en-US Wed, 22 Jan 2025 14:25:58 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 53835 The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.�

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.]]> 293 Edith Wharton 159308143X Wade 4 3.96 1920
author: Edith Wharton
name: Wade
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1920
rating: 4
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]]> 17728
Lily Bart, beautiful, witty and sophisticated, is accepted by ‘old money� and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect. Whilst many have sought her, something � fastidiousness or integrity- prevents her from making a ‘suitable� match.]]> 351 Edith Wharton 1844082938 Wade 5 3.97 1905
author: Edith Wharton
name: Wade
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1905
rating: 5
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]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Wade 5 4.21 1993
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Wade
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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]]> 26032825 Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.]]> 370 Holly Black 0316310271 Wade 0 to-read 4.01 2018
author: Holly Black
name: Wade
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/04
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]]> 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

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

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X Wade 0 to-read 3.56 2015
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Wade
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 30971657 An empty suit of armor is the hero in this witty novella, a picaresque gem—now available in an independent volume for the first time—that brilliantly parodies medieval knighthood.

Set in the time of Charlemagne and narrated by a nun with her own secrets to keep, The Nonexistent Knight tells the story of Agilulf, a gleaming white suit of armor with nothing inside it. A challenge to his honor sends Agilulf on a search through France, England, and North Africa to confirm the chastity of a virgin he saved from rape years earlier. In the end, after many surprising turns of plot, a closing confession draws this sparkling novella to a perfect finish.]]> 144 Italo Calvino 0544959108 Wade 0 to-read 3.94 1959
author: Italo Calvino
name: Wade
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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]]> 13496
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.]]> 835 George R.R. Martin 0553588486 Wade 3 4.44 1996
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Wade
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1996
rating: 3
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]]> 385706 Gregor's adventures continue in Book 3 of the New York Times bestselling series by author Suzanne Collins.

With two prophecies fulfilled, Gregor is now focused on the Prophecy of Blood, which calls for Gregor and Boots to return to the Underland to help ward off a plague. But this time, his mother refuses to let him go . . . unless she is allowed to travel with them.

When they arrive in the subterranean city, the plague is spreading -- and it claims one of Gregor's closest companions. Only then does Gregor start to understand how the illness plays with the fate of all warm-blooded creatures. But how can he help combat it?]]> 358 Suzanne Collins 0439656249 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.23 2005
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Wade
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> 537070 412 Suzanne Collins 043979143X Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.30 2007
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Wade
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> 319644 In Book 4 of the bestselling Underland Chronicles, Gregor is drawn ever deeper into a brewing crisis. For generations, rats have run the mice out of whatever lands they've claimed, keeping them constantly on the move. But now the mice are disappearing and the young queen Luxa is determined to find out why.

Gregor and Boots join Luxa on a simple fact-finding mission. But when the true fate of the mice is revealed, it is something far more sinister than they had imagined -- and it points the way to the final prophecy Gregor has yet to fulfill. His abilities are put to the test in this suspenseful, action-packed penultimate installment of Suzanne Collins's thrilling Underland Chronicles.]]> 343 Suzanne Collins 0439791464 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.25 2006
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Wade
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> 385742 Gregor swears he will never return to the Underland, that strange world below New York City. But he is a key player in another prophecy, this one about an ominous white rat called the Bane. The Underlanders know there is only one way to lure Gregor back to their world: by kidnapping his little sister, Boots.
Now Gregor's quest reunites him with his bat, Ares, and the rebellious princess Luxa. They descend into the dangerous Waterway in search of the Bane. If Gregor does not fulfill the prophecy, his life, and the Underland, will never be the same.]]> 312 Suzanne Collins 0439650763 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.21 2004
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Wade
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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]]> 262430 The story of a boy who embarks on a dangerous quest in order to fulfill his destiny -- and find his father -- in a strange world beneath New York City.
When Gregor falls through a grate in the laundry room of his apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland, where spiders, rats, cockroaches coexist uneasily with humans. This world is on the brink of war, and Gregor's arrival is no accident. A prophecy foretells that Gregor has a role to play in the Underland's uncertain future. Gregor wants no part of it -- until he realizes it's the only way to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance. Reluctantly, Gregor embarks on a dangerous adventure that will change both him and the Underland forever.]]> 326 Suzanne Collins 043977134X Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.04 2003
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Wade
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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]]> 40159
Then he drags a naive young guard into the center of the political maelstrom. Poor Costis knows he is the victim of the king's caprice, but his contempt for Eugenides slowly turns to grudging respect. Though struggling against his fate, the newly crowned king is much more than he appears. Soon the corrupt Attolian court will learn that its subtle and dangerous intrigue is no match for Eugenides.]]> 387 Megan Whalen Turner 006083577X Wade 5 coming-back-in-2020 4.38 2006
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Wade
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> 40158 Revenge

When Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, stole Hamiathes's Gift, the Queen of Attolia lost more than a mythical relic. She lost face. Everyone knew that Eugenides had outwitted and escaped her. To restore her reputation and reassert her power, the Queen of Attolia will go to any length and accept any help that is offered... she will risk her country to execute the perfect revenge.

...but

Eugenides can steal anything. And he taunts the Queen of Attolia, moving through her strongholds seemingly at will. So Attolia waits, secure in the knowledge that the Thief will slip, that he will haunt her palace one too many times.

…at what price?

When Eugenides finds his small mountain country at war with Attolia, he must steal a man, he must steal a queen, he must steal peace. But his greatest triumph—and his greatest loss—comes in capturing something that the Queen of Attolia thought she had sacrificed long ago...

Books for the Teen Age 2001 (NYPL) and Bulletin Blue Ribbon Best of 2000 Award.]]> 362 Megan Whalen Turner 0060841826 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.17 2000
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Wade
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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]]> 448873 Instead of Three Wishes, the first book by Megan Whalen Turner. Her second book more than fulfills that promise.

The king's scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king's prison. The magus is interested only in the thief's abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone's guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.

Megan Whalen Turner weaves Gen's stories and Gen's story together with style and verve in a novel that is filled with intrigue, adventure, and surprise.]]> 280 Megan Whalen Turner 0060824972 Wade 5 coming-back-in-2020 3.86 1996
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Wade
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> 8259162 Amnesiac Selves shows that the Victorian novel bears no such secure relation to memory, and, in fact, it tries to hide, evade, and eliminate remembering. Dames argues that the notable scarcity and distinct unease of representations of remembrance in the nineteenth-century British novel signal an art form struggling to define and construct new concepts of memory. By placing nineteenth-century British fiction from Jane Austen to Wilkie Collins alongside a wide variety of Victorian psychologies and theories of mind, Nicholas Dames evokes a novelistic world, and a culture, before modern memory--one dedicated to a nostalgic evasion of detailed recollection which our time has largely forgotten.
]]> 312 Nicholas Dames 0195349458 Wade 0 to-read 0.0 2001
author: Nicholas Dames
name: Wade
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> 807968
Molly Moon is no ordinary orphan. When she finds a mysterious old book on hypnotism, she discovers she can make people do whatever she wants. But a sinister stranger is watching her every move and he'll do anything to steal her hypnotic secret...]]> 371 Georgia Byng 0060514094 Wade 5 3.92 2002
author: Georgia Byng
name: Wade
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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]]> 3334563 1152 Cornelia Funke 1905294964 Wade 0 4.21 2008
author: Cornelia Funke
name: Wade
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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]]> 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 Wade 0 to-read 4.17 2022
author: Simon Jimenez
name: Wade
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 5488
The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons–the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. Sugar Street brings Mahfouz’s vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician.

