Dan's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 20:09:12 -0700 60 Dan's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)]]> 58416952 At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic � the Hierarchy � may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus � what they call Will � to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.]]> 639 James Islington 1982141190 Dan 5 4.60 2023 The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)
author: James Islington
name: Dan
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The City and Its Uncertain Walls]]> 209192695 From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.]]> 449 Haruki Murakami 0593801970 Dan 0 to-read 3.72 2023 The City and Its Uncertain Walls
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Dan
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

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

'An inventive, utterly unique debut'
Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light]]> 256 Maggie Su 0063358646 Dan 0 3.39 2025 Blob: A Love Story
author: Maggie Su
name: Dan
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
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]]> Titanium Noir 58894500
But Titans are Cal’s specialty. In fact, his ex-girlfriend, Athena, is a Titan. And not just any Titan—she’s Stefan’s daughter, heir to the Tonfamecasca empire. As Cal digs deeper into the murder investigation, he begins to unweave the complicated threads of what should have been a straightforward case, and it soon becomes clear he’s on the trail of a crime whose roots run deep into the dark heart of the world.

A virtuosic mash-up of Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler by way of Marvel—the story of a detective investigating the murder of a Titan, one of society’s most powerful, medically-enhanced elites, Titanium Noir is a tightly woven, intricate tale of murder, betrayal, and vengeance.]]> 272 Nick Harkaway 0593535375 Dan 0 4.23 2023 Titanium Noir
author: Nick Harkaway
name: Dan
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sleeper Beach (Titanium Noir #2)]]> 202330671 From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Karla's Choice, comes a thrilling new detective novel.

On the shore of a rundown holiday town, a young woman washes up dead. Martha Erskine, the matriarch of a local dynasty, suspects a member of her own family might be involved in the murder, and calls in Cal to investigate.

Cal Sounder is a detective first and a Titan second, but it's not easy to make that work. It's hard to be an ordinary guy when you're fundamentally not ordinary anymore. Cal has recently taken a dose of T7, a rare drug that is usually the preserve of the rich, making its users - called the Titans - younger and bigger each time they take it, so that as they age the bodies of the ultra-wealthy become as immense as their bank accounts.

As Cal digs into the crime, he finds this forgotten town is simmering with wage disputes, strikes, and political conflict, and no one is quite who they say they are - not even the victim. As Cal second-guesses everyone he meets, he is forced to confront his own identity and ask himself who he wants to be from the far side of the mirror of power, age and greed.

Sleeper Beach is a hugely original, powerful and action-packed novel from the acclaimed novelist Nick Harkaway.]]> 256 Nick Harkaway 147215889X Dan 0 to-read 4.17 2025 Sleeper Beach (Titanium Noir #2)
author: Nick Harkaway
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> Tuesday 1598515
It begins on Tuesday evening, when the frogs suddenly start to float. . . Thrill to the humorous cascading adventures that follow in a celebration of possibility unbounded—and of unexpected cause and effect. From the genius of international superstar and three-time Caldecott Medalist David Wiesner, this entertaining, thought-provoking, and nearly-wordless tale unrolls with the precision and clarity of a silent movie. Engaging for all ages, this beloved and innovative classic is a perfect gift to enthrall the young and the young at heart.]]> 32 David Wiesner 0395551137 Dan 4 childrens, picture-books 4.22 1991 Tuesday
author: David Wiesner
name: Dan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: childrens, picture-books
review:

]]> Awakened 217253497 A coven of trans witches battles an evil AI in the magical coming-of-middle-age romp about love, loss, drag shows, and late capitalism.�

On a morning much like any other, 30-something queer Brooklynite Wilder makes the miraculous discovery: suddenly, as if by magic, they can understand every language in the world. Dazed and disconnected, Wilder is found and taken in by a small coven of trans witches who have all become Awakened with mystical powers of their own. Quibble, a handsome portal traveler, Artemis, the group’s caretaker and seer, and Mary Margaret, a smart-ass teen with telekinetic powers all work to make the cagey and suspicious Wilder feel comfortable, both within their group and with the knowledge that magic is, in fact, real.

Just as Wilder is finding their footing, a malicious AI threatens to dismantle the delicate balance of the coven and the world as they know it. Newly assembled and tenuously bound, the group scrambles to stay united as they parse the difference between difficult and dangerous, asking themselves continuously: is any consciousness—be it artificial, material, or magical—too dangerous to exist?

Awakened is an exhilarating, hilarious and thought-provoking reflection on the ways that we are responsible for creating our own realities , a story of finding community, and a meditation on what it means to have a body (and if it might be far worse never to have had one at all).]]> 374 A.E. Osworth Dan 0 currently-reading 4.12 2025 Awakened
author: A.E. Osworth
name: Dan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe]]> 211025400 The essential biography of the controversial rebel, traitor, and only king of Haiti. Henry Christophe (1767 - 1820) is one of the most richly complex figures in the history of the Americas, and was, in his time, popular and famous the world over: in The First and Last King of Haiti, a brilliant, award-winning Yale scholar unravels the still controversial enigma that he was.

Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon's forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe--after nine years of his rule as King Henry I--shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.

Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti's first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south?

The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.]]> 656 Marlene L. Daut 0593316169 Dan 0 currently-reading 4.13 2025 The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe
author: Marlene L. Daut
name: Dan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inGörbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Dan 0 3.66 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Dan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> In Universes 195853541
In Universes is a mind-bending tour across parallel worlds, each an answer to the question of what life would be like if events had played out just a little differently. The universes grow increasingly strange: women fracture into hordes of animals, alien-infested bears prowl apocalyptic landscapes. But across them all, Raffi—alongside their sometimes-friends, sometimes-lovers Britt, Kay, and Graham—reaches for a life that feels authentically their own.

Blending realism with science fiction, In Universes explores the thirst for genius, the fluidity of gender and identity, and the pull of the past against the desire to lead a meaningful life. Part Ted Chiang, part Carmen Maria Machado, part Everything Everywhere All At Once, In Universes insists on the transgressive power of hope even in the darkest of times.]]> 240 Emet North 0063314878 Dan 0 3.82 2024 In Universes
author: Emet North
name: Dan
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/11
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]]> Lacking Character 36180181 The man Paul Auster called “A master of bewitchments� and a founder of the fiction collective returns to the novel after 20 years

In the spirit of “transcendent buffoonery� Curtis White's miraculous return to fiction is fun in the extreme. When a masked man arrives in N�, Illinois bearing a letter and claiming its contents a matter of life or death, the small town—and the fabric of reality—will never be the same.

]]> 196 Curtis White 1612196780 Dan 2
Oh well, at least it was short.]]> 3.40 2018 Lacking Character
author: Curtis White
name: Dan
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2018/03/29
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves:
review:
Um, I'm not exactly sure what this was supposed to be, but clearly not for me. It presents itself as being fun and entertaining and unusual, but instead dips its toes fully into the experimental/difficult pond. There's really no structure or coherence to it, and it does this whole faux-highbrow thing... quite disappointing.

Oh well, at least it was short.
]]> Darkly 208430757
As Dia and her fellow interns delve into the heart of Darkly, they discover hidden symbols, buried clues, and a web of intrigue. Who are these other teens, and what secrets do they keep? Why were any of them really chosen? The answers lie within the twisted labyrinth of Darkly.]]> 399 Marisha Pessl 0593706552 Dan 5 3.70 2024 Darkly
author: Marisha Pessl
name: Dan
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/20
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]]> River Mumma 157995292 Insecure with a magical realist spin: River Mumma is an exhilarating contemporary fantasy novel about a young Black woman who navigates her quarter-life-crisis while embarking on a mythical quest through the streets of Toronto.

Alicia has been out of grad school for months. She has no career prospects and lives with her mom, who won’t stop texting her macabre news stories and reminders to pick up items from the grocery store.

Then, one evening, the Jamaican water deity, River Mumma, appears to Alicia, telling her that she has twenty-four hours to scour the city for her missing comb.

Alicia doesn’t understand why River Mumma would choose her. She can’t remember all the legends her relatives told her, unlike her retail co-worker Heaven, who can reel off Jamaican folklore by heart. She doesn’t know if her childhood visions have returned, or why she feels a strange connection to her other co-worker Mars. But when the trio are chased down by malevolent spirits called duppies, they realize their tenuous bonds to each other may be their only lifelines. With the clock ticking, Alicia’s quest through the city broadens into a journey through time—to find herself and what the river carries.

Energetic and invigorating, River Mumma is a vibrant exploration of diasporic community and ancestral ties, and a homage to Jamaican storytelling by one of the most invigorating voices in today’s literature.]]> 304 Zalika Reid-Benta 1645661350 Dan 0 3.65 2023 River Mumma
author: Zalika Reid-Benta
name: Dan
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/11
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Woodworm 182113235 The house breathes. The house contains bodies and secrets. The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes. It was built by a small-time hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can’t leave. They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy draws unwanted attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice.

In this lush translation by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott, Layla Martinez’s eerie debut novel is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun. Described by Mariana Enriquez as “a house of shadows and women made of vengeance and poetry,� this vision of a broken family in our unjust world places power in the hands of the eccentric, the radical, and the desperate.]]> 149 Layla Martínez 1949641597 Dan 5 3.86 2021 Woodworm
author: Layla Martínez
name: Dan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Temporary 45011012 Temporary, a young woman's workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, "there is nothing more personal than doing your job."

This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.]]> 208 Hilary Leichter 1566895669 Dan 0 3.80 2020 Temporary
author: Hilary Leichter
name: Dan
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Children of the New World 29243630 AN EXTRAORDINARILY RESONANT AND PROPHETIC COLLECTION OF SPECULATIVE SHORT FICTION FOR OUR TECH-SAVVY ERA BY DEBUT AUTHOR ALEXANDER WEINSTEIN

Children of the New World introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.

