]]> 51187948
On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London.

Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."--]]> 546 Erik Larson 038534872X Chris 0 currently-reading 4.30 2020 The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
author: Erik Larson
name: Chris
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
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date added: 2021/03/20
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