DB's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 07 May 2025 20:11:47 -0700 60 DB's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg L'Écume des jours 141828 Pied de nez aux conventions romanesques et Ă  la morale commune, L'Écume des jours est un dĂ©lice verbal et un festin poĂ©tique. Jeux de mots, nĂ©ologismes, dĂ©calages incongrus... Vian surenchĂ©rit sans cesse, faisant naĂ®tre comme un vertige chez le lecteur hĂ©bĂ©tĂ©, qui sourit quand il peut. Mais le vĂ©ritable malaise vient d'ailleursĚý: ces adolescents Ă©ternels Ă  la sensibilitĂ© exacerbĂ©e constituent des victimes de choix. L'obsession consumĂ©riste de Chick, nĂ©e d'une idolâtrie frĂ©nĂ©tique pour un certain Jean-Sol Partre, semble vouloir dire que le bonheur ne saurait durer. En effet, l'asphyxie gagne du terrain, et l'on assiste avec effroi au rĂ©trĂ©cissement inexorable des appartements. On en veut presque Ă  Vian d'ĂŞtre aussi lucide et de ne pas s'ĂŞtre contentĂ© d'une expĂ©rience ludique sur fond de roman d'amour. --Sana Tang-LĂ©opold Wauters

]]> 351 Boris Vian DB 0 3.95 1947 L'Écume des jours
author: Boris Vian
name: DB
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: french, inthefreezer, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Jungle 41681
When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary.

The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905.
It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition.

A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition.]]> 335 Upton Sinclair 1884365302 DB 0 2025, aclassictheysay 3.77 1906 The Jungle
author: Upton Sinclair
name: DB
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1906
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/05
shelves: 2025, aclassictheysay
review:
Here’s a fun one. For this volume, go to the main page here on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ, and go to the gray Preview icon, which has the image of an open book, and appears just above the book description. If you select Preview, then you’ll be taken to the opening text. It shows not the text of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, but instead shows the opening of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Wanting to read Upton Sinclair, I ordered this Kindle volume and I received â€� just as the preview shows â€� The Jungle Book(!)
]]> Washington Square 133954 240 Henry James 0451528719 DB 4 2025 3.70 1880 Washington Square
author: Henry James
name: DB
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1880
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/03
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Roads To Quantum Gravity]]> 132695
In Three Roads to Quantum Gravity , Lee Smolin provides an accessible overview of the attempts to build a final "theory of everything." He explains in simple terms what scientists are talking about when they say the world is made from exotic entities such as loops, strings, and black holes and tells the fascinating stories behind these the rivalries, epiphanies, and intrigues he witnessed firsthand.

"Provocative, original, and unsettling." -- The New York Review of Books

"An excellent writer, a creative thinker." -- Nature]]> 256 Lee Smolin 0465078362 DB 0 to-read 4.20 2000 Three Roads To Quantum Gravity
author: Lee Smolin
name: DB
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Le Charretier de la providence]]> 140764 183 Georges Simenon 2253142972 DB 3 3.47 1931 Le Charretier de la providence
author: Georges Simenon
name: DB
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1931
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/15
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: french, whodundunit, cestunmystère, 2023
review:

]]> Notes from Underground 6568440 169 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1596250267 DB 3 4.03 1864 Notes from Underground
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: DB
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1864
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: 2025, aclassictheysay, intranslation
review:

]]> Pride and Prejudice 77776916 This deluxe edition brings to life the letters exchanged among Jane Austen's characters in Pride and Prejudice.
Glassine pockets placed throughout the book contain removable replicas of 19 letters from the story.

These powerful epistles include Lydia's announcement of her elopement, Mr. Collins's obsequious missives, and of course Darcy's painfully honest letter to Elizabeth.

- Nothing captures Jane Austen's vivid emotion and keen wit better than her characters' correspondence.
- Each letter is re-created with gorgeous calligraphy.
- Letters are hand-folded with painstaking attention to historical detail.

Perusing the letters will transport readers straight to the drawing room at Netherfield or the breakfast table at Longbourn.

For anyone who loves Austen, and for anyone who still cherishes the joy of letter writing, this book illuminates a favorite story in a whole new way.

- Step inside the world of Pride and Prejudice, one of the most beloved novels of all time.
- Great Mother's Day, birthday, or holiday gift for diehard Jane Austen fans
- A visually gorgeous book that will be at home on the shelf or on the coffee table
- Add it to the shelf with books like What Would Jane Do?: Quips and Wisdom from Jane Austen by Potter Gift, Jane-a-Day: 5 Year Journal with 365 Witticisms by Jane Austen Edition by Potter Gift, and The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne.]]> 397 Jane Austen DB 4 2025, aclassictheysay 4.49 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: DB
average rating: 4.49
book published: 1813
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: 2025, aclassictheysay
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Madame Bovary (French Classics in French and English)]]> 8488215 568 Gustave Flaubert 0956401058 DB 0 3.67 1856 Madame Bovary (French Classics in French and English)
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: DB
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1856
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: 2023, aclassictheysay, french, inthefreezer, ripvanwinkled
review:

]]> Britt-Marie Was Here 30753704
But hidden inside the socially awkward, fussy busybody is a woman who has more imagination, bigger dreams, and a warmer heart that anyone around her realizes.

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself in the miserable backwater town of Borg—of which the kindest thing one can say is that it has a road going through it—she finds work as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center. The fastidious Britt-Marie soon finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, layabouts. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?

Funny and moving, sweet and inspiring, Britt-Marie Was Here celebrates the importance of community and connection in a world that can feel isolating.

The New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry “returns with this heartwarming story about a woman rediscovering herself after a personal crisis� fans of Backman will find another winner in these pages.”]]> 324 Fredrik Backman 1501142542 DB 0 to-read 4.12 2014 Britt-Marie Was Here
author: Fredrik Backman
name: DB
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Thin Man 80616 The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners.]]> 201 Dashiell Hammett 0679722637 DB 3 3.92 1934 The Thin Man
author: Dashiell Hammett
name: DB
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: 2025, cestunmystère, whodundunit
review:

]]> The Alice Network 40004610
1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe to have her "little problem" taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.

