en-US Thu, 08 May 2025 21:28:41 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 214208333 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.��

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 319 Clare Leslie Hall 1668078201 Jeanette 0 4.53 2025
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
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]]> 56665711
Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them from having a good time.

In her diary, Isa describes a sweltering summer in the glittering city. By day, the girls sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Resources run ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert their social capital into something more lasting than precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill. Happy Hour is a novel about getting by and having fun in a world that wants you to do neither.]]> 174 Marlowe Granados 1839764031 Jeanette 0 currently-reading 3.55 2020
author: Marlowe Granados
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/08
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]]> 217182346 From the bestselling author of�� Why We Swim comes a mind-expanding exploration of muscle—from our ancient obsession with the ideal human form to the modern science of this amazing and adaptable tissue—that will change the way you think about what moves us through the world.
��
“Remarkable . . .�� A singular book about the true meanings of strength and flexibility, about our ability to define who we are and who we might be.��
—Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes
��
In On Muscle, Bonnie Tsui brings her signature blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal narrative to examine not just what muscles are but what they mean to us. Cardiac, smooth, skeletal—these three different types of muscle in our bodies make our hearts beat; push food through our intestines, blood through our vessels, babies out the uterus; attach to our bones and allow for motion. Tsui also traces how muscles have defined beauty—and how they have distorted it—through the ages, and how they play an essential role in our physical and mental health.
��
Tsui introduces us to the first female weightlifter to pick up the famed Scottish Dinnie Stones, then takes us on a 50-mile run through the Nevada desert that follows the path of escape from a Native boarding school—and gives the concept of endurance new meaning. She travels to Oslo, where cutting-edge research reveals how muscles help us bounce back after injury and illness, an important aspect of longevity. She jumps into the action with a historic Double Dutch club in Washington, D.C., to explain anew what Charles Darwin meant by the brain-body connection. Woven throughout are stories of Tsui’s childhood with her Chinese immigrant artist dad—a black belt in karate—who schools her from a young age in a kind of quirky, in-house Muscle Academy.��
��
On Muscle shows us the poetry in the physical, and the surprising ways muscle can reveal what we’re capable of.]]> 256 Bonnie Tsui 1643753088 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.03
author: Bonnie Tsui
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.03
book published:
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date added: 2025/04/21
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]]> 23213831 Please Don't Come Back from the Moon and My American Unhappiness delivers his breakout novel: a deft and hilarious exploration of the simmering tensions beneath the surface of a contented marriage that explode in the bedrooms and backyards of a small town over the course of a long, hot summer.

In the sweltering heat of one summer in a small Midwestern town, Claire and Don Lowry discover that married life isn't quite what they'd predicted.

One night Don, a father of two, leaves his house for an evening stroll, only to wake up the next morning stoned and lying in a hammock next to a young woman he barely knows. Meanwhile, his wife, Claire, leaves the house to go on a midnight run—only to find herself bumming cigarettes and beer outside the all-night convenience store.

As the summer lingers and the temperature rises, this quotidian town's adults grow wilder and more reckless while their children grow increasingly confused. Claire, Don, and their neighbors and friends find themselves on an existential odyssey, exploring the most puzzling quandaries of marriage and maturity. When does a fantasy become infidelity? When does compromise incite resentment? When does routine become boring monotony? Can Claire and Don survive everything that befalls them in this one summer, forgive their mistakes, and begin again?

Award-winning writer Dean Bakopoulos delivers a brutally honest and incredibly funny novel about the strange and tenuous ties that bind us, and the strange and unlikely places we find connection. Full of mirth, melancholy, and redemption, Summerlong explores what happens when life goes awry.]]> 352 Dean Bakopoulos 0062321188 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.36 2015
author: Dean Bakopoulos
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 31684925 Lab Girl and Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, a luminous coming-of-age novel about a young female scientist who must recalibrate her life when her academic career goes off track.

Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. She's tormented by her failed research--and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence from her throughout her life. But there's another, nonscientific question the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can't make a life before finding success on her own.

Eventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and herself, behind. And for the first time, she's confronted with a question she won't find the answer to in a What do I really want? Over the next two years, this winningly flawed, disarmingly insightful heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry--one in which the reactions can't be quantified, measured, and analyzed; one that can be studied only in the mysterious language of the heart. Taking us deep inside her scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love and family.]]> 224 Weike Wang 1524731757 Jeanette 0 currently-reading 3.74 2017
author: Weike Wang
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 60437824 In this powerful novel about the cost of greatness, a legendary athlete attempts a comeback when the world considers her past her prime—from the New York Times bestselling author of Malibu Rising.

Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.

But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan.

At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked “the Battle-Axe�� anyway. Even if her body doesn’t move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.

In spite of it all, Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells her most vulnerable, emotional story yet.]]> 371 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158695 Jeanette 5 4.28 2022
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 40164365
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.]]> 212 Sigrid Nunez 0735219451 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.72 2018
author: Sigrid Nunez
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> 211934958 Two women fight to save their dystopian border town—and literature—in this gonzo near-future adventure.

The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of the town’s mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick’s pockets.

Scraping by in this godforsaken landscape are best friends Prosperina and Neftalí—the latter of whom, one of the town’s last literate citizens, hides and reads the books of the mysterious renegade author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas, whose last novel, Brother Brontë, is finally in Neftalí’s possession. But after a series of increasingly violent atrocities committed by Crick’s forces, Neftalí and Prosperina, with the help of a wounded bengal tigress, three scheming triplets, and an underground network of rebel tías, rise up to reclaim their city—and in the process, unlock Rivas’s connection to Three Rivers itself.

An adventure that only the acclaimed Fernando A. Flores could dream up, Brother Brontë is a mordant, gonzo romp through a ruined world that, in its dysfunction, tyranny, and disparity, nonetheless feels uncannily like our own. With his most ambitious book yet, Flores once again bends what fiction can do, in the process crafting a moving and unforgettable story of perseverance.]]> 352 Fernando A. Flores 0374604169 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.44 2025
author: Fernando A. Flores
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> 48890225 A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.]]> 337 Torrey Peters 0593133374 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.94 2021
author: Torrey Peters
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> 127938747 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.]]> 220 Álvaro Enrigue 059354479X Jeanette 0 to-read 3.75 2022
author: Álvaro Enrigue
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> 60556232 From the author of the critically acclaimed novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy.

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amidst the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house where "what did you dream?" was the preferred greeting in place of "how are you?," very little was out of the ordinary. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called "the secrets: " the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. As a young girl Rojas Contreras spent her days eavesdropping on her mother's fortune-telling clients and eagerly waiting for the phone calls from relatives reporting that her mother's apparition had, yet again, visited them thousands of miles away from where Mami stood in the family's kitchen.
So when Rojas Contreras, now living in the United States, suffered a head injury in her twenties that left her with amnesia--an accident eerily similar to a fall her mother took as a child, from which she woke not just with amnesia, but also the ability to see ghosts--the family assumed "the secrets" had been passed down once again.
Spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey home to Colombia to disinter Nono's remains. With her mother as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often hilarious guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse.
Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.]]> 308 Ingrid Rojas Contreras 038554667X Jeanette 0 currently-reading 4.16 2022
author: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 202907408 A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world with no place for the undocumented. Her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties, and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: She is both fascinated and repulsed.

Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?]]> 224 Karla Cornejo Villavicencio 0593449096 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.56 2024
author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Jeanette 5 4.15 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 71872896 The beloved bestselling author of Here for It presents a collection of heartening, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud essays about the lifelong search for community and returning home.

After going viral "reading" the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas is ready to live his best life--or, if not, at least his best-ish life.

Now, in this collection of insightful and hilarious essays, Thomas finds himself doing things completely out of character, starting with moving back to his perpetually misunderstood hometown of Baltimore. They say you can't go home again, but what if you and home have changed beyond recognition? From attending his twenty-year high school reunion and discovering another person's face on his name badge, to splattering an urgent care room with blood à la The Shining, to being terrorized by a plague of gay frogs who've overtaken his backyard, Thomas shares the nitty, and sometimes gritty, details of wrestling with your past life while in the middle of a new one. With wit, heart, and hope for the future, Congratulations, The Best Is Over! is the not-so-gentle reminder we all need that even when life doesn't go according to plan, we can still find our way back home.]]> 240 R. Eric Thomas 0593496264 Jeanette 5 4.04 2023
author: R. Eric Thomas
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
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]]> 157981748 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593243916.

Who and what are supercommunicators? They're the people who can steer a conversation to a successful conclusion. They are able to talk about difficult topics without giving offence. They know how to make others feel at ease and share what they think. They're brilliant facilitators and decision-guiders. How do they do it?

In this groundbreaking book, Charles Duhigg unravels the secrets of the supercommunicators to reveal the art - and the science - of successful communication. He unpicks the different types of everyday conversation and pinpoints why some go smoothly while others swiftly fall apart. He reveals the conversational questions and gambits that bring people together. And he shows how even the most tricky of encounters can be turned around. In the process, he shows why a CIA operative was able to win over a reluctant spy, how a member of a jury got his fellow jurors to view an open-and-shut case differently, and what a doctor found they needed to do to engage with a vaccine sceptic.

Above all, he reveals the techniques we can all master to successfully connect with others, however tricky the circumstances. Packed with fascinating case studies and drawing on cutting-edge research, this book will change the way you think about what you say, and how you say it.]]> 320 Charles Duhigg Jeanette 5 3.99 2024
author: Charles Duhigg
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> 199223202
New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son Sam had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, in a search for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend Monk Adams—now one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairytale cut short by an agonizing betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat, a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah's longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared into a game of intrigue between two men…and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands And Lovers draws readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.]]> 384 Beatriz Williams 0593724232 Jeanette 5 4.25 2024
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.11 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/19
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]]> 60838163 320 Myra Strober 0063117517 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.77
author: Myra Strober
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
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]]> 203846480 A “wonderfully joyful read�� (Good Housekeeping) a funny, uplifting story about the power of friendship and finding love in unexpected places from the author of The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot: When twentysomething Bella learns that 90-year-old Eddie has never been kissed, she makes it her mission to help him find love.
Eddie Winston is 90 years old. He has lived and loved, but he has never been kissed.

A true gentleman and incurable romantic, Eddie spends his days volunteering at a charity shop, where he sorts through the donations of the living and the dead, preserving letters and tokens of love. It is here that he meets Bella, a troubled young woman who, at 24 years old, has just lost the love of her life.

When Bella learns that Eddie is yet to have his first kiss, she resolves to help Eddie Winston finally find love, sparking an adventure that will take them to unexpected places and, they hope, bring Eddie Winston to the moment he has waited for all his life.

A tale of friendship and kindness that reminds us that those we love are never forgotten and it is never too late to try again.]]> 301 Marianne Cronin 0063383527 Jeanette 5 4.38 2024
author: Marianne Cronin
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
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]]> 53430792 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A NEW YORK TIMES Selection for BEST 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK
A PICK FOR THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S 2018 BEST BOOKS
THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT FOR READERS

“A page turner...An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis. "��The New York Times Book Review

A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, he finds his partner is infected, and that he might even have the virus himself. The only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago epidemic, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways the AIDS crisis affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. Yale and Fiona's stories unfold in incredibly moving and sometimes surprising ways, as both struggle to find goodness in the face of disaster.]]> 431 Rebecca Makkai Jeanette 5 4.44 2018
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> 62358023 Two sisters navigate the turbulent, euphoric early days of California surf culture in this dazzling saga of ambition, sacrifice, and longing for a family they never had, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife

Southern California, 1960s: endless sunny days surfing in Malibu, followed by glittering neon nights at Whisky A-Go-Go. In an era when women are expected to be housewives, Carol Donelly is breaking the mold as a legendary female surfer struggling to compete in a male-dominated sport--and her daughters, Mindy and Ginger, bear the weight of her unconventional lifestyle.

The Donnelly sisters grow up enduring their mother's absence--physically, when she's at the beach, and emotionally, the rare times she's at home. To escape questions about Carol's whereabouts--and chase their mom's elusive affection--they cut school to spend their days in the surf. From her first time on a board, Mindy shows a natural talent, but Ginger, two years younger, feels out of place in the water.

As they grow up and their lives diverge, Mindy and Ginger's relationship ebbs and flows. Mindy finds herself swept up in celebrity, complete with beachside love affairs, parties at the Playboy Club, and USO tours to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Ginger--desperate for a community of her own--is tugged into the vibrant counterculture of drugs and cults. Through it all, their sense of duty to each other survives, as the girls are forever connected by the emotional damage they carry from their unorthodox childhood.

A gripping, emotional story set at a time when mothers were expected to be Donna Reed, not Gidget, California Golden is an unforgettable novel about three women living in a society that was shifting as tempestuously as the breaking waves.]]> 368 Melanie Benjamin 0593497864 Jeanette 3 book-club 3.66 2023
author: Melanie Benjamin
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> 57555902 A gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become. A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society.

In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them.

When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others�� expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs.

Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.

Written with Febos�� characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.]]> 328 Melissa Febos Jeanette 0 book-club 4.13 2021
author: Melissa Febos
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> 51969326
After the financial crash, Ellie and her family have lost nearly everything--including their home in town. They have started over, carving out a new life in the unforgiving terrain of Echo Mountain. Though her sister Esther, especially, resents everything about the mountain, Ellie has found more freedom, a new strength, and a love of the natural world that now surrounds them. But there is little joy, even for Ellie, as they all struggle with the sorrow and aftermath of an accident that left her father in a coma. An accident for which Ellie has accepted the unearned weight of blame.

Urgent for a cure to bring her father back, Ellie is determined to try anything. Following her heart, and the lead of a scruffy mutt, Ellie will make her way to the top of the mountain, in search of the healing secrets of a woman known only as "the hag." But the mountain still has many untold stories left to reveal to Ellie, as she finds her way forward among a complex constellation of strong women spanning generations.]]> 356 Lauren Wolk 0525555560 Jeanette 5 pax-mom-books 4.24 2020
author: Lauren Wolk
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: pax-mom-books
review:

]]> 62682485
“Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.��

So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who traveled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us. . . and so much more.