In “The Cartographers,� the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In “Saying Goodbye to Yang,� the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become.

Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.]]> 229 Alexander Weinstein 1250099005 Dan 0 to-read-maybe 3.74 2016 Children of the New World
author: Alexander Weinstein
name: Dan
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read-maybe
review:

]]> Social Distance 63049901 A commitment-phobic food writer tries to save her job from the chopping block by hiring a delivery driver. When a smoking-hot guy shows up on her doorstep, is he the answer she’s been looking for, or has she bitten off more than she can chew?

Thea Reyes lives a charmed life with a house full of plants, a dream job at the LA Times, and a book deal. But when the pandemic strikes, it all comes tumbling down: her boss threatens to fire her unless she agrees to use delivery services she’s morally opposed to, and she’s blocked on her book.

When a hot delivery driver named Gabe shows up on her doorstep, hiring him is the perfect answer. But now she can’t stop thinking about him. To nip this new distraction in the bud, she proposes a strictly casual, friends with benefits arrangement. Things are perfect…until they’re not.

As her pandemic fling grows complicated, Thea must choose between holding on to her previous life and risking her heart for something more.]]> 351 June Yi Dan 0 to-read 3.56 2022 Social Distance
author: June Yi
name: Dan
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Internet of Garbage 25910719 She writes, “Content platforms and social media networks do not have the power to restrain stalkers, end intimate partner violence, eliminate child abuse, or stop street harassment. But they can cultivate better interactions and better discourse, through thoughtful architecture, active moderation and community management.�
So how do we filter content from garbage? Read on.Sarah Jeong writes about technology, policy and law with bylines at Forbes, The Verge, The Guardian, Slate and WIRED.]]> 92 Sarah Jeong 1508018863 Dan 0 to-read-maybe 4.08 2015 The Internet of Garbage
author: Sarah Jeong
name: Dan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves: to-read-maybe
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]]> Same Bed Different Dreams 216247493
March, 1919. Far-flung Korean patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the North-South split that remains today.

But what if the KPG still existed now, today—working toward a unified Korea, secretly harnessing the might of a giant tech company to further its aims? That’s the outrageous premise of Same Bed Different Dreams, which weaves together three distinct narrative voices and an archive of mysterious images and twists reality like a kaleidoscope, spinning Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives into an extraordinary and unforgettable novel.

Early on we meet Soon Sheen, who works at the sprawling international technology company GLOAT, and comes into possession of an unfinished book authored by the KPG. The manuscript is a mysterious, revisionist history, tying famous names and obscure bit players to the KPG’s grand project. This strange manuscript links together figures from architect-poet Yi Sang to Jack London to Marilyn Monroe. M*A*S*H is in here, too, and the Moonies, and a history of violence extending from the assassination of President McKinley to the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.

Just as foreign countries have imposed their desires on Korea, so too has Park tucked different dreamers into this sprawling bed of a novel. Among them: Parker Jotter, Korean War vet and appliance-store owner, who saw something--a UFO?--while flying over North Korea; Nora You, nail salon magnate; and Monk Zingapan, game designer turned writing guru. Their links are revealed over time, even as the dreamers remain in the dark as to their own interconnectedness. A thrilling feat of imagination and a step forward from an award-winning author, Same Bed Different Dreams begins as a comic novel and gradually pulls readers into another dimension—one in which utopia is possible.]]> 544 Ed Park 0812988329 Dan 0 to-read 4.07 2023 Same Bed Different Dreams
author: Ed Park
name: Dan
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Scrapper 26310397 A man embarks on a desperate quest for redemption in a devastated Detroit, in this novel that �has the feel of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road... Powerful� (Publishers Weekly). Detroit has descended into ruin. Kelly scavenges for scrap metal from the hundred thousand abandoned buildings in a part of the city known as “the zone”—an increasingly wild landscape where one day he finds something far more valuable than the copper he’s come to a kidnapped boy, crying out for rescue. Briefly, Kelly is celebrated as a hero. But even after he has brought the boy to safety, he is driven to secretly avenge this crime and solve the mystery behind the kidnapping—a task that will take him deeper into the zone, and into a confrontation with his own past and long-buried traumas. From the acclaimed author of In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, Scrapper is a devastating reimagining of one of America’s greatest cities, its beautiful architecture, its lost houses, shuttered factories, boxing gyms, and storefront churches. With precise, powerful prose, it What do we owe for our crimes, even those we’ve committed to protect the people we love? ]]> 321 Matt Bell 1616955228 Dan 0 to-read-but-super-depressing 3.30 2015 Scrapper
author: Matt Bell
name: Dan
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: to-read-but-super-depressing
review:

]]> The Escapement 51620343
As the Stranger has learned, the Escapement is a dreamscape of deep mysteries, unlikely allies, and unwinnable battles. Yet the flower the he seeks still lies beyond the Mountains of Darkness. Time is running out as the Stranger journeys deeper into the secret heart of an unimaginable world.]]> 256 Lavie Tidhar 1616963271 Dan 0 to-read 3.71 2021 The Escapement
author: Lavie Tidhar
name: Dan
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport 203578748
Lina, a daughter of failed revolutionaries, has no desire to escape Shantiport. She loves her city and would do anything to save its people. This is, in fact, the plan for her life, made before she was even born.

Her brother, Bador, is a small monkey bot with a big attitude and bigger ambitions. He wants a chance to leave this dead-end planet and explore the universe on his own terms. But that would mean abandoning the family he loves―even if they do take him for granted.

When Shantiport's resident tech billionaire coerces Lina into retrieving a powerful artifact rumored to be able to reshape reality, forces from before their time begin coalescing around the siblings. And when you throw in a piece of sentient, off-world tech with the ability to grant three wishes into the mix� None of the city's powers will know what hit them.]]> 416 Samit Basu 1250827531 Dan 0 to-read 5.00 2023 The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport
author: Samit Basu
name: Dan
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> Here Goes Nothing 71519010
"...Clever lines drop down on these pages like flowers thrown on a casket...[a]zany, increasingly dark comedy..." -- The Washington Post

A wildly inventive, savagely funny and topical novel about love, mortality and the afterlife, by the Booker-shortlisted author of A Fraction of the Whole .

Angus is a reformed ne'er-do-well looking forward to the birth of his first child when he's murdered by a man who is in love with his pregnant wife Gracie. Having never believed in God, heaven or hell, Angus finds himself in the afterlife - a place that provides more questions than answers. As a worldwide pandemic finally reaches the shores of Australia, the afterlife starts to get very crowded and Angus finds a way to reconnect with his wife Gracie and maybe even seek revenge on his murderer...

Here Goes Nothing is a novel of exhilarating originality and scope about birth, death and everything in between and after by ‘a writer of prodigious talent� (Peter Carey) that contains a vision of the afterlife that rivals Dante’s Divine Comedy and George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, and the emmy-nominated The Good Place .]]> 384 Steve Toltz 1685890385 Dan 0 to-read 3.87 2022 Here Goes Nothing
author: Steve Toltz
name: Dan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2)]]> 199347538 Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade. Featuring gorgeous orange sprayed edges!

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 125088120X Dan 0 currently-reading 4.17 2024 Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Spear Cuts Through Water 55868456 Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this new epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.

The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.

But that god cannot be contained forever.

With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever. The journey ahead will be more dangerous than any of them could have imagined.

Both a sweeping adventure story and an intimate exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ambitious and profound saga that will transport and transform you—and is like nothing you’ve ever read before.
]]> 525 Simon Jimenez 0593156595 Dan 5 4.17 2022 The Spear Cuts Through Water
author: Simon Jimenez
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/09
date added: 2024/06/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Daughters' War (Blacktongue, #0)]]> 195790571
The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men.

They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and still they wage war.

Now, our daughters take up arms.

Galva � Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill � has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.

The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted � not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.]]> 416 Christopher Buehlman 1250887674 Dan 5 4.23 2024 The Daughters' War (Blacktongue, #0)
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: Dan
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/06/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession]]> 62873378 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.]]> 224 Michael Finkel 0525657320 Dan 5 3.92 2023 The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
author: Michael Finkel
name: Dan
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/20
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]]> <![CDATA[We're Safe When We're Alone (NVLA)]]> 80110997 168 Nghiem Tran 1566896835 Dan 0 3.67 2023 We're Safe When We're Alone (NVLA)
author: Nghiem Tran
name: Dan
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/14
date added: 2024/05/20
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]]> <![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]> 151 Becky Chambers Dan 0 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Dan
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/05/20
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]]> Moonbound 195790867 Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure.

In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what’s next.

It is thirteen thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history―and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story.

Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.]]> 432 Robin Sloan 0374610606 Dan 5 3.97 2024 Moonbound
author: Robin Sloan
name: Dan
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/15
date added: 2024/05/20
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]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Dan 5 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Dan
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe]]> 150247403
Something strange is going on in the cosmos. Scientists are uncovering a catalogue of weird phenomena that simply can’t be explained by our long-established theories of the universe. Particles with unbelievable energies are bursting from beneath the Antarctic ice. Unknown forces seem to be tugging on the basic building blocks of matter. Stars are flying away from us far faster than anyone can explain.

After decades of fruitless searching, could we finally be catching glimpses of a profound new view of our physical world? Or are we being fooled by cruel tricks of the data?