1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she's recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she's trained by the mesmerizing Lili, code name Alice, the "queen of spies", who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy's nose.

Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn't heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth...no matter where it leads.]]> 564 Kate Quinn DB 0 to-read 4.47 2017 The Alice Network
author: Kate Quinn
name: DB
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World]]> 214390561 A transformative guide to rethinking our approach to goals, creativity, and life itself from a neuroscientist and entrepreneur, and the creator of the popular Ness Labs newsletter

"I loved this profound, practical, and generous book."—Oliver Burkeman

"A thought-provoking guide to doing more trials and making fewer errors."—Adam Grant

"One of the best productivity books that I've read."—Ryder Carroll

"This book will change the way you design your goals and live your life."—Nir Eyal

Life isn’t linear, and yet we constantly try to mold it around linear four-year college degrees, ten-year career plans, thirty-year mortgages. What if instead we approached life as a giant playground for experimentation? Based on ancestral philosophy and the latest scientific research, Tiny Experiments provides a desperately needed Uncertainty can be a state of expanded possibility and a space for metamorphosis.

Neuroscientist and entrepreneur Anne-Laure Le Cunff reveals that all you need is an experimental mindset to turn challenges into self-discovery and doubt into opportunity. Readers will replace the old linear model of success with a circular model of growth in which goals are discovered, pursued, and adapted—not in a vacuum, but in conversation with the larger world.

Throughout the book, you will ask hard questions and design simple yet meaningful experiments to find the answers. You will learn how to break free from the invisible cognitive scripts that shape your life, how to harness the power of imperfection, and how to make smarter decisions when the path forward is unclear.

This is a guide
� Discover your true ambitions through conducting tiny personal experiments
� Dismantle harmful beliefs about success that have kept you stuck
� Dare to make decisions true to your own aspirations
� Stop trying to find your purpose and start living instead

Tiny Experiments offers not just practical tools to make sure our most vital work gets done, but a guide to reawakening our curiosity and drive in a noisy, busy, disaffected world, so that we can discover and pursue our most authentic ambitions while making a meaningful contribution.]]> 299 Anne-Laure Le Cunff 0593715144 DB 0 4.36 Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World
author: Anne-Laure Le Cunff
name: DB
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: currently-reading, 2025, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)]]> 37781 Things Fall Apart is written with remarkable economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.]]> 215 Chinua Achebe DB 3 3.73 1958 Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)
author: Chinua Achebe
name: DB
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: 2025, aclassictheysay, prizewinner
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Down and Out in Paris and London]]> 393199 213 George Orwell 015626224X DB 4 4.10 1933 Down and Out in Paris and London
author: George Orwell
name: DB
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1933
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: 2025, nonfiction, re-reading, rounded-down
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It]]> 19661852 Ěý
“A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the ĚýNew York Times ĚýbestsellerĚý Guitar Zero
Ěý
At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered.
Ěý
Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day.Ěý
Ěý
This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.]]> 326 Gabriel Wyner DB 0 4.07 2014 Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It
author: Gabriel Wyner
name: DB
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: currently-reading, 2025, nonfiction, sciencey
review:

]]> Walden or, Life in the Woods 16902 352 Henry David Thoreau DB 0 3.77 1854 Walden or, Life in the Woods
author: Henry David Thoreau
name: DB
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1854
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Stoner 8551582
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.
--nyrb.com]]> 305 John Williams 1590173937 DB 5 2025 4.38 1965 Stoner
author: John Williams
name: DB
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry]]> 25814222 A charming, warmhearted novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller A Man Called Ove.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.]]> 372 Fredrik Backman 1501115073 DB 0 to-read 4.07 2013 My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
author: Fredrik Backman
name: DB
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Henry IV, Part 1 38333521 151 William Shakespeare 1420955543 DB 3 4.00 1597 Henry IV, Part 1
author: William Shakespeare
name: DB
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1597
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: 2025, aclassictheysay, drama, historicalfiction
review:

]]> The Reader 101299
When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.]]> 216 Bernhard Schlink 0375408266 DB 4 3.78 1995 The Reader
author: Bernhard Schlink
name: DB
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: 2025, intranslation, historicalfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir]]> 211004074
It is one thing to study the fall of democracy, another to have it hit your homeland -- and yet another to raise children as it happens. The Last American Road Trip is one family’s journey to the most beautiful, fascinating, and bizarre places in the US during one of its most tumultuous eras. As Kendzior works as a journalist chronicling political turmoil, she becomes determined that her young children see America before it’s too late. So Kendzior, her husband, and the kids hit the road -- again and again.

Starting from Missouri, the family drives across America in every direction as cataclysmic events � the rise of autocracy, political and technological chaos, and the pandemic � reshape American life. They explore Route 66, national parks, historical sites, and Americana icons as Kendzior contemplates love for country in a broken heartland. Together, the family watches the landscape of the United States - physical, environmental, social, political -transform through the car window.

Part memoir, part political history, The Last American Road Trip is one mother’s promise to her children that their country will be there for them in the future � even though at times she struggles to believe it herself.]]> 320 Sarah Kendzior 1250879884 DB 0 to-read 4.22 2025 The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir
author: Sarah Kendzior
name: DB
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good Material 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 DB 4 2025 3.80 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: DB
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano DB 0 to-read, ripvanwinkled 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: DB
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read, ripvanwinkled
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tout Maigret - tome 1 (French Edition)]]> 44785307 Maigret, ce sont 75 romans et 28 nouvelles publiés entre 1931 et 1972Ce tome 1 regroupe les huit premiers Maigret parus en 1931, il est préfacé par Pierre Assouline, biographe de Simenon, qui lui a notamment consacré unAutodictionnaire Simenon, un documentaire, et vient d'adapter plusieurs romans de Simenon pour le théâtre radiophonique.Pietr-le-Letton - Le Charretier de "La Providence" - Monsieur Gallet, décédé - Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien - La Tête d'un homme - Le Chien jaune - La Nuit du carrefour - Un crime en HollandeIntroduction et notes de Michel CarlyIllustration de couverture inédite de Loustal]]> 1193 Georges Simenon 2258161932 DB 0 to-read, ripvanwinkled 4.43 Tout Maigret - tome 1 (French Edition)
author: Georges Simenon
name: DB
average rating: 4.43
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read, ripvanwinkled
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Have Always Lived in the Castle]]> 209516690 173 Shirley Jackson 199811466X DB 4 3.83 1962 We Have Always Lived in the Castle
author: Shirley Jackson
name: DB
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: 2024, aclassictheysay, cestunmystère, whodundunit
review:

]]> A Lost Lady 45185025 Marian Forrester arrives in Sweet Water as the treasured bride of a retired builder. To her husband she embodies the idealism of this railroad town on the Western plains. And to Niel Herbert, a smitten local boy, she’s so perfect as to belong to a different world. But as Niel comes of age, the fortunes of Sweet Water decline, and as the promise of the frontier fades, his perception of the fallible woman he has idolized since boyhood is shattered.

Sketched against the sunset of American pioneer life, A Lost Lady is a portrait of a woman who reflects, and defies, the conventions of her era.

Revised edition: Previously published as A Lost Lady, this edition of A Lost Lady (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.

]]> 113 Willa Cather 1542016126 DB 5 4.18 1923 A Lost Lady
author: Willa Cather
name: DB
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1923
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves:
review:

]]> White Nights 26164164 A young, lonely man strolls the streets of St. Petersburg contemplating his solitude when he happens upon a young woman in tears. While escorting her home, the two strike up a conversation and soon become friends, meeting up at night to share their stories. When the young woman, Nastenka, explains that she was crying because she had been waiting for her fiancé who promised he would be back to marry her, the young man, despite his growing feelings toward her, promises to help her locate her beloved.

“White Nights� is considered to be one of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s best short stories and has been adapted numerous times for film in various languages.

HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

]]> 62 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1443448176 DB 2 4.05 1848 White Nights
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: DB
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1848
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:

]]> My Friends 217163697 #1ĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 DB 0 to-read 4.60 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: DB
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Le Chien jaune 140846 Concarneau est désert.
L'horloge lumineuse de la vieille ville, qu'on aperçoit au-dessus des remparts, marque onze heures moins cinq.
C'est le plein de la marée et une tempête du sud-ouest fait s'entrechoquer les barques dans le port. Le vent s'engouffre dans les rues, où l'on voit parfois des bouts de papier filer à toute allure au ras du sol.
Quai de l'Aiguillon, il n'y a pas une lumière. Tout est fermé. Tout le monde dort. Seules les trois fenêtres de l'hôtel de l'Amiral, à l'angle de la place et du quai, sont encore éclairées.]]> 190 Georges Simenon 2253142921 DB 4 3.38 1931 Le Chien jaune
author: Georges Simenon
name: DB
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1931
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: 2024, cestunmystère, french, whodundunit
review:

]]> The Untouchable 163
One of the most dazzling and adventurous writers now working in English takes on the enigma of the Cambridge spies in a novel of exquisite menace, biting social comedy, and vertiginous moral complexity. The narrator is the elderly Victor Maskell, formerly of British intelligence, for many years art expert to the Queen. Now he has been unmasked as a Russian agent and subjected to a disgrace that is almost a kind of death. But at whose instigation?

As Maskell retraces his tortuous path from his recruitment at Cambridge to the airless upper regions of the establishment, we discover a figure of manifold Irishman and Englishman; husband, father, and lover of men; betrayer and dupe. Beautifully written, filled with convincing fictional portraits of Maskell's co-conspirators, and vibrant with the mysteries of loyalty and identity, The Untouchable places John Banville in the select company of both Conrad and le Carre.

"Victor Maskell is one of the great characters in recent fiction.... The Untouchable is the best work of art in any medium on [its] subject." � Washington Post Book World

"As remarkable a literary voice as any to come out of Ireland; Joyce and Beckett notwithstanding." � San Francisco Chronicle]]> 368 John Banville 0679767479 DB 5 2024 3.95 1997 The Untouchable
author: John Banville
name: DB
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Answer Is No 219876684 In a hilarious short story from New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, the absurdities of modern life cause one man’s solitary world to spin suddenly, and comically, out of control.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone?

Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.]]> 68 Fredrik Backman 1662526520 DB 4 2024 3.94 2024 The Answer Is No
author: Fredrik Backman
name: DB
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald Volume 1. The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other Stories]]> 22822649
The cut-glass age was Scott Fitzgerald's age - and it splintered and shattered right before his eyes. In these seven short stories (the first volume in a new uniform Penguin edition) Fitzgerald's insight reflects and refacts the profane image of America in the Jazz Age, creating cameos of a fairy-tale life among the very rich. By the idylls prove illusory; and the picture is always disrupted by sharp, painful shafts of reality.]]> 238 F. Scott Fitzgerald DB 4 2024 3.33 1922 The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald Volume 1. The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other Stories
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: DB
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Old School 753345
The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.]]> 195 Tobias Wolff 0375701494 DB 4 2024, prizewinner 3.77 2003 Old School
author: Tobias Wolff
name: DB
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: 2024, prizewinner
review:

]]> Gratitude 27190384 —Oliver Sacks

No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks.Ěý

During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.

“It is the fate of every human being,� Sacks writes, “to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.�

Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life.

“Oliver Sacks was like no other clinician, or writer. He was drawn to the homes of the sick, the institutions of the most frail and disabled, the company of the unusual and the â€abnormal.â€� He wanted to see humanity in its many variants and to do so in his own, almost anachronistic way—face to face, over time, away from our burgeoning apparatus of computers and algorithms. And, through his writing, he showed us what he saw.â€�
—Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal]]> 64 Oliver Sacks 0451492935 DB 0 to-read 4.34 2015 Gratitude
author: Oliver Sacks
name: DB
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #1)]]> 7061 235 Alexander McCall Smith 1400034779 DB 3 2024, prizewinner 3.81 1998 The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #1)
author: Alexander McCall Smith
name: DB
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: 2024, prizewinner
review:

]]> The Covenant of Water 63429926 From the New York Times–bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial new epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret.