In an extraordinary story that only he could tell—and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it—Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humor, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fueled it despite seemingly having it all.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening—as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.

©2022 Matthew Perry (P)2022 Macmillan Audio]]> 250 Matthew Perry Jeanette 0 3.82 2022
author: Matthew Perry
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 213870083 A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,�� a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,�� a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,�� Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.

Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.]]> 320 Curtis Sittenfeld 0593446739 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.91 2025
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60406379
A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,�� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?�� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!��), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 7 Jennette McCurdy 1797147943 Jeanette 5 4.44 2022
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 199796715
Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.]]> 368 Rufi Thorpe 0063356600 Jeanette 5 book-club 3.92 2024
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> 6609764
In a humorous and breakout book by Williams-Garcia, the Penderwicks meet the Black Panthers.]]> 224 Rita Williams-Garcia 0060760885 Jeanette 5 pax-mom-books 3.99 2010
author: Rita Williams-Garcia
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: pax-mom-books
review:

]]> 195820807
Emma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.

It's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected--including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?]]> 432 Abby Jimenez 1538704439 Jeanette 2 4.35 2024
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 198701985 From the New York Times best-selling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both.

Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped.

Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story��

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 354 Dolly Alderton 0593801318 Jeanette 3 3.80 2023
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 197828937
"A giddy, bold, mind-blowing tour de force by one of our most important literary writers." �� George Saunders, Booker-Prize winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo

"Profound and bawdy and deeply human, a brilliant work of art from a completely blown open and fearless mind."—Emma Cline, New York Times bestselling author of The Guest

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 333 Miranda July 0593190289 Jeanette 5 book-club 3.46 2024
author: Miranda July
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> 199124697 From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.

For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and—thanks to the cottage’s ancient plumbing—septic too.

This year’s vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past—except, perhaps, for Rocky’s hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing—her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.

It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family’s history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.]]> 236 Catherine Newman 0063345188 Jeanette 4 3.76 2024
author: Catherine Newman
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 209228675
From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.

Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. This is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.

When tech titans crowed that they would “move fast and break things,�� Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order. Her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of “listening in the heating ducts�� and prompted Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg to once observe: “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this.’��

While still in college, Swisher got her start at The Washington Post, where she became one of the few people in journalism interested in covering the nascent Internet. She went on to work for The Wall Street Journal, joining with Walt Mossberg to start the groundbreaking D: All Things Digital conference, as well as pioneering tech news sites.

Swisher has interviewed everyone who matters in tech over three decades, right when they presided over an explosion of world-changing innovation that has both helped and hurt our world. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few whom Swisher made sweat—figuratively and, in Zuckerberg’s case, literally.

Despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone.]]> 336 Kara Swisher Jeanette 5 3.88 2024
author: Kara Swisher
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 57359691 The riveting, unforgettable story of a girl whose indomitable spirit is tested by homelessness, poverty, and racism in an unequal America—from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott of The New York Times

Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, this story goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding as the chasm deepens between rich and poor.

In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to “code switch�� between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality. Based on nearly a decade of reporting, this book vividly illuminates some of the most critical issues in contemporary America through the life of one remarkable girl.]]> 602 Andrea Elliott 0812986946 Jeanette 5 4.71 2021
author: Andrea Elliott
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 212994452 'A modern-day Mrs. Caliban, BLOB is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways'
Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here

A hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend...

The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Now at twenty-three, after getting dumped and dropping out of college, Vi works as a front desk attendant at a hotel where she refills cucumber water samovars and fends off overtures of friendship from her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. But when Vi decides to accompany Rachel to a local drag show, her life changes forever. In the alley outside the bar, next to a trash can, is a blob with beady black eyes. Unable to leave it behind, Vi picks up the creature and, in a moment of drunken desperation, takes it home with her.

As her pet blob becomes sentient, Vi realizes it obeys her commands and she decides to mold the blob into her ideal partner. She feeds it sugary cereal and a stream of pop culture, and soon the creature transforms into a movie-star handsome white man. But as Vi's desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, the ex-boyfriend who has unfriended her, and the racial marginalization that has defined her relationships. Ultimately, Vi embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that it's impossible to control those you love.

Blending the familiar with the fantastical, BLOB tells a witty, heartfelt story of what it means to be human.

'An inventive, utterly unique debut'
Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light]]> 256 Maggie Su 0063358646 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.38 2025
author: Maggie Su
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43834909 Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then, one of them goes missing.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister--before it's too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.]]> 482 Liz Moore 0525540679 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.02 2020
author: Liz Moore
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55825214
Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. To Eleanor, their New Hampshire farm provides everything she always wanted—summer nights watching Cam’s softball games, snow days by the fire and the annual tradition of making paper boats and cork people to launch in the brook every spring. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family.

Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner.

Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart. Tracing the course of their lives—through the gender transition of one child and another’s choice to completely break with her mother—Joyce Maynard captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past, and find redemption in its darkest hours.

A story of holding on and learning to let go, Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness.]]> 480 Joyce Maynard 0062398288 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.11 2021
author: Joyce Maynard
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127282631 Following the death of her closest friend, Sloane Crosley explores multiple kinds of loss in this disarmingly witty and poignant memoir.

Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship and a book about loss packed with verve for life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.]]> 208 Sloane Crosley 0374609845 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.84 2024
author: Sloane Crosley
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.22 2024
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 174156218 An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer�� (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competition

An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors�� pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.

Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivates young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.]]> 224 Rita Bullwinkel 0593654102 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.49 2024
author: Rita Bullwinkel
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 34273236
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned �� from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

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

When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town �� and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost . . .]]> 338 Celeste Ng 0735224293 Jeanette 0 4.05 2017
author: Celeste Ng
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 958489
5 hr 5 min]]> 5 Joan Didion 159887005X Jeanette 0 3.72 2005
author: Joan Didion
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 26067890 *Winner of the 2016 Schneider Family Book Award��
*2016 Newbery Honor book

An exceptionally moving story of triumph against all odds set during World War 2, from the acclaimed author of Jefferson’s Sons and for fans of Number the Stars.
��
Ten-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada’s twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother Jamie is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn’t waste a minute—she sneaks out to join him.
��
So begins a new adventure of Ada, and for Susan Smith, the woman who is forced to take the two kids in. As Ada teaches herself to ride a pony, learns to read, and watches for German spies, she begins to trust Susan—and Susan begins to love Ada and Jamie. But in the end, will their bond be enough to hold them together through wartime? Or will Ada and her brother fall back into the cruel hands of their mother?]]> 316 Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 0147510481 Jeanette 5 pax-mom-books 4.56 2015
author: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: pax-mom-books
review:

]]> 37433980 Length: 3 hrs and 17 min

A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that blends HBO's Westworld with Iain M. Banks' Culture books.