Throughout the trilogy, the family's trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and remarkable insight, The Cairo Trilogy is the achievement of a master storyteller.]]> 1313 Naguib Mahfouz Wade 0 to-read 4.45 1957
author: Naguib Mahfouz
name: Wade
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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]]> 30037801
C. S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—presents a well-reasoned case for the importance of story and wonder, elements often ignored by critics of his time. He also discusses his favorite kinds of stories—children’s stories and fantasies—and offers insights into his most famous works, The Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy.]]> 256 C.S. Lewis 0062643541 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.08 1966
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Wade
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/11
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 723155 118 William Morris 1587152142 Wade 0 to-read 3.48 1894
author: William Morris
name: Wade
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1894
rating: 0
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]]> 3218173 562 William Morris 0345244826 Wade 0 to-read 3.80 1896
author: William Morris
name: Wade
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1896
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/09
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]]> 13624 The Lord of the Rings first appeared, the critics inevitably compared it to this 1922 landmark work. Tolkien himself frankly acknowledged its influence, with warm praise for its imaginative appeal. The story of a remote planet’s great war between two kingdoms, it ranks as the Iliad of heroic fantasy.

In the best traditions of Homeric epics, Norse sagas, and Arthurian myths, author E. R. Eddison weaves a compelling adventure, with a majestic, Shakespearean narrative style. His sweeping tale recounts battles between warriors and witches on fog-shrouded mountaintops and in the ocean’s depths—along with romantic interludes, backroom intrigues, and episodes of direst treachery. Generations of readers have joyfully lost themselves in the timeless worlds of The Worm Ouroboros.

[This new edition is illustrated with the classic original images.]
]]> 446 E.R. Eddison 0486447405 Wade 0 to-read 3.66 1922
author: E.R. Eddison
name: Wade
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1922
rating: 0
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]]> 1064084 A Voyage to Arcturus has inspired, enchanted, and unsettled readers for decades. It is simultaneously an epic quest across one of the most unusual and brilliantly depicted alien worlds ever conceived, a profoundly moving journey of discovery into the metaphysical heart of the universe, and a shockingly intimate excursion into what makes us human and unique. Ìý

After a strange interstellar journey, Maskull, a man from Earth, awakens alone in a desert on the planet Tormance, seared by the suns of the binary star Arcturus. As he journeys northward, guided by a drumbeat, he encounters a world and its inhabitants like no other, where gender is a victory won at dear cost; where landscape and emotion are drawn into an accursed dance; where heroes are killed, reborn, and renamed; and where the cosmological lures of Shaping, who may be God, torment Maskull in his astonishing pilgrimage. At the end of his arduous and increasingly mystical quest waits a dark secret and an unforgettable revelation.

A Voyage to Arcturus was the first novel by writer David Lindsay (1878�1945), and it remains one of the most revered classics of science fiction. This commemorative edition features an introduction by noted scholar and writer of speculative fiction John Clute and a famous essay by Loren Eiseley.]]> 274 David Lindsay 0803280041 Wade 0 to-read 3.57 1920
author: David Lindsay
name: Wade
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1920
rating: 0
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]]> 26816219
After having received numerous requests to continue the story of detective Elijah Baley and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw, featured in his earlier novels The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, Asimov wrote this short detective story.]]> 7 Isaac Asimov Wade 3 3.89 1972
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1972
rating: 3
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]]> 30016
Reacting in fear of the technological superiority of the Outer Worlds, the people of Earth have hidden themselves in vast underground cities, nursing a hatred for Spacers. The fifty Outer Worlds of the Spacers together are home to fewer people than planet Earth. And home to many, many more robots. Earthmen hate Spacer robots, too...