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of Cutting for Stone. Published in 2009, Cutting for Stone became a literary phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi—literally “Big Mother”—will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life. All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life.

A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 802 Abraham Verghese DB 0 didnotfinish, to-read 4.58 2023 The Covenant of Water
author: Abraham Verghese
name: DB
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: didnotfinish, to-read
review:

]]> The Weight of Water 228534 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

A newspaper photographer, Jean, researches the lurid and sensational ax murder of two women in 1873 as an editorial tie-in with a brutal modern double murder. (Can you guess which one?) She discovers a cache of papers that appear to give an account of the murders by an eyewitness. The plot weaves between the narrative of the eyewitness and Jean's private struggle with jealousies and suspicions as her marriage teeters. A rich, textured novel.]]> 246 Anita Shreve 0316780375 DB 4 2024 3.66 1997 The Weight of Water
author: Anita Shreve
name: DB
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Strange Fits of Passion 8939746 354 Anita Shreve 0547545371 DB 5 4.16 1991 Strange Fits of Passion
author: Anita Shreve
name: DB
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fast Funny Women: 75 Essays of Flash Nonfiction]]> 54985681 Fast Funny Women, you'll find everything you want from thoughtful essays in a short, delicious form. Perfect for students of writing, writers of humor, and all readers who welcome laughter, insight, and perspective into their lives.]]> 210 Gina Barreca 1949116212 DB 3 4.08 2021 Fast Funny Women: 75 Essays of Flash Nonfiction
author: Gina Barreca
name: DB
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2021/12/04
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Les Fleurs du mal 25747968 128 Charles Baudelaire DB 0 to-read 4.10 1857 Les Fleurs du mal
author: Charles Baudelaire
name: DB
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1857
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Maniac 214932061 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 BenjamĂ­n Labatut 0593654498 DB 0 to-read 4.42 2023 The Maniac
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: DB
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days / Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours]]> 60307708 217 Jules Verne DB 3 french, aclassictheysay 4.00 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days / Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours
author: Jules Verne
name: DB
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1872
rating: 3
read at: 2022/03/13
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: french, aclassictheysay
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X DB 0 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: DB
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes, #8)]]> 754713 242 Arthur Conan Doyle 0755334434 DB 4 4.26 1917 His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes, #8)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: DB
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1917
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Le Horla 36214809 La nouvelle est présentée en trois versions :
- Version bilingue
- Version anglaise
- Version française

Cette édition est destinée aux jeunes élèves et étudiants, pour un apprentissage efficace de l'anglais.
La lecture bilingue simultanée permet un apprentissage rapide du vocabulaire et des formes grammaticales, par observation des phrases simultanées. En voici un extrait :

Then, I go to bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner.
Puis, je me couche, et j’attends le sommeil comme on attendrait le bourreau.

I wait for its coming with dread,
Je l’attends avec l’épouvante de sa venueĚý;

and my heart beats and my legs tremble,
et mon cĹ“ur bat, et mes jambes frĂ©missentĚý;

while my whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes,
et tout mon corps tressaille dans la chaleur des draps,

...]]> 128 Guy de Maupassant DB 3 french 4.00 1886 Le Horla
author: Guy de Maupassant
name: DB
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1886
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/31
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: french
review:

]]> Housekeeping 55071104 A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother.

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

Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.]]> 349 Marilynne Robinson DB 0 3.82 1980 Housekeeping
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: DB
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Cordelia Gray, #1)]]> 365307 An Unsuitable Job for a Woman introduces bestselling mystery author P.D. James’s courageous but vulnerable young detective, Cordelia Gray, in a “top-rated puzzle of peril that holds you all the way� (The New York Times).

Handsome Cambridge dropout Mark Callender died hanging by the neck with a faint trace of lipstick on his mouth. When the official verdict is suicide, his wealthy father hires fledgling private investigator Cordelia Gray to find out what led him to self-destruction. What she discovers instead is a twisting trail of secrets and sins, and the strong scent of murder.]]> 256 P.D. James 0743219554 DB 3 3.83 1972 An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Cordelia Gray, #1)
author: P.D. James
name: DB
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1972
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: 2024, cestunmystère, whodundunit
review:

]]> The Maniac 75665931 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 BenjamĂ­n Labatut 0593654471 DB 0 to-read 4.33 2023 The Maniac
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: DB
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Master of Petersburg 6201 256 J.M. Coetzee 0140238107 DB 4 3.66 1994 The Master of Petersburg
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: DB
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: 2024, historicalfiction, roundedup
review:

]]> The Lime Twig 222388 The Lime Twig, which tells of an ingenious plot to steal and race a horse under a false name. But it would be unfair to the reader to reveal what happens when a gang of professional crooks gets wind of the scheme and moves to muscle in on this bettors' dream of a long-odds situation.]]> 190 John Hawkes 0811200655 DB 4 2024, re-reading, roundedup 3.85 1961 The Lime Twig
author: John Hawkes
name: DB
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/15
date added: 2024/06/15
shelves: 2024, re-reading, roundedup
review:

]]> Hiroshima 27323 152 John Hersey 0679721037 DB 3 2024, nonfiction 4.02 1946 Hiroshima
author: John Hersey
name: DB
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1946
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/12
date added: 2024/06/12
shelves: 2024, nonfiction
review:

]]> Small Things Like These 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 DB 0 to-read, fordecember 4.13 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: DB
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves: to-read, fordecember
review:

]]> Vol 1618 24145387 244 Bertrand Puard 2012043305 DB 3 3.40 2014 Vol 1618
author: Bertrand Puard
name: DB
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves: 2024, cestunmystère, french, whodundunit, roundedup
review:

]]> Cut and Thirst 209411839 Three women scheme to avenge an old friend in a darkly witty short story about loyalty, ambition, and delicious retribution by Margaret Atwood, the #1 bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy meet every Thursday to sample fine cheeses, to reminisce about their former lives as professors, and lately, to muse about murder. Decades ago, a vicious cabal of male poets contrived—quite publicly and successfully—to undermine the writing career, confidence, and health of their dear friend Fern. Now, after Fern has taken a turn for the worse, her three old friends decide that it’s finally time to strike back—in secret, of course, since Fern is far too gentle to approve of a vendetta. All they need is a plan with suitably Shakespearean drama. But as sweet and satisfying as revenge can be, it’s not always so cut and dried.]]> 35 Margaret Atwood 1662523335 DB 3 2024, rounded-down 3.13 2024 Cut and Thirst
author: Margaret Atwood
name: DB
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves: 2024, rounded-down
review:

]]> Sea of Tranquility 199288133 The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

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

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

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

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 290 Emily St. John Mandel DB 3 2024, scifi 4.17 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: DB
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: 2024, scifi
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession]]> 58929334 One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.]]> 384 Michael Finkel 0525657339 DB 3 4.12 2023 The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
author: Michael Finkel
name: DB
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/05
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves: 2024, cestunmystère, gddcbookclub, whodundunit
review:

]]> Memoirs of an Invisible Man 137443 396 H.F. Saint 0689117353 DB 4 2023 4.12 1987 Memoirs of an Invisible Man
author: H.F. Saint
name: DB
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/03
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?�

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 DB 0 to-read 3.97 2024 Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: DB
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent]]> 127279804
“Every sentence delivered. The pathos of truth-seeking left me thinking of Herman Melville."
―Timothy Snyder, #1 New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING author Sarah Kendzior delves into the difference between conspiracy and conspiracy theory, "deftly separat[ing] fact from fiction in a conspiracy-addled nation" (VANITY FAIR).

Conspiracy theories are on the rise because officials refuse to enforce accountability for real conspiracies. Uncritical faith in broken institutions is as dangerous as false narratives peddled by propagandists.

The truth may hurt―but the lies will kill us.

They Knew discusses conspiracy culture in a rapidly declining United States struggling with corruption, climate change, and other crises. As the actions of the powerful remain shrouded in mystery―“From Norman Baker to Jeffrey Epstein, Iran-Contra to January 6" ( VF )―it is unsurprising that people turn to conspiracy theories to fill the informational void. They Knew exposes the tactics these powerful actors use to placate an inquisitive public.

Here, for the first time, Kendzior blends her signature whip-smart prose and eviscerating arguments with lyrical and intimate examinations of the times and places that haunt American history. "America is a ghost story," writes Kendzior, as she unearths decades of buried history, providing an essential and critical look at how to rebuild our democracy by confronting the political lies and crimes that have shaped us.]]> 256 Sarah Kendzior 1250878608 DB 0 to-read 4.11 2022 They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent
author: Sarah Kendzior
name: DB
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Saturday by McEwan, Ian New edition (2006)]]> 123925076 0 Ian McEwan DB 3 2024 3.60 2005 Saturday by McEwan, Ian New edition (2006)
author: Ian McEwan
name: DB
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/08
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Complete English Poems 134025
This volume, superbly edited by Professor Smith, is the first complete edition to make a serious attempt to guide the reader closely through the complexities of Donne's poetry. Considerable attention has been paid to the text, and a selection of the important manuscript variants are included. This edition is also the first to make use of the newly discovered manuscript of the verse letter to Lady Carey and Mistress Essex Rich.]]> 688 John Donne 0140422099 DB 0 to-read 4.14 1633 The Complete English Poems
author: John Donne
name: DB
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1633
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Stories of Paul Bowles 12046 688 Paul Bowles 0061137049 DB 5 4.30 2001 The Stories of Paul Bowles
author: Paul Bowles
name: DB
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 1987/01/01
date added: 2024/03/29
shelves: re-reading, to-read, 2024, ripvanwinkled, inthefreezer
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Win the Talent Game: A Guide to Lateral Hiring for Law Firms and Lawyers]]> 201041507
In Win the Talent A Guide to Lateral Hiring for Law Firms and Lawyers, Richard Brock examines the most effective way for law firms to bring in top talent and increase their partner-level lateral hiring. When law firms hire a partner-level lawyer from another law firm, they are growing their business through lateral hiring. Richard dives into the ethical considerations of lateral hiring, what motivates a lawyer to move laterally, and best practices for successful lateral hiring.

Your law firm needs talented attorneys to stay competitive. Once you embrace the power of lateral hiring in growing your business, your law firm will gain the edge it needs to thrive.]]> 168 Richard Brock 1544544170 DB 0 to-read 4.50 Win the Talent Game: A Guide to Lateral Hiring for Law Firms and Lawyers
author: Richard Brock
name: DB
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Flight Behavior 17302754 Flight Behavior transfixes from its opening scene, when a young woman's narrow experience of life is thrown wide with the force of a raging fire. In the lyrical language of her native Appalachia, Barbara Kingsolver bares the rich, tarnished humanity of her novel's inhabitants and unearths the modern complexities of rural existence. Characters and reader alike are quickly carried beyond familiar territory here, into the unsettled ground of science, faith, and everyday truces between reason and conviction.

Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world.]]> 610 Barbara Kingsolver 0062124285 DB 3 2024, gddcbookclub 4.06 2012 Flight Behavior
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: DB
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves: 2024, gddcbookclub
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lady with the Dog & Other Stories (AmazonClassics Edition)]]> 52686578 Anton Chekhov is now justly celebrated as one of Russia’s greatest writers, but this reputation was hard won in his time. His work consistently challenged expectations, and his insights were not always easy to see. The continued relevance of his stories, however, has shown that Chekhov was ahead of his time, and the nine short stories collected here showcase his very best writing. In such masterpieces as “A Doctor’s Visit,� “Ionitch,� and the title story, “The Lady with the Dog,� Chekhov explores universal themes of ambition and failure, love and loss, and the thin line that divides triumph and despair. Admired for his startling modernity by such artists as Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Raymond Carver, Chekhov remains one of the world’s most influential storytellers.