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid �� a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.�� Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 4 Martha Wells Jeanette 0 4.01 2017
author: Martha Wells
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
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]]> 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

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

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

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Jeanette 0 to-read 4.11 2024
author: Alison Espach
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/04
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]]> 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 Jeanette 0 4.39 2010
author: Claire Keegan
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
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]]> 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

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

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Jeanette 0 4.41 2016
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2017/01/01
date added: 2024/11/06
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]]> 200597008 Brought to you by Penguin.

A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives - from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain

If you are going to care for someone, you must first understand them. If you're going to hire, marry, or befriend someone, you have to be able to see them. If you are going to work closely with someone, you have to be able to make them feel recognized and valued. As David Brooks observes, "The older I get, the more I come to the certainty that there is one skill at the center of any healthy family, company, classroom, community or the ability to see each other, to know other people, to make them feel valued, heard and understood."

And yet we humans don't do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us to do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us. If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person's story should you pay attention to?

Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, and from the worlds of theatre, history, and education, to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps listeners become more understanding and considerate towards others; it helps listeners find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.

The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is a profoundly creative How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, seeking to understand and yearning to be understood.]]> David Brooks Jeanette 0 3.97 2023
author: David Brooks
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/11/04
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]]> 17235026
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

The Girl with All the Gifts is a sensational thriller, perfect for fans of Stephen King, Justin Cronin, and Neil Gaiman.]]> 461 M.R. Carey 0356500152 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.94 2014
author: M.R. Carey
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/18
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]]> 60139504 How to Keep House While Drowning will introduce you to six life-changing principles that will revolutionize the way you approach home care—without endless to-do lists. Presented in 31 daily thoughts, this compassionate guide will help you begin to get free of the shame and anxiety you feel over home care.

Inside you will learn:
· How to shift your perspective of care tasks from moral to functional;
· How to stop negative self-talk and shame around care tasks;
· How to give yourself permission to rest, even when things aren’t finished;
· How to motivate yourself to care for your space.]]> 151 K.C. Davis 166800285X Jeanette 0 to-read 4.22 2022
author: K.C. Davis
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

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

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

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

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.54 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 45043854
The Lockwood brothers are supposed to be able to survive anything. Their dad, a hardcore survivalist, has stockpiled enough food and water on their isolated Nevada ranch to last for months. But when they are robbed at gunpoint during a massive blackout while their dad is out of town, John and Stew must walk 96 miles in the stark desert sun to get help—and they have only 3 days before their time runs out....]]> 304 J.L. Esplin 1250192307 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.05 2020
author: J.L. Esplin
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/18
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]]> 199531664 People

"Heavenly hilarity for readers."��Good Housekeeping

A whip-smart, satirical romp through the minefield of modern motherhood, in the vein of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Fleishman Is in Trouble

It takes a village...just not this one.

Annie Lewin is at the end of her rope. She’s a mother of three young children, her workaholic husband is never around, and the vicious competition for spots in New York City’s kindergartens is heating up. An advice-columnist for a parenting website, Annie can’t help but judge the insanity of it all—even as she finds herself going to impossible lengths to secure the best spot for her own son.

As Annie comes to terms with the infinitesimal odds of success, she is pushed to the brink. Of course, this newly raw and unhinged version of Annie is great for her advice column: the more she spins out, the more clicks and comments she gets.

But when she commits a ghastly social faux pas that goes viral, she’s forced to confront the question: is she really any better than the cutthroat parents she always judged?]]> 320 Sophie Brickman 0063371200 Jeanette 0 to-read 2.98
author: Sophie Brickman
name: Jeanette
average rating: 2.98
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 59761779 USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Improve all areas of your health—your sleep, cravings, mood, energy, skin, weight—and even slow down aging with easy, science-based hacks to manage your blood sugar while still eating the foods you love.Glucose, or blood sugar, is a tiny molecule in our body that has a huge impact on our health. It enters our bloodstream through the starchy or sweet foods we eat. Ninety percent of us suffer from too much glucose in our system—and most of us don't know it. The symptoms? Cravings, fatigue, infertility, hormonal issues, acne, wrinkles�� And over time, the development of conditions like type 2 diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome, cancer, dementia, and heart disease. Drawing on cutting-edge science and her own pioneering research, biochemist Jessie Inchauspé offers ten simple, surprising hacks to help you balance your glucose levels and reverse your symptoms—without going on a diet or giving up the foods you love. For * How eating foods in the right order will make you lose weight effortlessly * What secret ingredient will allow you to eat dessert and still go into fat-burning mode * What small change to your breakfast will unlock energy and cut your cravings Both entertaining, informative, and packed with the latest scientific data, this book presents a new way to think about better health. Glucose Revolution is chock-full of tips that can drastically and immediately improve your life, whatever your dietary preferences.]]> 295 Jessie Inchauspé 1982179430 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.52 2022
author: Jessie Inchauspé
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/11
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]]> 157981711 A manifesto on the gender politics of marriage (bad) and divorce (actually pretty good!) in America today, and an argument that the former needs a reboot

Studies show that nearly 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women—women who are tired, fed up, exhausted, and unhappy. Journalist Lyz Lenz is one such woman whose life fell apart after she reached a breaking point in her twelve-year marriage. In this exuberant and unapologetic book, Lenz flips the script on that narrative and preaches the good gospel of the power of divorce.

The end of a marriage is often seen as the failure of the individual—most often the woman. We've all seen how media portray divorced women: sad, lonely, drowning their sorrows in a bottle of wine, desperate for a new man. It’s as though they did something wrong, so they’ve been cast out from society. Lenz sees divorce as a practical and powerful solution for women to take back the power they are owed, while examining why we call divorce a failure when it's heterosexual marriage that has been flawed all along. How can women succeed in marriage when most relationships are based on inequality?

This book weaves reportage with sociological research, literature with popular culture, and personal stories of coming together and breaking up to create a kaleidoscopic and poignant portrait of American marriage today. Lenz argues that the mechanisms of American power, justice, love, and gender equality remain deeply flawed, and that marriage, like any other cultural institution, is due for a reckoning. Unlike any other book about divorce, this raucous manifesto for acceptance, solidarity, and collective female refusal takes readers on a riveting ride—all while pointing us toward something a little freer.]]> 288 Lyz Lenz 0593241126 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.92 2024
author: Lyz Lenz
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/11
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]]> 174156145
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

A nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we’ll do for our loved ones, what we’ll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.]]> 467 Tana French 0593493435 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.95 2024
author: Tana French
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/09
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]]> 203956642 From the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, a re-examination of one of the 20th century’s greatest unsung power players When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, obituaries that followed were predictably sexist. Written off as a party girl, courtesan and social climber, her real legacy was overshadowed by a glamorous social life spent in glittering, elite circles of power. That is, until with a wealth of new research, interviews and newly discovered sources, Sonia Purnell is reclaiming her larger-than-life story of influence and power in full, spectacular depth for the first time. At age 20 Churchill’s beloved daughter-in-law became a “secret weapon�� during World War II, wining, dining, and seducing diplomats and envoys to help win over American sentiment (and secrets) for the cause. She transformed Gianni Agnelli into a savvy businessman and heir to the Fiat empire, and after moving to the US brought a struggling Democratic party back to life, hand-picking Bill Clinton from obscurity and vaulting him to the presidency. Picked as Ambassador to France, she deployed her legendary quiet, subtle power to charm world leaders and broker an end to the conflict in Bosnia, in effect rehabilitating the reputation of the US on the world stage. There are few people in history with a greater scope of impact over as many decades and across continents, and there is no one in 20th Century politics, culture, and fashion whom she did not know, including Aly Khan, Kay Graham, Jackie Onassis, Truman Capote, Gloria Steinem, Ed Murrow, and Frank Sinatra among her friends and lovers.��Written with the novelistic richness and investigative rigor that only Sonia Purnell could bring to this story full of sex, politics, yachts, and fabulous clothes, KINGMAKER re-asserts Harriman’s rightful place in history.]]> 528 Sonia Purnell 0593297806 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.09
author: Sonia Purnell
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/29
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]]> 181250294 THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