But Baley doesn't. He once had a robot partner, R. Daneel � and when the authorities of the planet Solaria request terrestrial assistance in investigating a murder, Baley is once again teamed with Daneel. He is the first Earthmen in a millennium to travel to the Outer Worlds... and he must endure the glare of a sun far more deadly than Earth's.]]> 204 Isaac Asimov Wade 2 4.17 1958
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1958
rating: 2
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]]> 509 112 Tom Stoppard 0802135811 Wade 0 to-read 3.99 1997
author: Tom Stoppard
name: Wade
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> 489612
But then Calwyn befriends Darrow, a mysterious Outlander who appears inside the Wall and warns of an approaching danger. To help Darrow, to see the world, and perhaps to save it, Calwyn will leave the safety of the Wall for a journey with a man she barely knows—and an adventure as beautiful and dangerous as the music of chantment itself.]]> 320 Kate Constable 0439554799 Wade 2 3.91 2002
author: Kate Constable
name: Wade
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/02/29
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]]> 41811 206 Isaac Asimov Wade 3 4.19 1953
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1953
rating: 3
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]]> 41804
I, ROBOT

They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on perhaps its greatest adventure: the invention of the first positronic man. It was a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities—and unforeseen risks. For the scientists who invented the earliest robots weren't content that their creations should ' remain programmed helpers, companions, and semisentient worker-machines. And soon the robots themselves; aware of their own intelligence, power, and humanity, aren't either.

As humans and robots struggle to survive together—and sometimes against each other—on earth and in space, the future of both hangs in the balance. Human men and women confront robots gone mad, telepathic robots, robot politicians, and vast robotic intelligences that may already secretly control the world. And both are asking the same questions: What is human? And is humanity obsolete?

In l, Robot Isaac Asimov changes forever our perception of robots, and human beings and updates the timeless myth of man's dream to play god. with all its rewards—and terrors.
--front flap]]> 224 Isaac Asimov 0553803700 Wade 3 4.22 1950
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1950
rating: 3
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]]> 29582
But is it the right choice for the destiny of mankind? While Trevize feels it is, that is not enough. He must know.

Trevize believes the answer lies at the site of humanity's roots: fabled Earth . . . if it still exists. For no one is sure where the planet of Gaia's first settlers is to be found in the immense wilderness of the Galaxy. Nor can anyone explain why no record of Earth has been preserved, no mention of it made anywhere in Gaia's vast world-memory. It is an enigma Trevize is determined to resolve, and a quest he is determined to undertake, at any cost.

[ Original description here:
Гор�тка �мельчаков пытает�� найти прародину человече�тва - Землю, чтобы получить разгадку тайн и�тории Галактики.
= A handful of brave souls trying to find humanity's ancestral home—the Earth, to get answers to the mysteries of the history of the Galaxy.]]]> 499 Isaac Asimov 0553587579 Wade 3 4.06 1986
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1986
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/02/29
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]]> 85861 The story of a truly galactic civilization with over 6,000 inhabited worlds.

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues--technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism--have only become more pressing with the passage of time.

The novel's topic is information itself: What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other's perfect erotic object out to "point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more"? What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by "cultural fugue," and the other is--you!]]> 356 Samuel R. Delany 0819567140 Wade 0 to-read 3.85 1984
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: Wade
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> 85866 Return to ±·±ð±¹Ã¨°ùÿ´Ç²Ô, Hugo and Nebula award-winner Samuel R. Delany appropriated the conceits of sword-and-sorcery fantasy to explore his characteristic themes of language, power, gender, and the nature of civilization. Wesleyan University Press has reissued the long-unavailable ±·±ð±¹Ã¨°ùÿ´Ç²Ô volumes in trade paperback.

The eleven stories, novellas, and novels in Return to ±·±ð±¹Ã¨°ùÿ´Ç²Ô's four volumes chronicle a long-ago land on civilization's brink, perhaps in Asia or Africa, or even on the Mediterranean. Taken slave in childhood, Gorgik gains his freedom, leads a slave revolt, and becomes a minister of state, finally abolishing slavery. Ironically, however, he is sexually aroused by the iron slave collars of servitude. Does this contaminate his mission - or intensify it? Presumably elaborated from an ancient text of unknown geographical origin, the stories are sunk in translators' and commentators' introductions and appendices, forming a richly comic frame.