In Space Oddities, Harry Cliff, a physicist who does cutting-edge work on the Large Hadron Collider, provides a riveting look at the universe’s most confounding puzzles. In a journey that spans continents, from telescopes perched high above the Atacama Desert to the subterranean caverns of state-of-the-art particle colliders to balloons hovering over the frozen icesheets of the South Pole, he meets the men and women hunting for answers—who have staked their careers and reputations on the uncertain promise of new physics.

The result is a mind-expanding, of-the-moment look at the fields of physics and cosmology as they transform before us. With wonder, clarity, and a dose of humor, Cliff investigates the Are these anomalies accidents of nature, or could they be pointing us toward vast, hidden worlds?]]> 288 Harry Cliff 0385549032 Dan 0 science 3.95 2024 Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe
author: Harry Cliff
name: Dan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/06
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves: science
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]]> Whale Fall 195888522 A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community

In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.

The arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture, then, feels like a boon to her—both a glimpse of life outside her community and a means of escape. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized.

With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person's ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O'Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.]]> 224 Elizabeth O'Connor 0593700910 Dan 5 3.80 2024 Whale Fall
author: Elizabeth O'Connor
name: Dan
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/19
date added: 2024/05/20
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]]> The Firm (The Firm, #1) 1001556
Soon, though, Mitch senses trouble: two of the partners die in a suspicious diving accident off Grand Cayman; the firm's management is overly proud of the fact that no one has ever resigned, and security measures at the firm are-even for a company with billionaire clients—more than a little stringent. Then, suddenly, Mitch's vague suspicions come to life. While eating alone at a nearby diner, he is approached by a man named Tarrance who claims to be with the FBI. Tarrance tells Mitch that the firm's "security" people have bugged his phone, his house, and probably his can that he is in great danger and should......
--front flap]]> 432 John Grisham Dan 3 read-a-long-time-ago 3.89 1991 The Firm (The Firm, #1)
author: John Grisham
name: Dan
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2003/01/01
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: read-a-long-time-ago
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]]> Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
“[An] enormously entertaining and lovable book.� —Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

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

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.

“A wholly original novel. . . . Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.� —The Associated Press]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 Dan 0 3.86 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Dan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Shopkeeping: Stories, Advice, and Observations]]> 198498336
“There is a tradition of shopkeeping, a tradition of codes, etiquette, and customs. For the most part, it is an oral history, passed along, person to person. You learn to be a retailer—not by going to college, but by going to work. You learn from people who have learned how to run a shop.� [from the Introduction]

For more than four decades, Peter Miller has run a design bookshop that shares his name in Seattle. He has also written three of his own books, manuals about cooking and about food and about eating together. Inthis love letter to his day job, Miller writes for the first time about his other shopkeeping.

Miller crafts stories from the bookshop floor with wry humor and skillful storytelling. Readers are taken on a shopkeeping journey and will come to understand along the way that small shops characterize our towns and cities, making them unique, special, and worth visiting and living near. This essay collection is for shop lovers everywhere and captures the art and heart of running a local shop treasured by the community that surrounds it. By the end, you can’t help wanting to own a shop.]]> 144 Peter Miller 1797228765 Dan 5
A very quick read, this is a one-sitting book, but what a sitting it will be!]]> 4.16 2024 Shopkeeping: Stories, Advice, and Observations
author: Peter Miller
name: Dan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2024/02/24
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This book is an immaculate view of retail, of shops, of the act of shopkeeping. I find it fits very well with my own thoughts of owning and operating and designing a shop, I could only wish to be half as successful as him.

A very quick read, this is a one-sitting book, but what a sitting it will be!
]]> <![CDATA[Haunted Holiday (Sinister Summer #5)]]> 156738769
Trapped in Aunt Saffronia’s spectral house, Theo and Alexander must work together to escape, stop their newfound nemesis Essa and her henchman Edgaren’t, save Wil and their friends, find their parents, and maybe, just maybe, get things back to normal.

Following the clues left behind, the twins find themselves at Siren’s Song Seaside Amusement Park. Old faces and new surprises await them in a park that was built to lure in visitors� and their secrets.

As they get closer to answers, the twins are left with the biggest question of Who is Essa really, and why is she so determined to find their parents?]]> 267 Kiersten White 0593570073 Dan 0 4.10 2024 Haunted Holiday (Sinister Summer #5)
author: Kiersten White
name: Dan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories]]> 122754906 Far away and long ago, when dragons still existed and the only arcade game was ping-pong in black and white, a wizard cautiously entered a smoky tavern in the evil, ancient, foggy city of Morpork...

A truly unmissable, beautifully illustrated collection of unearthed stories from the pen of Sir Terry Pratchett: award-winning and bestselling author, and creator of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.

Twenty early short stories by one of the world's best loved authors, each accompanied by exquisite original woodcut illustrations.

These are rediscovered tales that Pratchett wrote under a pseudonym for newspapers during the 1970s and 1980s. Whilst none are set in the Discworld, they hint towards the world he would go on to create, containing all of his trademark wit, satirical wisdom and fantastic imagination.

Meet Og the inventor, the first caveman to cultivate fire, as he discovers the highs and lows of progress; haunt the Ministry of Nuisances with the defiant evicted ghosts of Pilgarlic Towers; visit Blackbury, a small market town with weird weather and an otherworldly visitor; and go on a dangerous quest through time and space with hero Kron, which begins in the ancient city of Morpork...]]> 240 Terry Pratchett 0857529633 Dan 5 3.99 2023 A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Dan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/24
date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> The Left Hand of Darkness 118028 See alternate cover editions here and here.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants� gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 366 Ursula K. Le Guin 0441478123 Dan 0 4.07 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Dan
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/02/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Reading the Room: A Bookseller's Tale]]> 204753751 Reading the Room is Paul Yamazaki's love letter to the work of bookselling and an engaged life of the mind.



Over twenty-four hours, Paul Yamazaki leads us through the stacks of storied City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco; the care and prowess of his approach to book buying; his upbringing in a Japanese American family in Southern California and moving to San Francisco at the height of revolutionary foment; working with legendary figures in the book publishing industry like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sonny Mehta, and others; and his vision for the future of bookselling. Navigating building trust with readers and nurturing relationships across the literary industry, Yamazaki testifies to the value of generosity, sharing knowledge, and dialogue in a life devoted to books.]]> 100 Paul Yamazaki 1958846694 Dan 5 4.17 2024 Reading the Room: A Bookseller's Tale
author: Paul Yamazaki
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/02/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Skeleanor the Decomposer: A Graphic Novel]]> 66087036
Skeleanor loves music more than life itself. There’s just one problem: She has a bit more rattle than rhythm at the moment. No matter what type of instrument she plays—from the fiddle to the xylobone—she always seems to scare the people of Little Casketon away. But with the Little Casketon Summershine festival coming up, and the town band missing a player, maybe Skeleanor (along with the help of her best friend, Batima) could show people her skills and finally take center stage.

Hilarious and heartfelt, Skeleanor the Decomposer by debut author and illustrator Emily Ettlinger is a story about chasing your passions no matter what other people say. Sometimes, all you need is a dream, your friends, and a little music.]]> 64 Emily Ettlinger 0593519469 Dan 5 4.07 2023 Skeleanor the Decomposer: A Graphic Novel
author: Emily Ettlinger
name: Dan
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/20
date added: 2023/12/20
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Fantastic story about a skeleton who wants to play in the local community band. A delight.
]]> Lonely Castle in the Mirror 125077742 Seven students find unusual common ground in this warm, puzzle-like Japanese bestseller laced with gentle fantasy and compassionate insight.

Bullied to the point of dropping out of school, Kokoro's days blur together as she hides in her bedroom, unable to face her family or friends. As she spirals into despair, her mirror begins to shine; with a touch, Kokoro is pulled from her lonely life into a resplendent, bizarre fairytale castle guarded by a strange girl in a wolf mask. Six other students have been brought to the castle, and soon this marvelous refuge becomes their playground.

The castle has a hidden room that can grant a single wish, but there are rules to be followed, and breaking them will have dire consequences. As Kokoro and her new acquaintances spend more time in their new sanctuary, they begin to unlock the castle's secrets and, tentatively, each other's.

Lonely Castle in the Mirror is a mesmerizing, heart-warming novel about the unexpected rewards of embracing human connection.]]> 384 Mizuki Tsujimura 1645660745 Dan 5 spec-fic-book-club 4.20 2017 Lonely Castle in the Mirror
author: Mizuki Tsujimura
name: Dan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/11
date added: 2023/12/20
shelves: spec-fic-book-club
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon]]> 63896470 The debut fantasy novel from an award-winning Nigerian author presents a mythic tale of disgruntled gods, revenge, and a heist across two worlds

Shigidi is a disgruntled and demotivated nightmare god in the Orisha spirit company, reluctantly answering prayers of his few remaining believers to maintain his existence long enough to find his next drink. When he meets Nneoma, a sort-of succubus with a long and secretive past, everything changes for him.

Together, they attempt to break free of his obligations and the restrictions that have bound him to his godhood and navigate the parameters of their new relationship in the shadow of her past. But the elder gods that run the Orisha spirit company have other plans for Shigidi, and they are not all aligned--or good.