From New York Times bestselling coauthor of��The Coddling of the American Mind, an essential investigation into the collapse of youth mental health—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“Erudite, engaging, combative, crusading.�� ��New York Times Book Review

“Words that chill the parental heart�� ��thanks to Mr. Haidt, we can glimpse the true horror of what happened not only in the U.S. but also elsewhere in the English-speaking world�� lucid, memorable�� galvanizing.�� ��Wall Street Journal

"[An] important new book...The shift in kids�� energy and attention from the physical world to the virtual one, Haidt shows, has been catastrophic, especially for girls."��—Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood�� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood�� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood�� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems�� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 395 Jonathan Haidt 0593655044 Jeanette 0 4.38 2024
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/26
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]]> 207293815 In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial�� America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.]]> 304 Cebo Campbell 1668034921 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Cebo Campbell
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/20
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]]> 68007803 “The world's leading alien hunter�� �� New York Times Magazine

From acclaimed Harvard astrophysicist and bestselling author of Extraterrestrial comes a mind-expanding new book explaining why becoming an interstellar species is imperative for humanity’s survival and detailing a game plan for how we can settle among the stars.

In��the New York Times��bestseller��Extraterrestrial,��Avi Loeb, the��longest serving Chair of Harvard’s Astronomy Department, presented a theory that��shook the scientific our solar system, Loeb claimed, had likely been visited by��a piece of advanced alien technology from a distant star.��This provocative and persuasive argument opened millions of minds internationally to the vast possibilities of our universe and the existence of��intelligent life beyond Earth. But a crucial question now that we are aware of the existence of extraterrestrial life, what do we do next? How do we prepare ourselves for interaction with interstellar extraterrestrial civilization? How can our species become interstellar?

Now Loeb tackles these questions in a revelatory, powerful call to arms that reimagines the idea of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Dismantling our science-fiction fueled visions of a human and alien life encounter,��Interstellar��provides a realistic and practical blueprint for how such an interaction might actually occur, resetting our cultural understanding and expectation of what it means to identify an extraterrestrial object. From awe-inspiring searches for extraterrestrial technology, to the heated debate of the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Loeb��provides a thrilling, front-row view of the monumental progress in science and technology��currently preparing us for contact. He also lays out the��profound implications of becoming—or not becoming—interstellar; in an urgent, eloquent appeal for more proactive engagement��with the world beyond ours, he powerfully contends why we must seek out other life forms, and in the process, choose who and what we are within the universe.

Combining cutting edge��science, physics, and philosophy,��Interstellar��revolutionizes the approach��to our search for extraterrestrial��life and our preparation for its discovery. In this eye-opening, necessary look at our future, Avi Loeb artfully and expertly raises some of the most important questions facing us as humans, and proves, once again, that scientific curiosity is the key to our survival.]]> 252 Avi Loeb 006325090X Jeanette 0 to-read 3.53 2023
author: Avi Loeb
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/14
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]]> 43261155 Kwame Alexander's The Crossover��is brought to life as a graphic novel with illustrations by Dawud Anyabwile.��

"With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . . The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering.��’Cuz tonight I’m delivering," raps twelve-year-old Josh Bell. Thanks to their dad, he and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood—he's got mad beats, too, which help him find his rhythm when it’s all on the line.

See the Bell family in a whole new light through Dawud Anyabwile's illustrations as the brothers'��winning season unfolds, and the world as they know it begins to change.]]> 224 Kwame Alexander 1328575497 Jeanette 0 mother-daughter-book-club 4.39
author: Kwame Alexander
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.39
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: mother-daughter-book-club
review:

]]> 19161852
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.]]> 468 N.K. Jemisin Jeanette 0 to-read 4.29 2015
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56212905 The Brittanys.

Brittany Rosenberg: drives her golf cart around her subdivision to meet boys.

Brittany Gottlieb: insists you can't lose your virginity if you haven't gotten your period. (She heard it somewhere!)

Brittany Tomassi: is from New York.

Brittany Jensen: once threw her tampon into a stranger's swimming pool. A brash, bold, unapologetic tomboy. And the greatest person in the whole wide world.

At least as far as the fifth Brittany--our narrator--is concerned. Even within their friend group, she and Jensen are a duo: with their matching JanSport backpacks, Tiffany chokers, and Victoria's Secret push-up bras, they are unstoppable. And now that they're finally growing up, they're going to do everything: dye their hair, attend no-parent parties, try pot . . . maybe even lose their virginities. 2004 is totally going to be their year!

Except Jensen's interests may be diverging from her friends'. And within our narrator's own family--in the lives of her exhausted mother and beloved, genius older brother--life-changing events may be taking shape. Events that only years later, looking back, she has the perspective to see.]]> 272 Brittany Ackerman 0593311736 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.26 2021
author: Brittany Ackerman
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 22098550 278 Sara Pennypacker 0062377019 Jeanette 0 pax-mom-books 3.96 2016
author: Sara Pennypacker
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves: pax-mom-books
review:

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

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Jeanette 0 to-read 4.46 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver Jeanette 0 to-read 4.46 2022
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/09
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]]> 127463471
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardised by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue.

A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior.]]> 400 Kiley Reid Jeanette 0 3.48 2024
author: Kiley Reid
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/07
date added: 2024/07/07
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]]> 198563648
Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the UK, is a desperate young soccer agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin”—an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Messi.

Narrated in turn by Mark and his work colleague Lakesha Williams, the novel is both a tale of family and migration and an international adventure story that implicates the brothers in the beauty and ugliness of soccer, the perils and promises of international business, and the dark history of transatlantic money-making.

As only he can do, Joseph O'Neill investigates the legacy of colonialism in the context of family love, global capitalism, and the dreaming individual.]]> 288 Joseph O'Neill 0593701321 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.53 2024
author: Joseph O'Neill
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?��

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives�� successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives�� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.72 2024
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/28
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]]> 190118193 From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?]]> 610 Rachel Khong 0593537262 Jeanette 0 book-club 4.15 2024
author: Rachel Khong
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/06/17
shelves: book-club
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]]> 199459845 Meet the Milanis: fast-food heiresses, L.A. royalty, and your newest reality TV obsession.

Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all—a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire, and four spirited daughters. There’s Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically online overachiever; and impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll. Each of the Milanis—even their aloof Persian cat Pari—has something to hide, but the looming scrutiny of fame also threatens to bring the family closer than ever. Dramatic and biting yet full of heart, Tehrangeles is a tragicomic saga about high-functioning family dysfunction and the ever-present struggle to accept one’s true self.]]> 320 Porochista Khakpour 1524747904 Jeanette 0 to-read 2.87 2024
author: Porochista Khakpour
name: Jeanette
average rating: 2.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 195697350
Reese Hart can’t wait to spend the summer in Scotland, resetting her life while her daughter attends an elite soccer camp. Her goal? To move past what happened between her ex-husband and her former best friend, now happily engaged and eager to rebuild their relationship with Reese. What’s definitely not on the agenda? A summer fling with a sexy Scot.

Two years after an injury ended his professional soccer career—and his bad behavior in clubs made headlines—Oliver Vass is running trainings for a soccer camp. He knows two one, he’s nothing without soccer, and two, if he doesn’t get his act together, he’ll lose the chance to be a father to his ten-year-old son.

When Reese’s ex-husband and his fiancée show up in Scotland, Reese’s reset month dream disappears �� until Oliver comes up with a fake dating. A new boyfriend is just the excuse Reese needs to avoid her ex. And if Oliver brings wholesome Reese to his son’s birthday party, it’ll look like he’s getting his act together. It’s the perfect plan, but when Oliver kisses Reese in the ruins of an ancient abbey, their steamy chemistry explodes.

But Reese is only in Scotland for a month. And as the end of their charade approaches, she and Oliver have to figure out what’s real and what’s not, before they end up an ocean apart.

If We Pretend is a first person, present tense, dual POV romance about a divorced mom and a Scottish ex-professional soccer player who fake date against the gorgeous backdrop of the Scottish Borders. For fans of Tessa Bailey, Lucy Score, Meghan Quinn, and Ted Lasso.]]> 296 Chrissy Hopewell Jeanette 0 to-read 4.07
author: Chrissy Hopewell
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/05
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]]> 75593520
Roz calms and organizes the animals, but the poison tide takes a terrible toll on the island. And when the robot discovers that her new body is waterproof, she marches into the waves and sets out across the ocean, determined to stop the poison tide.

During her undersea journey, Roz encounters amazing geological formations and incredible creatures, and she sees the devastation caused by the toxic waters. Creatures she meets along the way direct her to a mysterious character known as the Ancient Shark, who explains that the poison tide is caused by a huge station that floats on the waves; a station operated by humans and by robots. To stop them, the Ancient Shark is prepared to attack with an army of sea creatures. However, Roz hopes to find a peaceful solution, instead. Can the wild robot save the ocean and her island and everything she loves?]]> 288 Peter Brown Jeanette 0 pax-mom-books 4.10 2023
author: Peter Brown
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: pax-mom-books
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]]> 65648032 “Does love conquer all? Does it now? Did it ever? These are questions Cecilia Rabess asks in her nimble, discerning debut…The ending of Everything’s Fine is one of the best I’ve read in years.�� ��The New York Times

A painfully funny, painfully real love story for our time that doesn’t just ask will they, but…should they?

Jess is a senior in college, ambitious but aimless, when she meets Josh. He’s a privileged preppy in chinos, ready to inherit the world. She’s not expecting to inherit anything.

A year later, they’re both working at the same investment bank. And when Jess finds herself the sole Black woman on the floor, overlooked and underestimated, Josh shows up for her in surprising—if imperfect—ways. Before long, an unlikely friendship forms, tinged with undeniable chemistry. It gradually, and then suddenly, turns into an electrifying romance that shocks them both.

Despite their differences, the force of their attraction propels the relationship forward. But as the cultural and political landscape shifts underneath them, Jess is forced to consider if their disagreements run deeper than she can bear, what she’s willing to compromise for love, and whether, in fact, everything’s fine.

A stunning debut about “a love affair that turns inferno�� (People), that is “extraordinarily brave…funny as hell,�� (Zakiya Dalilah Harris) Cecilia Rabess’s Everything’s Fine is an incisive and moving portrait of a young woman who is just beginning to discover who she is and who she has the right to be. It is also a “subtle, ironic, wise, state-of-the-nation novel�� (Nick Hornby) that asks big questions about the way we live now and “whether our choices stop and end with us�� (The New York Times).]]> 335 Cecilia Rabess 1982187719 Jeanette 0 3.69 2023
author: Cecilia Rabess
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
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]]> 199797614
Gwen Turner has made a bloody mess of her life. She recently broke up with the best man she’s ever known for reasons even she can’t admit to herself and quit a lucrative job to open her own coffee shop. To top it all off, her best friend is getting married and leaving her behind in singlehood.

Along with too much cheap wine and bad reality TV, Gwen turns to a dating app to help fill the void in her life. Swiping through the few eligible bachelors left in town, she spends her evenings out on one disastrous date after another. But when a string of murders suddenly occurs in her small coastal English city, she’s shocked by the connection between each of the victims—they’ve all been on a date with her.

Before she knows what’s happening, Gwen finds herself the main suspect in a serial killer’s murderous spree, and the only way she can clear her name is to track down her former dates (even those that have ghosted her) and unmask a killer before it’s too late.]]> 304 L.M. Chilton 1668045702 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.41 2023
author: L.M. Chilton
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> 137183760
This is the ultimate manual for living better and longer.

For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of ageing that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late, prolonging lifespan at the expense of quality of life. Dr Peter Attia, the world's top longevity expert who is featured on Chris Hemsworth's National Geographic documentary Limitless, believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalised, proactive strategy for longevity.

This isn't 'biohacking,' it's science: a well-founded strategic approach to extending lifespan while improving our physical, cognitive and emotional health, making each decade better than the one before. With Outlive's practical advice and roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Read by Peter Attia.

©2023 Peter Attia and Bill Gifford (P)2023 Penguin Audio]]> 18 Peter Attia Jeanette 0 4.24 2023
author: Peter Attia
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/05/30
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]]> 58673059
This year, as her son joins the ranks of the PMS wrestlers, Jen faces mystifying new social dynamics with her trademark combination of reluctance and resigned acceptance. The sights and smells of her son’s wrestling matches are more than enough for her to deal with, but Jen also finds herself fully immersed in sports-mom competitiveness. These parents all seem perfectly unassuming until their kids start to wrestle, and then some become raging momsters.

Jen steels herself for the indignities of middle school life, but she cannot quite fathom the extents to which some kids (and moms) will go for the sweet taste of victory. Add to this some truly bizarre encounters with students from her spin class and deeper challenges managing her parents, and Jen has more gum than she can chew...and even her riotously funny one-liners might not get her through it this time.]]> 241 Laurie Gelman 1250777593 Jeanette 0 4.02 2022
author: Laurie Gelman
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/05/30
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]]> 61364899 What’s the point of giving someone a beautiful death if you can’t give yourself a beautiful life?