Revised edition: Previously published as The Lady with the Dog & Other Stories, this edition of The Lady with the Dog & Other Stories (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.

]]> 214 Anton Chekhov 154201915X DB 4 2024, intranslation 4.10 1899 The Lady with the Dog & Other Stories (AmazonClassics Edition)
author: Anton Chekhov
name: DB
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1899
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/02/23
shelves: 2024, intranslation
review:

]]> Pale Fire 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov DB 3 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: DB
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/19
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: 2024, aclassictheysay, gddcbookclub
review:
I feel like I didn't have the requisite level of sophistication to appreciate this.
]]> The Only Story 35570812 Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.

First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention.

As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.

Tender and profound, The Only Story is an achingly beautiful novel by one of fiction’s greatest mappers of the human heart.]]> 272 Julian Barnes 1473554799 DB 0 to-read 3.58 2018 The Only Story
author: Julian Barnes
name: DB
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Learn French with Arsène Lupin Gentleman-Thief: Interlinear French to English (Learn French with Interlinear Stories for Beginners and Advanced Readers)]]> 57505558 884 Maurice Leblanc DB 2 french, 2023 2.00 1907 Learn French with Arsène Lupin Gentleman-Thief: Interlinear French to English (Learn French with Interlinear Stories for Beginners and Advanced Readers)
author: Maurice Leblanc
name: DB
average rating: 2.00
book published: 1907
rating: 2
read at: 2023/02/11
date added: 2024/02/13
shelves: french, 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1)]]> 58111375 The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,� a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.]]> 445 Viet Thanh Nguyen DB 3 4.16 2015 The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1)
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: DB
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/04
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: 2024, gddcbookclub, historicalfiction, prizewinner
review:

]]> Angle of Repose 292408
Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical.]]> 569 Wallace Stegner 014016930X DB 5
AR is a frame tale, with Lyman Ward writing about the life of Susan Ward who in turn writes (and draws) her own life. But at a gap of 50 years since Stegner and Lyman were writing, AR is historical fiction in another sense. For those of us who remember that period, there’s another, outer frame to wrap around the book --- our reconstructed view of those days of utopian dreams and Viet Nam reality. That frame implicitly colors our interpretation of the strengths and weaknesses in the arguments between Lyman and Shelly.

The book that I read immediately before AR was Eastbound, which wasn’t a good as book as I thought it could have been. Although many praised Eastbound, I thought the writing was self-congratulatory and imprecise at the same time. The language of Stegner’s AR was so refreshing after Eastbound’s that I upped my opinion of AR and rounded up my grade from four stars to five. I had the same experience with Tom Lake. Its mostly warm-hearted Hallmark story was a foil to the violent, existential, desert stories of Paul Bowles that I had been re-reading. I love Paul Bowles, but I must’ve needed a lakeside vacation in western Massachusetts. So I had rounded up Tom Lake.

(I’d be interested to hear about how the order in which you read books has affected your opinions of them.)

The title “Angle of Repose� is inspired. [spoilers removed]]]> 4.24 1971 Angle of Repose
author: Wallace Stegner
name: DB
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1971
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/09
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves: aclassictheysay, audioed, historicalfiction, 2024, 2023
review:
There are so many brilliant and brilliantly crafted reviews here on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ of Angle of Repose (“ARâ€�), that I don’t see immediately what I can add. I gave the book five stars, for mostly the reasons that other “five-star reviewersâ€� did. So I’ll just add a few notions that I don’t think were covered so much.

AR is a frame tale, with Lyman Ward writing about the life of Susan Ward who in turn writes (and draws) her own life. But at a gap of 50 years since Stegner and Lyman were writing, AR is historical fiction in another sense. For those of us who remember that period, there’s another, outer frame to wrap around the book --- our reconstructed view of those days of utopian dreams and Viet Nam reality. That frame implicitly colors our interpretation of the strengths and weaknesses in the arguments between Lyman and Shelly.

The book that I read immediately before AR was Eastbound, which wasn’t a good as book as I thought it could have been. Although many praised Eastbound, I thought the writing was self-congratulatory and imprecise at the same time. The language of Stegner’s AR was so refreshing after Eastbound’s that I upped my opinion of AR and rounded up my grade from four stars to five. I had the same experience with Tom Lake. Its mostly warm-hearted Hallmark story was a foil to the violent, existential, desert stories of Paul Bowles that I had been re-reading. I love Paul Bowles, but I must’ve needed a lakeside vacation in western Massachusetts. So I had rounded up Tom Lake.

(I’d be interested to hear about how the order in which you read books has affected your opinions of them.)

The title “Angle of Repose� is inspired. [spoilers removed]
]]> Eastbound 74827320 In this gripping tale, a Russian conscript and a French woman cross paths on the Trans-Siberian railroad, each fleeing to the east for their own reasons.

Eastbound is both an adventure story and a duet of two vibrant inner worlds. In mysterious, winding sentences gorgeously translated by Jessica Moore, De Kerangal gives us the story of two unlikely souls entwined in a quest for freedom with a striking sense of tenderness, sharply contrasting the brutality of the surrounding world.ĚýRacing toward Vladivostok, we meet the young Aliocha, packed onto a Trans-Siberian train with other Russian conscripts. Soon after boarding, he decides to desert and over a midnight smoke in a dark corridor of the train, he encounters an older French woman, HĂ©lène, for whom he feels an uncanny trust.