]]> 260 Samuel R. Delany 081956270X Wade 0 to-read 3.96 1979
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: Wade
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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]]> 145354 A nonhuman race reimagines human mythology.

The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967. The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale concerns, however, the way those who are "different" must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey's mythic quest for his lost love, Friza. In luminous and hallucinated language, it explores what new myths might emerge from the detritus of the human world as those who are "different" try to seize history and the day.]]> 136 Samuel R. Delany 0819563366 Wade 0 to-read 3.57 1967
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: Wade
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> 85863
The balance of galactic power in the 31st century revolves around Illyrion, the most precious energy source in the universe. The varied and exotic crew who sign up with Captain Lorq van Ray know their mission is dangerous, and they soon learn that they are involved in a deadly race with the charismatic but vicious leader of an opposing space federation. But they have no idea of Lorq's secret obsession: to gather Illyrion at the source by flying through the very heart of an imploding star.]]> 241 Samuel R. Delany 0375706704 Wade 4 3.83 1968
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: Wade
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: audiobook, coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 1199688 Babel-17 is all about the power of language. Humanity, which has spread throughout the universe, is involved in a war with the Invaders, who have been covertly assassinating officials and sabotaging spaceships. The only clues humanity has to go on are strange alien messages that have been intercepted in space. Poet and linguist Rydra Wong is determined to understand the language and stop the alien threat. (Paul Goat Allen)]]> 192 Samuel R. Delany 0839823282 Wade 4 3.74 1966
author: Samuel R. Delany
name: Wade
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/01
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: audiobook, coming-back-in-2020
review:

]]> 6527841
In Attolia, Eugenides, the new and unlikely king, has never stopped wondering what happened to Sophos. Nor has the Queen of Eddis. They send spies. They pay informants. They appeal to the gods. But as time goes by, it becomes less and less certain that they will ever see their friend alive again.

Across the small peninsula battles are fought, bribes are offered, and conspiracies are set in motion. Darkening the horizon, the Mede Empire threatens, always, from across the sea. And Sophos, anonymous and alone, bides his time. Sophos, drawing on his memories of Gen, Pol, the Magus and Eddis, sets out on an adventure that will change all of their lives forever.]]> 316 Megan Whalen Turner 0061870935 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.10 2010
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Wade
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/01
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 76683
Meanwhile someone—or something—outside of both Foundations seems to be orchestrating events to suit its own ominous purpose. Soon representatives of both the First and Second Foundations will find themselves racing toward a mysterious world called Gaia and a final shocking destiny at the very end of the universe!]]> 450 Isaac Asimov 0553293389 Wade 3 4.16 1982
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1982
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/01
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: audiobook, coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 29580 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803735 Wade 3 4.27 1953
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1953
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/01
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: audiobook, coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 29581 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803727 Wade 4 4.23 1952
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/01
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: audiobook, coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 77566 500 Dan Simmons 0553283685 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.26 1989
author: Dan Simmons
name: Wade
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 29579 The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.]]> 244 Isaac Asimov 0553803719 Wade 4 audiobook 4.18 1951
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Wade
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/01
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: audiobook
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]]> 50887313 254 Patrick Cooper 1629334669 Wade 0 to-read 3.70
author: Patrick Cooper
name: Wade
average rating: 3.70
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/12
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]]> 10796910 The Village Voice

By one of the most transcendent poets of this generation, a remarkable collection of prose poems that explores themes of love, pain, isolation, and connection. In this self-eulogy written in the final years of Mahmoud Darwish's life, Palestine becomes a metaphor for the injustice and pain of our contemporary moment.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was one of the most acclaimed poets in the Arab world. His poetry collections include Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? and A River Dies of Thirst (Archipelago Books). In 2001 Darwish was awarded the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.