From the day she watched her kindergarten teacher drop dead during a dramatic telling of Peter Rabbit, Clover Brooks has felt a stronger connection with the dying than she has with the living. After the beloved grandfather who raised her dies alone while she is traveling, Clover becomes a death doula in New York City, dedicating her life to ushering people peacefully through their end-of-life process.

Clover spends so much time with the dying that she has no life of her own, until the final wishes of a feisty old woman send Clover on a trip across the country to uncover a forgotten love story––and perhaps, her own happy ending. As she finds herself struggling to navigate the uncharted roads of romance and friendship, Clover is forced to examine what she really wants, and whether she’ll have the courage to go after it.

Probing, clever, and hopeful, The Collected Regrets of Clover turns the normally taboo subject of death into a reason to celebrate life.]]> 320 Mikki Brammer 1250284406 Jeanette 0 4.29 2023
author: Mikki Brammer
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/30
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]]> 63876547
The definitive book on the rise of “toxic achievement culture�� overtaking our kids' and parents' lives, and a new framework for fighting back

In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to “get ahead.�� Family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules. Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America’s highest achieving schools. Parents, educators, and community leaders are facing the same how can we teach our kids to strive towards excellence without crushing them?

In Never Enough, award-winning reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace investigates the deep roots of toxic achievement culture, and finds out what we must do to fight back. Drawing on interviews with families, educators, and an original survey of nearly 6,000 parents, she exposes how the pressure to perform is not a matter of parental choice but baked in to our larger society and spurred by increasing income inequality and dwindling opportunities. As a result, children are increasingly absorbing the message that they have no value outside of their accomplishments, a message that is reinforced by the media and greater culture at large.

Through deep research and interviews with today’s leading child psychologists, Wallace shows what kids need from the adults in the room is not more pressure, but to feel like they matter , and have intrinsic self-worth not contingent upon external achievements. Parents and educators who adopt the language and values of mattering help children see themselves as a valuable contributor to a larger community. And in an ironic twist, kids who receive consistent feedback that they matter no matter what are more likely to have the resilience, self-confidence, and psychological security to thrive.

Packed with memorable stories and offering a powerful toolkit for positive change, Never Enough offers an urgent, humane view of the crisis plaguing today’s teens and a practical framework for how to help.]]> 320 Jennifer Breheny Wallace 0593191862 Jeanette 0 4.15 2023
author: Jennifer Breheny Wallace
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/30
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]]> 61190770
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.]]> 367 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 0593317335 Jeanette 0 4.13 2023
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/05/30
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]]> 54785515 The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless battle against distraction; we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,�� Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.]]> 271 Oliver Burkeman 0374159122 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.20 2021
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 55835474
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.

Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...

With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.]]> 256 Rachel Yoder 0385546815 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.46 2021
author: Rachel Yoder
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 46041199 A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old “millennial everywoman,�� she has recently left her white-collar desk job—in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time—as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women—alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist.

In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child—to put them first.

Jiyoung’s painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons “family planning�� birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the arrival of writer of international significance]]> 163 Cho Nam-Joo 1631496700 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.17 2016
author: Cho Nam-Joo
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 198123575 “Be prepared to fully lose yourself in The Winner—a book I started and then simply couldn’t stop reading. Teddy Wayne has written a timely, topical novel that still somehow feels like a classic.”—Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Long Bright River

Conor O’Toole has never been anywhere as casually glamorous as Cutters Neck, a gated community near Cape Cod. It’s a sweet deal for the summer: free lodging in a guest cottage in exchange for tennis lessons, luxuriously far from the cramped Yonkers apartment he shares with his diabetic mother.

In this oceanfront paradise, however, new clients prove hard to come by, and Conor has bills to pay. Then a sharp-tongued divorcée appears, offering him double his usual rate. Soon he realizes Catherine is expecting additional, off-the-court services for her money, and Conor tumbles into a secret erotic affair unlike anything he’s experienced before.

Despite his steamy flings with a woman twice his age, he simultaneously finds himself falling for the artsy, outspoken girl he met on the beach. Conor somehow finds a way to manage this tangled web—until he makes one final, irreversible mistake.

A dark, explosive literary thriller that brilliantly skewers the elite, Whiting Award winner Teddy Wayne’s unputdownable novel is cinematic, shocking, and a psychological masterpiece.]]> 320 Teddy Wayne 0063353598 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.11 2024
author: Teddy Wayne
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61195313
In teenagers, powerful emotions come with the territory. And with so many of today’s teens contending with academic pressure, social media stress, worries about the future, and concerns about their own mental health, it’s easy for them—and their parents—to feel anxious and overwhelmed. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Parents who read this book will
�� what to expect in the normal course of adolescent emotional development and when it’s time to worry
�� why teens (and adults) need to understand that mental health isn’t about “feeling good�� but about having feelings that fit the moment, even if those feelings are unwanted or painful
�� strategies for supporting teens who feel at the mercy of their emotions so they can become psychologically aware and skilled at managing their feelings
�� how to approach common challenges that come with adolescence, such as friction at home, spiking anxiety, risky behavior, navigating friendships and romances, the pull of social media, and many more
�� the best ways to stay connected to their teens and how to provide the kind of relationship that adolescents need and want

With clear, research-informed explanations alongside illuminating, real-life examples, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers gives parents the concrete, practical information they need to steady their teens through the bumpy yet transformational journey into adulthood.]]> 229 Lisa Damour 0593500016 Jeanette 0 4.47
author: Lisa Damour
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/19
date added: 2024/03/19
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]]> 15785457 Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's. In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.

This volume also includes three of Capote's best-known stories, “House of Flowers,�� “A Diamond Guitar,�� and “A Christmas Memory,�� which the Saturday Review called “one of the most moving stories in our language.�� It is a tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.]]> 141 Truman Capote Jeanette 0 book-club 3.82 1958
author: Truman Capote
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/19
date added: 2024/03/19
shelves: book-club
review:

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

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

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

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Jeanette 5 3.77 2022
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/19
date added: 2024/03/19
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]]> 200632685
Now, I’m gonna be honest: Some of the details might be vague because a b*tch is fifty-five and she’s smoked a ton of weed. But while bits might be a touch hazy, I can promise you the underlying truth is REAL. Whether I’m talking about my childhood growing up in the South, my early stand-up days driving from gig to gig through the darkest parts of our country and praying I wouldn’t get murdered, what Chris Rock told Lorne Michaels, that time I wanted to shoot Whoopi Goldberg on SNL, and yeah, I’ll tell you all about Ghostbusters and the nudes and Supermarket Sweep and The Daily Show . . . I’m sharing it all in these pages. It’s not easy being a woman in comedy, especially when you’re a tall-*ss Black woman with a trumpet voice. I have to fight so that no one takes me for granted, and no one takes advantage. These are the stories that explain why. (Cue the Law & Order theme.)