A complicity quickly grows between the two when he manages to urgently ask—through a pantomime and basic Russian that Hélène must decipher—for her help to hide him. They hurry from the filth of his third-class carriage to Hélène’s first-class sleeping car. Aliocha now a hunted deserter and Hélène his accomplice with her own inner landscape of recent memories to contend with.]]> 135 Maylis de Kerangal 1953861512 DB 2 4.05 2012 Eastbound
author: Maylis de Kerangal
name: DB
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/01/14
shelves: 2024, historicalfiction, intranslation, rounded-down
review:
Please see my Notes and Highlights to understand why two stars only. I found the writing often lazy, wooden and jarring, and the metaphors wrong-headed.
]]> The Inmate 61149872 1) Treat all prisoners with respect.
2) Never reveal any personal information.
3) Never EVER become too friendly with the inmates.

But none of the staff at the prison knows Brooke has already broken the rules. Nobody knows about her intimate connection to Shane Nelson, one of the penitentiary's most notorious and dangerous inmates. And they certainly don't know that Shane was Brooke's high school sweetheart―the star quarterback who is now spending the rest of his life in prison for a series of grisly murders. Or that Brooke's testimony was what put him there.

But Shane knows. And he will never forget.]]> 388 Freida McFadden DB 2 4.03 2022 The Inmate
author: Freida McFadden
name: DB
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/12/21
shelves: 2023, cestunmystère, whodundunit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Toon Up: The Craziness Continues]]> 202351909 76 Geri Gay DB 5 5.00 Toon Up: The Craziness Continues
author: Geri Gay
name: DB
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> The Haunting of Hill House 260439
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 246 Shirley Jackson 0140071083 DB 0 to-read 3.81 1959 The Haunting of Hill House
author: Shirley Jackson
name: DB
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ethan Frome 35913229 will have its consequences.

Exploring the costs of living life according to social mores, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome is a masterwork of doomed love.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as Ethan Frome, this edition of Ethan Frome (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.]]> 99 Edith Wharton 1542099269 DB 4 4.04 1911 Ethan Frome
author: Edith Wharton
name: DB
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1911
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/13
date added: 2023/12/13
shelves:
review:

]]> Horse 59560942 413 Geraldine Brooks 0399562982 DB 3 historicalfiction, 2023 4.53 2022 Horse
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: DB
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/12
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: historicalfiction, 2023
review:

]]> Little Fires Everywhere 63100951
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

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

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

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.]]> 347 Celeste Ng DB 3 2023 4.19 2017 Little Fires Everywhere
author: Celeste Ng
name: DB
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/15
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Convenience Store Woman 51031906
Sayaka Murata brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the familiar convenience store that is so much part of life in Japan. With some laugh-out-loud moments prompted by the disconnect between Keiko’s thoughts and those of the people around her, she provides a sharp look at Japanese society and the pressure to conform, as well as penetrating insights into the female mind. Convenience Store Woman is a fresh, charming portrait of an unforgettable heroine that recalls Banana Yoshimoto, Han Kang, and ´ˇłľĂ©±ôľ±±đ.]]> 176 Sayaka Murata DB 3 2023 3.74 2016 Convenience Store Woman
author: Sayaka Murata
name: DB
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/23
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Never Let Me Go 55132921 From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes a devastating novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss.
Ěý
As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is modern classic.]]> 272 Kazuo Ishiguro DB 4 2023 3.88 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: DB
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/06
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Faerie Queene, Book One (Hackett Classics)]]> 258108 256 Edmund Spenser 0872208079 DB 4 2023, aclassictheysay 3.62 1590 The Faerie Queene, Book One (Hackett Classics)
author: Edmund Spenser
name: DB
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1590
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/02
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023, aclassictheysay
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Side of Paradise (AmazonClassics Edition)]]> 39291159 This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald's romantic and witty first novel, was written when the author was only twenty-three years old. This semiautobiographical story of the handsome, indulged, and idealistic Princeton student Amory Blaine received critical raves and catapulted Fitzgerald to instant fame. Now, readers can enjoy the newly edited, authorized version of this early classic of the Jazz Age, based on Fitzgerald's original manuscript. In this definitive text, This Side of Paradise captures the rhythms and romance of Fitzgerald's youth and offers a poignant portrait of the "Lost Generation."]]> 304 F. Scott Fitzgerald 1542049415 DB 2 2023, aclassictheysay 3.50 1920 This Side of Paradise (AmazonClassics Edition)
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: DB
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1920
rating: 2
read at: 2023/11/03
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023, aclassictheysay
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bonjour Effect: The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed (ST. MARTIN'S PR)]]> 30036452 322 Julie Barlow 1250102448 DB 4 nonfiction, 2022 4.00 2016 The Bonjour Effect: The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed (ST. MARTIN'S PR)
author: Julie Barlow
name: DB
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/14
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: nonfiction, 2022
review:

]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 35113385
Oscar Wilde’s only novel takes a witty, philosophical, and harrowing look at our obsession with youth and the price we pay for it.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as The Picture of Dorian Gray, this edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.]]> 171 Oscar Wilde 1542097436 DB 4 aclassictheysay, 2023 4.16 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: DB
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1890
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/03
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: aclassictheysay, 2023
review:

]]> Pietr-le-Letton 2260534 Pietr le Letton, première enquête officielle du commissaire Maigret, fut aussi le premier roman que Simenon signa de son patronyme en 1931.

Jumeaux et escroquerie... La police internationale signale l'arrivée à Paris du célèbre escroc Pietr-le-Letton. Maigret le file dès sa descente du rapide L'Etoile-du-Nord. Mais alors que le suspect se rend à l'hôtel Majestic, on découvre dans le train un cadavre qui est son sosie. Tandis que Pietr prend de mystérieux contacts avec un milliardaire américain, M. Mortimer-Levingston, l'enquête sur le meurtre conduit Maigret à Fécamp, où il l'aperçoit, sortant de la villa d'une certaine Mme Swaan]]> 190 Georges Simenon 2253142948 DB 3 french, 2023 3.24 1930 Pietr-le-Letton
author: Georges Simenon
name: DB
average rating: 3.24
book published: 1930
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/29
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: french, 2023
review:

]]> Trust 59039413
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE

“Buzzy and enthralling …A glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery…Fun as hell to read.� � Oprah Daily

"A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City’s elite in the roaring �20s and Great Depression." � Vanity Fair