From the boisterous streets of Lagos to the swanky rooftop bars of Singapore and the secret spaces of London, Shigidi and Nneoma will encounter old acquaintances, rival gods, strange creatures, and manipulative magicians as they are drawn into a web of revenge, spirit business, and a spectacular heist across two worlds that will change Shigidi's understanding of himself forever and determine the fate of the Orisha spirit company.]]> 320 Wole Talabi 0756418267 Dan 0 3.60 2023 Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon
author: Wole Talabi
name: Dan
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/10
date added: 2023/12/20
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]]> Linghun 62109191
Follow Wenqi, Liam, and Mrs. in this modern gothic ghost story by Chinese-Canadian writer and immigrant, Ai Jiang. LINGHUN is set in the mysterious town of HOME, a place where the dead live again as spirits, conjured by the grief-sick population that refuses to let go.]]> 178 Ai Jiang Dan 0 spec-fic-book-club 3.91 2023 Linghun
author: Ai Jiang
name: Dan
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/08
date added: 2023/12/20
shelves: spec-fic-book-club
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]]> <![CDATA["You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World]]> 60254955
Few of us give much thought to computer code or how it comes to be. The very word “code� makes it sound immutable or even inevitable. “You Are Not Expected to Understand This� demonstrates that, far from being preordained, computer code is the result of very human decisions, ones we all live with when we use social media, take photos, drive our cars, and engage in a host of other activities.

Everything from law enforcement to space exploration relies on code written by people who, at the time, made choices and assumptions that would have long-lasting, profound implications for society. Torie Bosch brings together many of today’s leading technology experts to provide new perspectives on the code that shapes our lives. Contributors discuss a host of topics, such as how university databases were programmed long ago to accept only two genders, what the person who programmed the very first pop-up ad was thinking at the time, the first computer worm, the Bitcoin white paper, and perhaps the most famous seven words in Unix “You are not expected to understand this.�

This compelling book tells the human stories behind programming, enabling those of us who don’t think much about code to recognize its importance, and those who work with it every day to better understand the long-term effects of the decisions they make.

With an introduction by Ellen Ullman and contributions by Mahsa Alimardani, Elena Botella, Meredith Broussard, David Cassel, Arthur Daemmrich, Charles Duan, Quinn DuPont, Claire L. Evans, Hany Farid, James Grimmelmann, Katie Hafner, Susan C. Herring, Syeda Gulshan Ferdous Jana, Lowen Liu, John MacCormick, Brian McCullough, Charlton McIlwain, Lily Hay Newman, Margaret O’Mara, Will Oremus, Nick Partridge, Benjamin Pope, Joy Lisi Rankin, Afsaneh Rigot, Ellen R. Stofan, Lee Vinsel, Josephine Wolff, and Ethan Zuckerman.]]> 216 Torie Bosch 0691208484 Dan 4 science 3.53 "You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World
author: Torie Bosch
name: Dan
average rating: 3.53
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/20
date added: 2023/11/20
shelves: science
review:

]]> Other Birds 59807954 An enchanting tale filled with magical realism and moments of pure love that won’t let you go.

Between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways.

Right off the coast of South Carolina, on Mallow Island, The Dellawisp sits—a stunning old cobblestone building shaped like a horseshoe, and named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy.

When Zoey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment at the Dellawisp she meets her quirky and secretive neighbors, including a young woman with a past, two estranged middle-aged sisters, and a lonely chef, and three ghosts. The sudden death of one of Zoey's new neighbors sets off a search that leads to the island's famous author and to a long-estranged relative of the sisters.
Each of them has a story, and each story has an ending which hasn't yet been written.]]> 290 Sarah Addison Allen 1250019869 Dan 0 4.00 2022 Other Birds
author: Sarah Addison Allen
name: Dan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/09
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mordew (Cities of the Weft, #1)]]> 53438794
In the slums of the sea-battered city a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew.

The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength � and it is greater than the Master has ever known. Great enough to destroy everything the Master has built. If only Nathan can discover how to use it.

So it is that the Master begins to scheme against him � and Nathan has to fight his way through the betrayals, secrets, and vendettas of the city where God was murdered, and darkness reigns�

� WELCOME TO MORDEW � THE FIRST IN A MONUMENTAL NEW TRILOGY FROM THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR, ALEX PHEBY]]> 617 Alex Pheby 1913111024 Dan 0 currently-reading 3.57 2020 Mordew (Cities of the Weft, #1)
author: Alex Pheby
name: Dan
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Fraud 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith Dan 0 currently-reading 3.25 2023 The Fraud
author: Zadie Smith
name: Dan
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Blue Is Where God Lives 61783849
Blue’s daughter, Tsitra, is dying a violent and horrific death while, thousands of miles away, Blue feels time slowing and hears voices, followed by a stillness that befalls her for 18 months.

More than a century before, Blue’s grandparents Amanda and Palmer attend a salon party in New Orleans. It’s a veritable who’s who within pre–Civil War social circles. Conversations get heated quickly as Ismay, the hostess who hails from French royalty—and who is the daughter of one of the most ruthless and wealthy slaveholders—antagonizes Palmer, a landowner and slaveholder himself whose parents had been sold into American slavery and who’s there to seek revenge, and Amanda, a shape-shifter and puzzle maker who had been enslaved until this very gathering. At this party, Amanda learns of a cosmic plot that will doom a line of her and Palmer’s family to poverty, so she devises her own counterplot to undo the damage.

Back in the present, Blue comes out of her stillness, broke and devoid of inspiration. In profound grief and consumed by guilt, Blue travels to The Ranch where the voices grow louder and she has visions of two women from the distant past. There, Blue feels the spark of a power and creative energy she has only glimpsed . . . but can it change her future?

A time-bending novel of invention grounded in the real, The Blue Is Where God Lives obliterates the space between past and present and asks whether belief, magic, and intention can forge new realities. With lush, captivating prose, intricate plotting, and unforgettable characters, The Blue Is Where God Lives is a transcendent, electrifying debut of undeniable beauty and possibility that heralds the arrival of a major new voice in fiction.]]> 288 Sharon Sochil Washington 1419767100 Dan 4 3.66 2023 The Blue Is Where God Lives
author: Sharon Sochil Washington
name: Dan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/10
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves:
review:
A mix of surrealism and historical fiction. Hard to follow at times, but a good message and I liked many of the characters.
]]> <![CDATA[Menacing Manor (Sinister Summer #4)]]> 62562955
After escaping from Edgaren’t and Dr. Jay, the Sinister-Winterbottoms and their friends arrive at Stein Manor Science Camp. They all work together to distract the friendly teenage camp director so they can explore and look for clues about where their parents might be.

Meanwhile, Theo and Alexander settle on a daring plan. They know exactly where Edgaren’t is going to coming for them, and the books. This time, they’ll be ready. This time, they’ll get answers. And this time, they won’t trust the adult in charge, which is easy enough when it’s enormous, lurking, unfriendly Mr. Frank. But as they get closer to opening the books and their parents� histories, an unexpected foe is watching everything they do. . . .

Fake volcanoes! Real sea caves! Strangely modified frogs! Startling betrayal! And a lightning-struck manor! all combine for the electrifying penultimate Sinister Summer adventure.]]> 272 Kiersten White 0593570014 Dan 0 4.13 2023 Menacing Manor (Sinister Summer #4)
author: Kiersten White
name: Dan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/30
date added: 2023/06/19
shelves:
review:

]]> The Same Place But Different 1308937 192 Perry Nodelman 0671898396 Dan 4 4.10 1995 The Same Place But Different
author: Perry Nodelman
name: Dan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/06/18
shelves: childrens, fantasy, read-a-long-time-ago, book-rediscovery-project
review:

]]> The Remains of the Day 274186 here.

The Remains of the Day is a profoundly compelling portrait of the perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world postwar England. At the end of his three decades of service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a country drive, during which he looks back over his career to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving “a great gentleman.� But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington’s “greatness� and graver doubts about his own faith in the man he served.]]> 245 Kazuo Ishiguro 0679731725 Dan 4 literary, historical-fiction 4.17 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2010/11/07
date added: 2023/05/16
shelves: literary, historical-fiction
review:

]]> Severance 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 Dan 4 3.90 2018 Severance
author: Ling Ma
name: Dan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/13
date added: 2023/05/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Camp Creepy (Sinister Summer #3)]]> 61233656 Follow the Sinister-Winterbottoms on their most outrageous adventure yet, when they find themselves at a normal summer camp!

After leaving the Sanguine Spa in pursuit of Edgaren't, the kids find themselves at a mysterious summer camp, Camp Creek. There are lake games and happy counselors, and there's even a tie-dye cabin. It's all very . . . normal.

But if Theo and Alexander know one thing, it's that normal doesn't always mean good. When everyone around her starts acting strange, Theo wonders if maybe the fumes from the tie-dye cabin are seeping into their brains, and she resolves to investigate what's really going on at Camp Creek.]]> 288 Kiersten White 0593379128 Dan 0 4.12 2023 Camp Creepy (Sinister Summer #3)
author: Kiersten White
name: Dan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/08
date added: 2023/03/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Vampiric Vacation (Sinister Summer #2)]]> 60372359 The spooky summer adventures of the Sinister-Winterbottom twins continue in another gothic mystery: can Theo and Alexander solve the secret of the Sanguine Spa in the little Transylvania Mountains?

After leaving Fathoms of Fun, the kids are on their way to the next odd summer destination their aunt has chosen for them. This time, they find themselves dropped off at the Sanguine Spa in the "little Transylvania Mountains". There they meet the owners: Mina, her mysterious little sister, Lucy (who is extremely pale, can't go in the sunlight, and has an affinity for hanging upside down from the ceiling), and their intimidating guardian, the Count.

When the Count sends all the children in the spa on a scavenger hunt, the Sinister-Winterbottoms use the excuse to snoop around and discover that this spa may be more than just eerie--it might also hold clues to what happened to their parents. When Wil starts to show vampiric symptoms, the twins resolve to investigate what's really going on at the Sanguine Spa.