Read by the author, with a Foreword by Chris Rock.]]> 17 Leslie Jones Jeanette 5 4.31 2023
author: Leslie Jones
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/31
shelves:
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]]> 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Jeanette 5 4.06 2023
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/31
date added: 2024/01/31
shelves:
review:

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

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Jeanette 0 3.69 2023
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/20
date added: 2024/01/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 191004855
“My go-to for how we all, including ourselves, raise good humans! �� —Drew Barrymore

In the age of high-pressure parenting, when so many of us we feel like we’ve got to get everything exactly right the first time, Dr. Aliza Pressman is the compassionate, reassuring expert we all need—and the one whose advice we can all use. Already beloved by listeners of hit podcast, Raising Good Humans , Dr. Pressman distills it all with a handful of strategies every parent can use to get things right often enough : Relationship, Reflection, Regulation, Rules, and Repair.

The 5 Principles of Parenting doesn’t presume to tell you how to parent with “my way is right�� advice because the science is There’s no one “right�� way to raise good humans. No matter how you were raised, how your coparent behaves, or how your kids have been parented up until now, you can start using The 5 Principles of Parenting to chart a manageable course for raising good humans that’s aligned with your own values and with your children’s unique temperaments. Whether you're in the trenches with a toddler or a tween (because spoiler the tantrums of childhood mirror of the tantrums of adolescence), it’s never too late to learn to use these 5 principles to reparent yourself and help your kids build the resilience they need to thrive. Through practice and normalizing imperfection, along the way you’ll discover the person you’re ultimately raising is yourself . By becoming more intentional people, we become better parents. By becoming better parents, we become better people. Let’s get started.]]> 368 Aliza Pressman 166801453X Jeanette 0 to-read 4.12
author: Aliza Pressman
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 19161872
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

I AM MALALA will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.]]> 230 Malala Yousafzai 031632793X Jeanette 0 mother-daughter-book-club 4.32
author: Malala Yousafzai
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2021/11/01
date added: 2024/01/23
shelves: mother-daughter-book-club
review:

]]> 75495038
When Dory loses track of her mom in the hardware store, it leads to a touch of separation anxiety. Dory suspects her mom will soon sail off on a ship across the world to eat cake and play kickball and never return. These are big feelings, and Dory knows what to. She throws a sheet over her head and haunts her family everywhere they go so they can't leave her, much to the annoyance of her brother and sister. Then Dory’s longtime nemesis Mrs. Gobble Gracker reappears, wearing a wedding dress, and Dory’s mom makes an announcement that leaves not just Dory reeling but her siblings, too. Maybe a haunting is exactly what's needed to get this family back to normal.

In her sixth book, Dory delivers hoots and oopses on every page, entangling her friends—real and imaginary—in fabulous plots that sometimes take even Dory herself by delightful surprise.]]> 160 Abby Hanlon 0593615980 Jeanette 5 pax-mom-books 4.52
author: Abby Hanlon
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: pax-mom-books
review:
My absolute favorite series to read with my little one. Best for k-2nd grade, but my 3rd grader really loved it. I must admit, I think we will read any new book that comes out in this series, even if she is in high school. ha!
]]> 6496815
NurtureShock is a groundbreaking collaboration between award-winning science journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.�� They argue that when it comes to children, we've mistaken good intentions for good ideas.�� With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis,��they demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science have been overlooked.

Nothing like a parenting manual, the authors' work is an insightful exploration of themes and issues that transcend children's (and adults') lives.]]> 336 Po Bronson 0446504122 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.01 2008
author: Po Bronson
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 101145269
Alison has never been a fan of Christmas. But with it right around the corner and her husband busily decorating their cozy Vermont home, she has no choice but to face it. Then she gets the call.

Mavis, Alison’s estranged mother, has been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. She wants to spend her remaining days with her daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. But Alison grew up with her mother’s alcoholism and violent abuse and is reluctant to unearth these traumatic memories. Still, she eventually agrees to take in Mavis, hoping that she and her mother could finally heal and have the relationship she’s always dreamed of.

But when mysterious and otherworldly things start happening upon Mavis’s arrival, Alison begins to suspect her mother is not quite who she seems. And as the holiday festivities turn into a nightmare, she must confront just how far she is willing to go to protect her family.]]> 320 Jennifer McMahon 166801906X Jeanette 5 3.71 2023
author: Jennifer McMahon
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.��Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.��]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 Jeanette 5 3.97 2023
author: Nathan Hill
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/19
date added: 2023/12/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 59900688 Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll
take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.��

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

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

A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and
intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey,
but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most
unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story
of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.]]> 384 Javier Zamora 0593498062 Jeanette 5 4.46 2022
author: Javier Zamora
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 55513377 A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a “compelling�� (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is an “enthralling detective story�� (Oprah Daily) that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.]]> 552 Walter Isaacson 1982115874 Jeanette 0 to-read 4.48 2021
author: Walter Isaacson
name: Jeanette
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62919776 “Strange and wonderful…A book for our times.�� —The New York Times Book Review
“Propulsive…mesmerizing…breathtaking.�� —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

This unforgettable memoir traces the ramifications of a series of lies that threaten to derail the author’s life—exploring the line between fact and fiction, reality and conspiracy.

In To Name the Bigger Lie, Sarah Viren “has pulled off a magic trick of fantastic proportion�� (The Washington Post), telling the story of an all-too-real investigation into her personal and professional life that she expands into a profound exploration of the nature of truth. The memoir begins as Viren is researching what she believes will be a book about her high school philosophy teacher, a charismatic instructor who taught her and her classmates to question everything—eventually, even the reality of historical atrocities. As she digs into the effects of his teachings, her life takes a turn into the fantastical when her wife, Marta, is notified that she’s being investigated for sexual misconduct at the university where they both teach.

To Name the Bigger Lie follows the investigation as it challenges everything Sarah thought she knew about truth, testimony, and the difference between the two. She knows the claims made against Marta must be lies, and as she attempts to uncover the identity of the person behind them and prove her wife’s innocence, she’s drawn back into the questions that her teacher inspired all those years ago: about the nature of truth, the value of skepticism, and the stakes we all have in getting the story right.

An incisive journey into honesty and betrayal, this memoir explores the powerful pull of dangerous conspiracy theories and the pliability of personal narratives in a world dominated by hoaxes and fakes. An “ouroboros of a book�� (The New York Times) and a “bold new approach to the genre of memoir�� (The Millions), To Name the Bigger Lie also reads like the best of psychological thrillers—made all the more riveting because it’s true.

A compelling, incisive journey into honesty and betrayal, this memoir explores the powerful pull of dangerous conspiracy theories and the pliability of personal narratives in a world dominated by hoaxes and fakes. To Name the Bigger Lie reads like the best of psychological thrillers—made all the more riveting because it’s true.]]> 304 Sarah Viren 1982166592 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.47 2023
author: Sarah Viren
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 196842
When it was first published in 1958, Rona Jaffe's debut novel electrified readers who saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. There's Ivy League Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor's office, naive country girl April, who within months of hitting town reinvents herself as the woman every man wants on his arm; Gregg, the free-spirited actress with a secret yearning for domesticity. Now a classic, and as page-turning as when it first came out, The Best of Everything portrays their lives and passions with intelligence, affection and prose as sharp as a paper cut.
(back cover)]]> 448 Rona Jaffe 0143035290 Jeanette 0 to-read 3.83 1958
author: Rona Jaffe
name: Jeanette
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>