“A riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed.”Ěýâ€� Esquire

"Exhilarating.� � New York Times

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 endless 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.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýHernan 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.
Ěý Ěý 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.]]> 415 Hernan Diaz 0593420330 DB 4 3.97 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: DB
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/30
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: roundedup, gddcbookclub, historicalfiction, 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Introducing Quantum Theory: A Graphic Guide]]> 25537096
Introducing Quantum Theory takes readers on a step-by-step tour with the key figures, including Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger. Each contributed at least one crucial concept to the theory. The puzzle of the wave-particle duality is here, along with descriptions of the two questions raised against Bohr's "Copenhagen Interpretation"—the famous "dead and alive cat" and the EPR paradox. Both remain unresolved.]]> 352 J.P. McEvoy DB 3 2023, sciencey 3.77 1992 Introducing Quantum Theory: A Graphic Guide
author: J.P. McEvoy
name: DB
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/04
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023, sciencey
review:

]]> Bonjour tristesse 25300109 Écrit par une jeune fille de dix-huit ans, ce roman, poétique et ensorcelant, révèle un talent exceptionnel.]]> 116 Françoise Sagan DB 4 french, 2023 3.93 1954 Bonjour tristesse
author: Françoise Sagan
name: DB
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/07
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: french, 2023
review:

]]> Ham on Rye 34725346 Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.]]> 298 Charles Bukowski DB 4 2023 4.11 1982 Ham on Rye
author: Charles Bukowski
name: DB
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/28
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Mrs. Dalloway 14942 194 Virginia Woolf 0151009988 DB 3 3.80 1925 Mrs. Dalloway
author: Virginia Woolf
name: DB
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1925
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/24
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: aclassictheysay, gddcbookclub, 2023
review:

]]> Monsieur Gallet, décédé 2260532 Émile Gallet, voyageur de commerce, domicilié à Saint-Fargeau, Seine-et-Marne, assassiné nuit du 25 au 26, Hôtel de la Loire à Sancerre. Nombreux détails étranges. Prière prévenir famille pour reconnaissance cadavre. Si possible envoyer inspecteur de Paris.]]> 192 Georges Simenon 2253142565 DB 3 french, 2023 3.57 1931 Monsieur Gallet, décédé
author: Georges Simenon
name: DB
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1931
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/12
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: french, 2023
review:

]]> The Death of Ivan Ilych 151737378
How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]> 81 Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy DB 4 4.38 The Death of Ivan Ilych
author: Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
name: DB
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/22
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: aclassictheysay, 2023, intranslation
review:

]]> Our Town 205476 Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.]]> 181 Thornton Wilder 0060512636 DB 4 drama, 2023 3.72 1938 Our Town
author: Thornton Wilder
name: DB
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: drama, 2023
review:

]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

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

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X DB 4 2023, audioed 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: DB
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/13
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023, audioed
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Immoralist/L'Immoraliste: A Dual-Language Book (Dover Dual Language French) (English and French Edition)]]> 115174 One of Gide's best-known works, The Immoralist (published in 1902) concerns the unhappy consequences of amoral hedonism. It tells the story of a man who travels through Europe and North Africa, attempting to transcend the limitations of conventional morality by surrendering to his appetites. Notable for its fusion of autobiographical elements with both biblical and classical symbolism, this work marks a decided shift in Gide's prose style from a somewhat decadent floweriness to his later classic clarity.
This dual-language edition, which offers a clear, accurate English translation on pages facing the original French, will be invaluable to students and teachers, Stanley Applebaum's translation preserves the passion and intensity of the original while skillfully retaining Gide's nobility and simplicity of style.]]> 208 André Gide 0486426955 DB 4 2023, french 3.76 1902 The Immoralist/L'Immoraliste: A Dual-Language Book (Dover Dual Language French) (English and French Edition)
author: André Gide
name: DB
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1902
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/28
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023, french
review:

]]> Demon Copperhead 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 DB 5 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: DB
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/09
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023, audioed, gddcbookclub, aclassictheysay
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (Incerto, #4)]]> 33279884 Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world.

Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile� is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish.

In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.

Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient� not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear.

Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.

Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it.]]> 544 Nassim Nicholas Taleb DB 0 4.20 2012 Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (Incerto, #4)
author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
name: DB
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/09
shelves: nonfiction, to-read, inthefreezer, ripvanwinkled, sciencey
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Le Fils d'Astérix (Astérix le Gaulois, #27)]]> 621061
Etrangement, les Romains, à commencer par le vil Brutus, s'intéressent au plus haut point au sort de ce bébé amateur de potion magique� Albert Uderzo réinvente tous les codes de la BD et redonne une seconde jeunesse à Astérix.]]> 48 Albert Uderzo 2864970112 DB 2 3.61 1983 Le Fils d'Astérix (Astérix le Gaulois, #27)
author: Albert Uderzo
name: DB
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1983
rating: 2
read at: 2022/12/12
date added: 2023/12/07
shelves: bandedessinée, french, 2022, historicalfiction
review:

]]> Foundation (Foundation, #1) 58831139
The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are among the most influential in the history of science fiction, celebrated for their unique blend of breathtaking action, daring ideas, and extensive worldbuilding. In Foundation, Asimov has written a timely and timeless novel of the best—and worst—that lies in humanity, and the power of even a few courageous souls to shine a light in a universe of darkness.]]> 255 Isaac Asimov DB 2 2023, scifi 4.16 1951 Foundation (Foundation, #1)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: DB
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1951
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/06
date added: 2023/12/06
shelves: 2023, scifi
review:

]]> Gone Girl 19288043 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 415 Gillian Flynn 0307588378 DB 4 4.22 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: DB
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/25
date added: 2023/11/25
shelves: 2023, whodundunit, audioed, roundedup, cestunmystère
review:

]]> North Woods 75569082
This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 320 Daniel Mason DB 3 4.12 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: DB
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/13
date added: 2023/11/13
shelves: 2023, gddcbookclub, historicalfiction
review:

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