The second book in the Sinister Summer series continues the adventures of the Sinister-Winterbottoms and their aunt who never saw a discount vacation destination she didn't love.]]> 320 Kiersten White 059337908X Dan 0 3.97 2022 Vampiric Vacation (Sinister Summer #2)
author: Kiersten White
name: Dan
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/03
date added: 2023/03/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris]]> 7902560 An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Perec compiled a melancholic, slightly eerie and oddly touching document in which existence boils down to rhythm, writing turns into time and the line between the empirical and the surreal grows surprisingly thin.]]> 55 Georges Perec 0984115528 Dan 0 3.78 1975 An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
author: Georges Perec
name: Dan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/21
date added: 2023/03/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Forgotten Work 51132522 217 Jason Guriel 1771963824 Dan 4 spec-fic-book-club 3.83 Forgotten Work
author: Jason Guriel
name: Dan
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/11
date added: 2023/03/12
shelves: spec-fic-book-club
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings]]> 43305488 Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology, their art and culture. From Björn Ironside, who led an expedition to sack Rome, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most travelled woman in the world, Price shows us the real Vikings, not the caricatures they have become in popular culture and history.]]> 656 Neil Price Dan 0 currently-reading 4.14 2020 Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
author: Neil Price
name: Dan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)]]> 61812836 Colson Whitehead continues his Harlem saga in a novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.

It's 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It's strictly the straight-and-narrow for him -- until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire. But Munson has his own favors to ask of Carney and staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated - and deadly.

1973. The counter-culture has created a new generation, the old ways are being overthrown, but there is one constant, Pepper, Carney's endearingly violent partner in crime. It's getting harder to put together a reliable crew for hijackings, heists, and assorted felonies, so Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem. He finds himself in a freaky world of Hollywood stars, up-and-coming comedians, and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters, and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook - to their regret.

1976. Harlem is burning, block by block, while the whole country is gearing up for Bicentennial celebrations. Carney is trying to come up with a July 4th ad he can live with. ("Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!"), while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, the former assistant D.A and rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire severely injures one of Carney's tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it. Our crooked duo have to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent, and the utterly corrupted.]]> 336 Colson Whitehead 0385545150 Dan 0 currently-reading 3.82 2023 Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Dan
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place]]> 44286534
We rely on AI every day for recommendations, for translations, and to put cat ears on our selfie videos. We also trust AI with matters of life and death, on the road and in our hospitals. But how smart is AI really, and how does it solve problems, understand humans, and even drive self-driving cars?

Shane delivers the answers to every AI question you've ever asked, and some you definitely haven't--like, how can a computer design the perfect sandwich? What does robot-generated Harry Potter fan-fiction look like? And is the world's best Halloween costume really "Vampire Hog Bride"?

In this smart, often hilarious introduction to the most interesting science of our time, Shane shows how these programs learn, fail, and adapt--and how they reflect the best and worst of humanity. You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is the perfect book for anyone curious about what the robots in our lives are thinking.]]> 272 Janelle Shane 0316525243 Dan 0 to-read 4.11 2019 You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place
author: Janelle Shane
name: Dan
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tatami Galaxy (Tatami Series, #1)]]> 60619439
An unfulfilled college student hurtles through four parallel realities to explore the what-might've-been and the what-should-never-be in this Groundhog Day meets The Midnight Library–esque novel from one of Japan’s most popular authors.

Our protagonist, an unnamed junior at a prestigious university in Kyoto, is on the verge of dropping out. After rebelling against the dictatorial jock president of the film club, he and his worst and only friend, the diabolical creep Ozu, are personas non grata on campus. For two years, our protagonist has made all the wrong decisions, and now he's about to make another mistake. He and Ozu are preparing for revenge—a fireworks attack at the film club's welcoming party for new members. Then, a chance encounter with a self-proclaimed god sets the confused and distraught young man on a new course. Destiny will bring him together with Akashi, the blunt but charming sophomore he has a crush on—if he’s brave enough to make a move. Yet our protagonist cannot get beyond his profound disillusionment and the moment is lost. But what if there's a universe where he did join the club of his dreams, ditched Ozu for good, and was confident enough to get the girl? A realm of possibility opens up for our protagonist as time rewinds, and from the four-and-a-half-mat tatami floor of his dorm room, he is plunged into a series of adventures that will take him to four parallel universes. In each universe, he is given the opportunity to start over as a freshman, in search of a rose-colored campus life.

The inspiration behind the much-loved anime series, Tomihiko Morimi's contemporary classic is a fantastic journey through time and space, where a half-eaten castella cake, a photograph from Rome, and a giant cavity in a wisdom tooth hold the keys to self-discovery. A time-traveling romp that speaks to everyone who has wondered what if, The Tatami Galaxy will win readers� hearts over . . . and over . . . and over again.]]> 344 Tomihiko Morimi 0063158442 Dan 4 3.45 2004 The Tatami Galaxy (Tatami Series, #1)
author: Tomihiko Morimi
name: Dan
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/09
date added: 2023/03/09
shelves:
review:
Solid four stars. Bizarre, but fun.
]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Dan 3 3.66 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Dan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/12
date added: 2023/02/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Self-Portrait with Nothing 59807970 If a picture paints a thousand worlds...

Abandoned as an infant on the local veterinarian’s front porch, Pepper Rafferty was raised by two loving mothers, and now at thirty-six is married to the stable, supportive Ike. She’s never told anyone that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her biological mother.

That’s because her birth mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter famous for the outrageous claims that her portraits summon their subjects� doppelgangers from parallel universes.

Researching the rumors, Pepper couldn’t help but wonder:
Was there a parallel universe in which she was more confident, more accomplished, better able to accept love?
A universe in which Ula decided she was worth keeping?
A universe in which Ula’s rejection didn’t still hurt too much to share?

Sometimes living our best life means embracing the imperfect one we already have…]]> 295 Aimee Pokwatka 1250820847 Dan 0 3.47 2022 Self-Portrait with Nothing
author: Aimee Pokwatka
name: Dan
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/07
date added: 2023/02/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Nether Regions 61696133
“Filled with wordplay to die for, Randal Graham’s latest dizzying, irresistible life-after-death satire tackles perennial existential questions with humor and hunger.� � Foreword Reviews on Afterlife Crisis

What do you get when a narcissistic megalomaniac plagued by daddy issues leads a horde of angry zealots, xenophobes, and ornery incels on a crusade to Make the Afterlife Great Again? You get an out-of-this-world adventure in which history’s greatest minds face an apocalypse that could make Armageddon look like a cotillion.
You also get Nether Regions, the third installment of Randal Graham’s Beforelife Series. Picking up the threads of Beforelife and Afterlife Crisis, Nether Regions reveals what happens when two of the afterlife’s best-known residents have a baby: the first one born in the hereafter. That baby holds a secret � one that sets off an adventure featuring Socrates, Albert Einstein, Nostradamus, Elizabeth I, Sigmund Freud, Neferneferuaten, and at least 200 Napoleons, all doing their level best to keep the afterlife from turning into hell.]]> 420 Randal Graham 1770414711 Dan 0 to-read 4.35 Nether Regions
author: Randal Graham
name: Dan
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Invisible Cities 9809 165 Italo Calvino 0156453800 Dan 0 4.16 1972 Invisible Cities
author: Italo Calvino
name: Dan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at: 2022/11/12
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wretched Waterpark (Sinister Summer, #1)]]> 57064814 A middle-grade mystery series that's spooky, creepy, and filled with gothic twists! Meet the Sinister-Winterbottom twins, who solve mysteries at increasingly bizarre summer vacation destinations in the hopes of being reunited with their parents—or at the very least finally finding a good churro.

Meet the Sinister-Winterbottoms: brave Theo, her timid twin, Alexander, and their older sister, Wil. They’re stuck for the summer with their Aunt Saffronia, who doesn’t know how often children need to eat and can’t use a smartphone, and whose feet never quite seem to touch the floor when she glides—er—walks.

When Aunt Saffronia suggests a week pass to the Fathoms of Fun Waterpark, they hastily agree. But the park is even stranger than Aunt Saffronia. The waterslides look like gray gargoyle tongues. The employees wear creepy black dresses and deliver ominous messages. An impossible figure is at the top of the slide tower, people are disappearing, and suspicious goo is seeping into the wave pool.

Something mysterious is happening at Fathoms of Fun, and it’s up to the twins to get to the bottom of it. The mystery, that is. NOT the wave pool. Definitely NOT the wave pool. But are Theo and Alexander out of their depth?]]> 235 Kiersten White Dan 4 3.73 2022 Wretched Waterpark (Sinister Summer, #1)
author: Kiersten White
name: Dan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/28
date added: 2022/12/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Girl With All the Gifts 18656044
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

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

The Girl with All the Gifts is a sensational thriller, perfect for fans of Stephen King, Justin Cronin, and Neil Gaiman.]]> 407 M.R. Carey 0316278157 Dan 4
Here we are, back in this state: the world has ended. Again. It did so more decisively this time, as if my concern at the wishy-washy ways it ended in California was registered. As usual, we're stuck with the “lucky" ones, the survivors. (What contrast to those who died early! For them, the period of suffering is brief. But are their stories less valued in their brevity? Too little time for foreboding, dread, and worry?)

While I suppose it’s true for the majority of apocalypses, you can't really go back from zombies. It’s a done deal. For those survivors, it makes you think: what's your goal here? Is even the most positive outcome worth living in? I get pretty bummed out any time I'm reading about zombies.

So, what makes this story any different? Because the first words I'd use to describe “The Girl With All the Gifts� are “compassion� and “warmth�. Because I’ve never read a zombie novel so full of life, so supportive, so positive. Because it doesn’t read like a horror flick: it's a buddy adventure. Carey's writing turns this into so much more than another cookie-cutter zombie thriller, and the rich characters and well-executed backstory means I would have loved to devour another 200 pages.