]]> 171 Mahmoud Darwish 1935744011 Wade 0 to-read 4.52 2006
author: Mahmoud Darwish
name: Wade
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 77265004 848 Homer 1324001801 Wade 0 to-read 4.09 -800
author: Homer
name: Wade
average rating: 4.09
book published: -800
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 374962 293 Louis Sachar 0030664128 Wade 3 4.29 1998
author: Louis Sachar
name: Wade
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/09/28
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]]> 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
Ìý
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Wade 0 to-read 4.19 1966
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Wade
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/16
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]]> 7007561
Gregor wants no part in this conflict, but again and again, he and his family are drawn into the Underland. Gregor must find his place in the frightening prophecies he encounters, the strength to protect his family, and the courage to defend against an army of giant rats.

In this action-packed and masterful series, Suzanne Collins unfolds the fate of the Underland and its great warrior, Gregor the Overlander.]]> 1733 Suzanne Collins 0545166810 Wade 5 4.49 2009
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Wade
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> 2328841
Scarlett is the third of four children in the Martin family. The Martins live in and manage a shabby hotel in NYC that dates back to the 1920s. When Scarlett turns 15, she is put in charge of one of the hotel's 27 rooms- the Empire Suite. Into this room moves Mrs. Amberson, a failed 1970s starlet who has returned to New York to write her memoirs. Soon, Scarlett is taking dictation, running around town with Mrs. Amberson, and getting caught up in her Auntie Mame-meets-Bianca Jagger adventures.]]> 368 Maureen Johnson 0439899273 Wade 3 3.61 2008
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Wade
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2008
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/07/30
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]]> 993238 96 R.D. Laing 0394717767 Wade 0 to-read 3.94 1970
author: R.D. Laing
name: Wade
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 31109202 104 Herbert Mason 0395110785 Wade 0 to-read 3.99 1970
author: Herbert Mason
name: Wade
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 16878
This bestselling, groundbreaking exploration of the Far North is a classic of natural history, anthropology, and travel writing.

The Arctic is a perilous place. Only a few species of wild animals can survive its harsh climate. In this modern classic, Barry Lopez explores the many-faceted wonders of the Far North: its strangely stunted forest, its mesmerizing aurora borealis, its frozen seas. Musk oxen, polar bears, narwhal, and other exotic beasts of the region come alive through Lopez’s passionate and nuanced observations. And, as he examines the history and culture of the indigenous people, along with parallel narratives of intrepid, often underprepared and subsequently doomed polar explorers, Lopez drives to the heart of why the austere and formidable Arctic is also a constant source of breathtaking beauty, beguilement, and wonder.

Written in prose as memorably pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is a timeless mediation on the ability of the landscape to shape our dreams and to haunt our imaginations.]]> 464 Barry Lopez 0375727485 Wade 0 to-read 4.24 1986
author: Barry Lopez
name: Wade
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> 58532153 From the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and The Kingdoms, an epic Cold War novel set in a mysterious town in Soviet Russia.

In 1963, in a Siberian gulag, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive: the right connections to the guards for access to food and cigarettes, the right pair of warm boots to avoid frostbite, and the right attitude toward the small pleasures of life so he won’t go insane. But on one ordinary day, all that changes: Valery’s university mentor steps in and sweeps Valery from the frozen prison camp to a mysterious unnamed town that houses a set of nuclear reactors and is surrounded by a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within.

In City 40, Valery is Dr. Kolkhanov once more, and he’s expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. But as Valery begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises: why is there so much radiation in this area? What, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town? And if he keeps looking for answers, will he live to serve out his sentence?