Whatever the future holds, I remain optimistic: It can't be as bad as it’s portrayed, in so many apocalypses sitting in so many books. Every time we read an apocalypse, we are renewed in our present, reaffirmed that we are full of potential, our lives valuable, our bodies vigorous. We have so much. We have so many blessings, or, should I say, we have so many gifts.



Footnote:
Terrible jokes from my 7th grade science teacher that are spoilers [spoilers removed]]]> 3.90 2014 The Girl With All the Gifts
author: M.R. Carey
name: Dan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/09/04
date added: 2022/12/20
shelves: horror, recommended-to-me, adventure
review:
I’ve often wondered what is so appealing about apocalypses. How can someone be sufficiently satisfied with the human experience that they desire to depict it broken and defeated? Or, could it be the opposite? Do they so despise the world that, in their portrayal, we must watch it burn?

Here we are, back in this state: the world has ended. Again. It did so more decisively this time, as if my concern at the wishy-washy ways it ended in California was registered. As usual, we're stuck with the “lucky" ones, the survivors. (What contrast to those who died early! For them, the period of suffering is brief. But are their stories less valued in their brevity? Too little time for foreboding, dread, and worry?)

While I suppose it’s true for the majority of apocalypses, you can't really go back from zombies. It’s a done deal. For those survivors, it makes you think: what's your goal here? Is even the most positive outcome worth living in? I get pretty bummed out any time I'm reading about zombies.

So, what makes this story any different? Because the first words I'd use to describe “The Girl With All the Gifts� are “compassion� and “warmth�. Because I’ve never read a zombie novel so full of life, so supportive, so positive. Because it doesn’t read like a horror flick: it's a buddy adventure. Carey's writing turns this into so much more than another cookie-cutter zombie thriller, and the rich characters and well-executed backstory means I would have loved to devour another 200 pages.

Whatever the future holds, I remain optimistic: It can't be as bad as it’s portrayed, in so many apocalypses sitting in so many books. Every time we read an apocalypse, we are renewed in our present, reaffirmed that we are full of potential, our lives valuable, our bodies vigorous. We have so much. We have so many blessings, or, should I say, we have so many gifts.



Footnote:
Terrible jokes from my 7th grade science teacher that are spoilers [spoilers removed]
]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida]]> 57224204
Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a “thrilling satire� (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.]]> 386 Shehan Karunatilaka 1908745908 Dan 5
This is one of my favorite novels of the year. Powerful, unique, humbling, and even a little funny at times. More than anything else, this is historical fiction and a character portrait of three young people living their lives in a time of great upheaval. You may want to brush up on the Sri Lankan civil war on Wikipedia before you start, but you'll be well rewarded.

The middle does drag a bit, but the last hundred-plus pages really rolled along. Maali might be a flawed anti-hero, but I liked him all the same, and was rooting for him the whole time.

I will definitely be recommending this one to folks.]]> 3.89 2022 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
author: Shehan Karunatilaka
name: Dan
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/11
date added: 2022/12/11
shelves:
review:
Everyone is raving about the Sevens -- Seven Husbands, Seven Lives, etc -- so, how about Seven Moons?

This is one of my favorite novels of the year. Powerful, unique, humbling, and even a little funny at times. More than anything else, this is historical fiction and a character portrait of three young people living their lives in a time of great upheaval. You may want to brush up on the Sri Lankan civil war on Wikipedia before you start, but you'll be well rewarded.

The middle does drag a bit, but the last hundred-plus pages really rolled along. Maali might be a flawed anti-hero, but I liked him all the same, and was rooting for him the whole time.

I will definitely be recommending this one to folks.
]]> Singer Distance 60583990 For fans of Station Eleven and Light from Other Stars, Ethan Chatagnier’s propulsive, genre-bending debut novel asks: What happens when we discover intelligent life just next door? And what does it really mean to know we’re not alone in the universe?

The odds of the planet next door hosting intelligent life are―that’s not luck. That’s a miracle. It means something.

In December 1960, Crystal Singer, her boyfriend Rick, and three other MIT grad students take a cross-country road trip from Boston to Arizona to paint a message in the desert. Mars has been silent for thirty years, since the last time Earth solved one of the mathematical proofs the Martian civilization carved onto its surface. The latest proof, which seems to assert contradictory truths about distance, has resisted human understanding for decades. Crystal thinks she’s solved it, and Rick is intent on putting her answer to the test―if he can keep her from cracking under the pressure on the way. But Crystal’s disappearance after the experiment will set him on a different path than he expected, forever changing the distance between them.

Filled with mystery and wonder, Ethan Chatagnier’s Singer Distance is a novel about ambition, loneliness, exploration, and love―about how far we’re willing to go to communicate with a distant civilization, and the great lengths we’ll travel to connect with each other here on Earth.]]> 288 Ethan Chatagnier 1953534430 Dan 0 currently-reading 3.90 2022 Singer Distance
author: Ethan Chatagnier
name: Dan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/11/27
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Please Report Your Bug Here 60741772 “An unexpected, inventive, heartfelt riff on the workplace novel—startup realism with a multiverse twist.� —Anna Wiener, author of Uncanny Valley

Introducing Josh Riedel's adrenaline-packed debut novel about a dating app employee who discovers a glitch that transports him to other worlds

Once you sign an NDA it's good for life. Meaning legally, I shouldn't tell you this story. But I have to.

A college grad with the six-figure debt to prove it, Ethan Block views San Francisco as the place to be. Yet his job at hot new dating app DateDate is a far cry from what he envisioned. Instead of making the world a better place, he reviews flagged photo queues, overworked and stressed out. But that's about to change.

Reeling from a breakup, Ethan decides to view his algorithmically matched soulmate on DateDate. He overrides the system and clicks on the profile. Then, he disappears. One minute, he’s in a windowless office, and the next, he’s in a field of endless grass, gasping for air. When Ethan snaps back to DateDate HQ, he’s convinced a coding issue caused the blip. Except for anyone to believe him, he’ll need evidence. As Ethan embarks on a wild goose chase, moving from dingy startup think tanks to Silicon Valley’s dominant tech conglomerate, it becomes clear that there’s more to DateDate than meets the eye. With the stakes rising, and a new world at risk, Ethan must choose who—and what—he believes in.

Adventurous and hypertimely, Please Report Your Bug Here is an inventive millennial coming-of-age story, a dark exploration of the corruption now synonymous with Big Tech, and, above all, a testament to the power of human connection in our digital era.]]> 288 Josh Riedel 1250813794 Dan 0 currently-reading 2.94 2023 Please Report Your Bug Here
author: Josh Riedel
name: Dan
average rating: 2.94
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/22
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World]]> 60383041 320 Tim Palmer 1541619714 Dan 0 to-read 3.95 The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World
author: Tim Palmer
name: Dan
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/18
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]]> The First Bright Thing 61884813 If you knew how dark tomorrow would be, what would you do with today?

Ringmaster � Rin, to those who know her best � can jump to different moments in time as easily as her wife, Odette, soars from bar to bar on the trapeze. And the circus they lead is a rare home and safe haven for magical misfits and outcasts, known as Sparks.

With the world still reeling from World War I, Rin and her troupe � the Circus of the Fantasticals � travel the midwest, offering a single night of enchantment and respite to all who step into their Big Top.

But threats come at Rin from all sides. The future holds an impending war that the Sparks can see barrelling toward their show and everyone in it. And Rin's past creeps closer every day, a malevolent shadow she can’t fully escape.

It takes the form of another circus, with tents as black as midnight and a ringmaster who rules over his troupe with a dangerous power. Rin's circus has something he wants, and he won't stop until it's his.]]> 336 J.R. Dawson 1250805546 Dan 0 to-read 3.56 2023 The First Bright Thing
author: J.R. Dawson
name: Dan
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> Revenge of the Librarians 59808600
Tom Gauld returns with his wittiest and most trenchant collection of literary cartoons to date. Perfectly composed drawings are punctuated with the artist’s signature brand of humour, hitting high and low. After all, Gauld is just as comfortable taking jabs at Jane Eyre and Game of Thrones .

Some particularly favoured targets include the pretentious procrastinating novelist, the commercial mercenary of the dispassionate editor, the willful obscurantism of the vainglorious poet. Quake in the presence of the stack of bedside books as it grows taller! Gnash your teeth at the ever-moving deadline that the writer never meets! Quail before the critic’s incisive dissection of the manuscript! And most importantly, seethe with envy at the paragon of creative productivity!

Revenge of the Librarians contains even more murders, drubbings, and castigations than The Department of Mind-Blowing Theories, Baking For Kafka, or any other collections of mordant scribblings by the inimitably excellent Gauld.]]> 180 Tom Gauld 1770466169 Dan 5 3.96 2022 Revenge of the Librarians
author: Tom Gauld
name: Dan
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/17
date added: 2022/10/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World]]> 60149545 An enthralling journey through the history of books and libraries in the ancient world and those who have helped preserve their rich literary traditions

Long before books were mass-produced, those made of reeds from along the Nile were worth fighting and dying for. Journeying along the battlefields of Alexander the Great, beneath the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, at Cleopatra's palaces and the scene of Hypatia's murder, award-winning author Irene Vallejo chronicles the excitement of literary culture in the ancient world, and the heroic efforts that ensured this extraordinary tradition would continue. Weaved throughout are fascinating stories about the spies, scribes, illuminators, librarians, booksellers, authors, and statesmen whose rich and sometimes complicated engagement with the written word bears remarkable similarities to the world today: Aristophanes and the censorship of the humorists, Sappho and the empowerment of women's voices, Seneca and the problem of a post-truth world. Vallejo takes us to mountainous landscapes and the roaring sea, to the capitals where culture flourished and the furthest reaches where knowledge found refuge in chaotic times. In this sweeping tour of the history of books, the wonder of the ancient world comes alive and, along the way, we discover the singular power of the written word.]]> 464 Irene Vallejo 0593318897 Dan 0 to-read 3.96 2019 Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
author: Irene Vallejo
name: Dan
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, #3)]]> 62810028
Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for in the triumphant conclusion to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate.

The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it's all we dream about, the hideously slim chance we'll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls.

And now the impossible dream has come true. I'm out, we're all out--and I didn't even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. So much for my great-grandmother's prophecy of doom and destruction. I didn't kill enclavers, I saved them. Me, and Orion, and our allies. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: we saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves of the world.

Ha, only joking! Actually it's gone all wrong. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war on the horizon. And the first thing I've got to do now, having miraculously got out of the Scholomance, is turn straight around and find a way back in.]]> 15 Naomi Novik Dan 5 3.95 2022 The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, #3)
author: Naomi Novik
name: Dan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/11
date added: 2022/10/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 41161349
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' pain.

Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith...and a startling vision of human destiny.

This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler “pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale� (John Green, New York Times)—now with a new foreword by N. K. Jemisin.]]> 329 Octavia E. Butler 1538732181 Dan 4 4.17 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Dan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/10
date added: 2022/10/15
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]]> Liberation Day 60471573 Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose--wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned--Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.

Love Letter is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson, in the midst of a dystopian political situation in the not-too-distant future, that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and each other. Ghoul is set in a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado, and follows the exploits of a lonely, morally complex character named Brian, who comes to question everything he takes for granted about his "reality." In Mother's Day, two women who loved the same man come to an existential reckoning in the middle of a hailstorm. And in Elliott Spencer, our eighty-nine-year-old protagonist finds himself brainwashed--his memory "scraped"--a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters.

Together, these nine subversive, profound, and essential stories coalesce into a case for viewing the world with the same generosity and clear-eyed attention as Saunders does, even in the most absurd of circumstances.]]> 256 George Saunders 0525509593 Dan 0 currently-reading 3.99 2022 Liberation Day
author: George Saunders
name: Dan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/15
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]]> Nights of Plague 60097027 From the the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Part detective story, part historical epic--a bold and brilliant novel that imagines a plague ravaging a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire.

It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria--the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire--located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives--brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria--the island revolts.

To stop the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II sends his most accomplished quarantine expert to the island--an Orthodox Christian. Some of the Muslims, including followers of a popular religious sect and its leader Sheikh Hamdullah, refuse to take precautions or respect the quarantine. And then a murder occurs.

As the plague continues its rapid spread, the Sultan sends a second doctor to the island, this time a Muslim, and strict quarantine measures are declared. But the incompetence of the island's governor and local administration and the people's refusal to respect the bans doom the quarantine to failure, and the death count continues to rise. Faced with the danger that the plague might spread to the West and to Istanbul, the Sultan bows to international pressure and allows foreign and Ottoman warships to blockade the island. Now the people of Mingheria are on their own, and they must find a way to defeat the plague themselves.

Steeped in history and rife with suspense, Nights of Plague is an epic story set more than one hundred years ago, with themes that feel remarkably contemporary.]]> 683 Orhan Pamuk 0525656898 Dan 0 currently-reading 3.49 2021 Nights of Plague
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Dan
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/11
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature]]> 60784368
“Wide-ranging and thoroughly winning.� ―Jordan Ellenberg, The New York Times Book Review

“An absolute joy to read!" ―Steven Levitt, New York Times bestselling author of Freakonomics

For fans of Seven Brief Lessons in Physics , an exploration of the many ways mathematics can transform our understanding of literature and vice versa, by the first woman to hold England's oldest mathematical chair.

We often think of mathematics and literature as polar opposites. But what if, instead, they were fundamentally linked? In her clear, insightful, laugh-out-loud funny debut, Once Upon a Prime , Professor Sarah Hart shows us the myriad connections between math and literature, and how understanding those connections can enhance our enjoyment of both.

Did you know, for instance, that Moby-Dick is full of sophisticated geometry? That James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novels are deliberately checkered with mathematical references? That George Eliot was obsessed with statistics? That Jurassic Park is undergirded by fractal patterns? That Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote mathematician characters? From sonnets to fairytales to experimental French literature, Professor Hart shows how math and literature are complementary parts of the same quest, to understand human life and our place in the universe.

As the first woman to hold England’s oldest mathematical chair, Professor Hart is the ideal tour guide, taking us on an unforgettable journey through the books we thought we knew, revealing new layers of beauty and wonder. As she promises, you’re going to need a bigger bookcase.]]> 304 Sarah Hart 1250850886 Dan 0 currently-reading 3.86 2023 Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature
author: Sarah Hart
name: Dan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/11
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Last White Man 58885796 From the New York Times -bestselling author of Exit West , a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change.

One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different a chance at a kind of rebirth--an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.

In Mohsin Hamid’s lyrical and urgent prose, The Last White Man powerfully uplifts our capacity for empathy and the transcendence over bigotry, fear, and anger it can achieve.]]> 192 Mohsin Hamid 0593538811 Dan 0 3.43 2022 The Last White Man
author: Mohsin Hamid
name: Dan
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/10/08
date added: 2022/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

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

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Dan 5 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Dan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/15
date added: 2022/09/19
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]]> <![CDATA[50 Shades of Akash: Hand to Eye Coordination]]> 25874918
Documents the struggles of Akash as he continually fails to live up to the expectation of peers. He's unable to perform simple physical tasks due to a malfunctioning circuit in his cybernetic interface.]]> Testy McTesterson Dan 0 to-read 3.54 2015 50 Shades of Akash: Hand to Eye Coordination
author: Testy McTesterson
name: Dan
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/23
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]]> The City & the City 4703581
Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.]]> 312 China Miéville 0345497511 Dan 4 3.90 2009 The City & the City
author: China Miéville
name: Dan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/10
date added: 2022/08/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Bold Ventures: Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy]]> 58709525 304 Charlotte Van den Broeck 1784743984 Dan 0 to-read 3.43 2019 Bold Ventures: Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy
author: Charlotte Van den Broeck
name: Dan
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Alive at the End of the World 60418994 Pierced by grief and charged with history, this new poetry collection from the award-winning author of Prelude to Bruise and How We Fight for Our Lives confronts our everyday apocalypses.

In haunted poems glinting with laughter, Saeed Jones explores the public and private betrayals of life as we know it. With verve, wit, and elegant craft, Jones strips away American artifice in order to reveal the intimate grief of a mourning son and the collective grief bearing down on all of us.

Drawing from memoir, fiction, and persona, Jones confronts the everyday perils of white supremacy with a finely tuned poetic ear, identifying moments that seem routine even as they open chasms of hurt. Viewing himself as an unreliable narrator, Jones looks outward to understand what’s within, bringing forth cultural icons like Little Richard, Paul Mooney, Aretha Franklin and Diahann Carroll to illuminate how long and how perilously we’ve been living on top of fault lines. As these poems seek ways to love and survive through America’s existential threats, Jones ushers his readers toward the realization that the end of the world is already here—and the apocalypse is a state of being.]]> 104 Saeed Jones Dan 5 4.34 2022 Alive at the End of the World
author: Saeed Jones
name: Dan
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/31
date added: 2022/07/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 � 1066]]> 59560987 A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national bestselling author Marc Morris.

Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters.

The Anglo-Saxonstraces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics. It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters - ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being.

Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.]]> 528 Marc Morris 1639362118 Dan 0 to-read 4.36 2021 The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066
author: Marc Morris
name: Dan
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional]]> 54860230 Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.

Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others.

Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.]]> 256 Isaac Fitzgerald 1635573971 Dan 5 3.56 2022 Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional
author: Isaac Fitzgerald
name: Dan
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/08
date added: 2022/07/21
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]]> Remote Control 34215764 The new book by Nebula and Hugo Award-winner, Nnedi Okorafor.

"She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own."

The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa­­--a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.

Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks--alone, except for her fox companion--searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.

But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?]]> 156 Nnedi Okorafor Dan 5 3.86 2021 Remote Control
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Dan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/10
date added: 2022/07/10
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]]> The Impossible Us 58575269
***

Nick: Failed writer. Failed husband. Dog owner.

Bee: Serial dater. Dress maker. Pringles enthusiast.

One day, their paths cross over a misdirected email. The connection is instant, electric. They feel like they've known each other all their lives.

Nick buys a new suit, gets on a train. Bee steps away from her desk, sets off to meet him under the clock at Euston station.

Think you know how the rest of the story goes? They did too . . .

But this is a story with more twists than most. This is Impossible.]]> 483 Sarah Lotz 0593436776 Dan 0 to-read-maybe 3.86 2022 The Impossible Us
author: Sarah Lotz
name: Dan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/06
shelves: to-read-maybe
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]]> The Hiking Book from Hell 61070625 Jim Gaffigan meets Cheryl Strayed in this blisteringly funny memoir about the call of the wild, from one of Scandinavia's biggest comedians.

Sometime around his forties, Are Kalvø starts losing his friends ... to the mountains. Friends who used to meet him at the pub are now hiking and skiing every weekend, and when they do show up, all they talk about is feeling at one with nature (without a hint of irony). When Are realizes he's the only person who hasn't posted a selfie on a mountain, he starts to wonder: does he have it all wrong?

To find out, Are buys some ridiculously expensive gear and heads into the woods. The result of his sardonic trek is at once a smart and funny take-down of outdoors culture, and a reluctant surrender to nature's undeniable pull. An adventure, a comedy, and a tragedy, The Hiking Book from Hell is destined to become a nature writing (and nature hating) classic.]]> 328 Are Kalvø 1771645857 Dan 0 to-read 3.50 2018 The Hiking Book from Hell
author: Are Kalvø
name: Dan
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1)]]> 25526296 Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost.]]> 176 Seanan McGuire 0765385503 Dan 0 to-read 3.81 2016 Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: Dan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> In Praise of Good Bookstores 59149216 From a devoted reader and lifelong bookseller, an eloquent and charming reflection on the singular importance of bookstores

Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In this beautifully written book, Jeff Deutsch--the director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world--pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, abundance, and community find expression in a good bookstore. Along the way, he also predicts--perhaps audaciously--a future in which the bookstore not only endures, but realizes its highest aspirations.

In exploring why good bookstores matter, Deutsch draws on his lifelong experience as a bookseller, but also his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew. This spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading, not as a means to a living, but as an essential part of a meaningful life. Central among Deutsch's arguments for the necessity of bookstores is the incalculable value of browsing--since, when we are deep in the act of looking at the shelves, we move through space as though we are inside the mind itself, immersed in self-reflection.

In the age of one-click shopping, this is no ordinary defense of bookstores, but rather an urgent account of why they are essential places of discovery, refuge, and fulfillment that enrich the communities that are lucky enough to have them.]]> 216 Jeff Deutsch 0691207763 Dan 5
There are a handful of passages that are strikingly clear articulations of my thoughts on owning a bookstore, to the point where I may ask staff to read and ruminate on them when hired.]]> 3.43 2022 In Praise of Good Bookstores
author: Jeff Deutsch
name: Dan
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/28
date added: 2022/05/28
shelves:
review:
A very philosophical take on the purpose, direction, and lineage of bookstores, bookselling, and the act of owning and/or reading books. No answers or simple arguments here, everything is presented with a historical context (SO MANY quotations) and an eye toward the ideal.

There are a handful of passages that are strikingly clear articulations of my thoughts on owning a bookstore, to the point where I may ask staff to read and ruminate on them when hired.
]]> <![CDATA[The Brides of Maracoor (Another Day, #1)]]> 56645982 The Brides of Maracoor, finds Elphaba’s granddaughter, Rain, washing ashore on a foreign island. Comatose from crashing into the sea, Rain is taken in by a community of single women committed to obscure devotional practices.

As the mainland of Maracoor sustains an assault by a foreign navy, the island’s civil-servant overseer struggles to understand how an alien arriving on the shores of Maracoor could threaten the stability and wellbeing of an entire nation. Is it myth or magic at work, for good or for ill?

The trilogy Another Day will follow this green-skinned girl from the island outpost into the unmapped badlands of Maracoor before she learns how, and becomes ready, to turn her broom homeward, back to her family and her lover, back to Oz, which—in its beauty, suffering, mystery, injustice, and possibility—reminds us all too clearly of the troubled yet sacred terrain of our own lives.

Ten years ago this season, Gregory Maguire wrapped up the series he began with Wicked by giving us the fourth and final volume of the Wicked Years, his elegiac Out of Oz. Maguire’s new series, Another Day, is here, twenty-five years after Wicked first flew into our lives.]]> 384 Gregory Maguire 0063093960 Dan 4 3.58 2021 The Brides of Maracoor (Another Day, #1)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Dan
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/15
date added: 2022/05/15
shelves:
review:

]]> The Chinese Groove 58978261
Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams of bigger things. Buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the "Chinese groove," a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders.

Upon arrival, Shelley is dismayed to find that his "rich uncle" is in fact his unemployed second cousin once removed and that the grand guest room he’d envisioned is but a crappy sofa. The indefinite stay he’d planned for? That has a firm two-week expiration date. Even worse, the loving family he hoped would embrace him is in shambles, shattered by a senseless tragedy that has cleaved the family in two. They want nothing to do with this youthful bounder who’s barged into their lives. Ever the optimist, Shelley concocts a plan to resuscitate his American dream by insinuating himself into the family. And, who knows, maybe he’ll even manage to bring them back together in the process.]]> 304 Kathryn Ma 1640095667 Dan 0 currently-reading 3.89 2023 The Chinese Groove
author: Kathryn Ma
name: Dan
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Riverman: An American Odyssey 58537150 The true story of Dick Conant, an American folk hero who, over the course of more than twenty years, canoed solo thousands of miles of American rivers--and then disappeared near the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

For decades, Dick Conant paddled the rivers of America, covering the Mississippi, Yellowstone, Ohio, Hudson, as well as innumerable smaller tributaries. These solo excursions were epic feats of planning, perseverance, and physical courage. At the same time, Conant collected people wherever he went, creating a vast network of friends and acquaintances who would forever remember this brilliant and charming man even after a single meeting.

Ben McGrath, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was one of those people. In 2014 he met Conant by chance just north of New York City as Conant paddled down the Hudson, headed for Florida. McGrath wrote a widely read article about their encounter, and when Conant's canoe washed up a few months later, without any sign of his body, McGrath set out to find the people whose lives Conant had touched--to capture a remarkable life lived far outside the staid confines of modern existence.

Riverman is a portrait of a man who was as troubled as he was charismatic, who struggled with mental illness and self-doubt, and was ultimately unable to fashion a stable life for himself; who traveled alone and yet thrived on connection and brought countless people together in his wake. It is also a portrait of an America we rarely see: a nation of unconventional characters, small river towns, and long-forgotten waterways.]]> 256 Ben McGrath 0451494008 Dan 5 3.66 2022 Riverman: An American Odyssey
author: Ben McGrath
name: Dan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/09
date added: 2022/05/09
shelves:
review:
I had no idea how much I would like this book. A portrait of a wandering soul, a guy who gets along with everyone, an outdoorsman and canoe traveler. Fascinating and deeply researched, I will definitely be sharing this one with some people.
]]> <![CDATA[Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Cities and Vanished Villages]]> 58999181 Drowned. Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff. This is the extraordinary tale of Britain’s eerie and remarkable ghost towns and villages; shadowlands that once hummed with life. Peering through the cracks of history, we find Dunwich, a medieval city plunged off a cliff by sea storms; the abandoned village of Wharram Percy, wiped out by the Black Death; the lost city of Trellech unearthed by moles in 2002; and a Norfolk village zombified by the military and turned into a Nazi, Soviet, and Afghan village for training.

Matthew Green, a British historian and broadcaster, tells the astonishing tales of the rise and demise of these places, animating the people who lived, worked, dreamed, and died there. Traveling across Britain to explore their haunting and often-beautiful remains, Green transports the reader to these lost towns and cities as they teeter on the brink of oblivion, vividly capturing the sounds of the sea clawing away row upon row of houses, the taste of medieval wine, or the sights of puffin hunting on the tallest cliffs in the country. We experience them in their prime, look on at their destruction, and revisit their lingering remains as they are mourned by evictees and reimagined by artists, writers, and mavericks.

A stunning and original excavation of Britain’s untold history, Shadowlands gives us a truer sense of the progress and ravages of time, in a moment when many of our own settlements are threatened as never before.]]> 368 Matthew Green 0393635341 Dan 4 3.83 2022 Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Cities and Vanished Villages
author: Matthew Green
name: Dan
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/04
date added: 2022/05/05
shelves:
review:
Another cool history of very specific places and people, definitely right in my wheelhouse. Now I just need to find the very specific history of the Brewsters in England to know where I can claim my castle...
]]> <![CDATA[The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films: A Comprehensive Account of Howard Shore's Scores (Book and Rarities CD)]]> 8882617 401 Doug Adams 0739071572 Dan 0 to-read 4.67 2010 The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films: A Comprehensive Account of Howard Shore's Scores (Book and Rarities CD)
author: Doug Adams
name: Dan
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Dan 5
Can't wait to share this one with folks.]]> 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Dan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/06
date added: 2022/04/18
shelves:
review:
A gem of a novel, spiraling out of place and time, incorporating bits of our present day hopes and anxieties into a larger narrative of optimism, peace, and resilience. As in her previous books, Mandel weaves effortlessly between historical and science fiction, with characters full of life and beautiful set pieces. Mandel is a master at this immersive storytelling, and I loved to watch the novel unfold.

Can't wait to share this one with folks.
]]> The Queue 26067678 Set against the backdrop of a failed political uprising, The Queue is a chilling debut that evokes Orwellian dystopia, Kafkaesque surrealism, and a very real vision of life after the Arab Spring.

In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Middle East, a centralized authority known as ‘the Gate� has risen to power in the aftermath of the ‘Disgraceful Events,� a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer.

Citizens from all walks of life mix and wait in the sun: an activist journalist, a sheikh, a poor woman concerned for her daughter’s health, and even the cousin of a security officer killed in clashes with protestors. Among them is Yehya, a man who was shot during the Events and is waiting for permission from the Gate to remove a bullet that remains lodged in his pelvis. Yehya’s health steadily declines, yet at every turn, officials refuse to assist him, actively denying the very existence of the bullet.

Ultimately it is Tarek, the principled doctor tending to Yehya’s case, who must decide whether to follow protocol as he has always done, or to disobey the law and risk his career to operate on Yehya and save his life.

Written with dark, subtle humor, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it.]]> 217 Basma Abdel Aziz 1612195164 Dan 0 to-read 3.62 2012 The Queue
author: Basma Abdel Aziz
name: Dan
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Either/Or 58890783 From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood

Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin's elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan's weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel--a life worthy of becoming a novel--without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?

Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice--no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.

Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.]]> 368 Elif Batuman 0525557598 Dan 0 to-read 4.00 2022 Either/Or
author: Elif Batuman
name: Dan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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