Based on real events in a surreal Soviet city, and told with bestselling author Natasha Pulley’s inimitable style, The Half Life of Valery K is a sweeping new adventure for readers of Stuart Turton and Sarah Gailey.]]> 375 Natasha Pulley 1635573270 Wade 0 to-read 4.16 2022
author: Natasha Pulley
name: Wade
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/11/11
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]]> 62069739
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.Ìý

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.]]> 193 Benjamín Labatut Wade 0 to-read 4.10 2020
author: Benjamín Labatut
name: Wade
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 441468 83 Christopher Bursk 1930974256 Wade 0 to-read 4.37 2003
author: Christopher Bursk
name: Wade
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/30
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]]> 6916961 ±á²¹°ù±è±ð°ù’s magazine in the â€�90s were, according to Lipsky, “like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.â€�

ThenÌýRolling StoneÌýsent Lipsky to join Wallace on the last leg of his book tour forÌýInfinite Jest, the novel that made him internationally famous. They lose to each other at chess. They get iced-in at an airport. They dash to Chicago to catch a make-up flight. They endure a terrible reader’s escort in Minneapolis. Wallace does a reading, a signing, an NPR appearance. Wallace gives in and imbibes titanic amounts of hotel television (what he calls an “orgy of spectationâ€�). They fly back to Illinois, drive home, walk Wallace’s dogs. Amid these everyday events, Wallace tells Lipsky remarkable things—everything he can about his life, how he feels, what he thinks, what terrifies and fascinates and confounds him—in the writing voice Lipsky had come to love. Lipsky took notes, stopped envying him, and came to feel about him—that grateful, awake feeling—the same way he felt aboutÌýInfinite Jest. Then Lipsky heads to the airport, and Wallace goes to a dance at a Baptist church.

A biography in five days,ÌýAlthough Of Course You End Up Becoming YourselfÌýis David Foster Wallace as few experienced this great American writer. Told in his own words, here is Wallace’s own story, and his astonishing, humane, alert way of looking at the world; here are stories of being a young writer—of being young generally—trying to knit together your ideas of who you should be and who other people expect you to be, and of being young in March of 1996. And of what it was like to be with and—as he tells it—what it was like to become David Foster Wallace.

Ìý]]> 320 David Lipsky 030759243X Wade 0 to-read 3.93 2010
author: David Lipsky
name: Wade
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> 40664707
A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain �dolorists,� the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of �pink ribbon culture� while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others.

A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious.]]> 320 Anne Boyer Wade 0 to-read 4.18 2019
author: Anne Boyer
name: Wade
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/09
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]]> 11503920
Neither accepted nor beloved, Eugenides is the uneasy linchpin of a truce on the Lesser Peninsula, where he has risen to be high king of Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis. As the treacherous Baron Erondites schemes anew and a prophecy appears to foretell the death of the king, the ruthless Mede empire prepares to strike. The New York Times–bestselling Queen’s Thief novels are rich with political machinations, divine intervention, dangerous journeys, battles lost and won, power, passion, and deception.]]> 464 Megan Whalen Turner 0062874470 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.48 2020
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Wade
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/02
date added: 2022/09/03
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 133380 “First Fig� from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)

Alongside Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and E. E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent Millay remains among the most celebrated poets of the early twentieth century for her uniquely lyrical explorations of love, individuality, and artistic expression. This invaluable compendium of her work is not only an essential addition to any collection of the world’s most moving and memorable poetry but an unprecedented look into her life.]]> 768 Edna St. Vincent Millay 0060908890 Wade 0 to-read 4.24 1956
author: Edna St. Vincent Millay
name: Wade
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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]]> 41745412 Soft Science explores queer, Asian American femininity. A series of Turing Test-inspired poems grounds its exploration of questions not just of identity, but of consciousness―how to be tender and feeling and still survive a violent world filled with artificial intelligence and automation. We are dropped straight into the tangled intersections of technology, violence, erasure, agency, gender, and loneliness.]]> 100 Franny Choi 1938584996 Wade 0 to-read 3.93 2019
author: Franny Choi
name: Wade
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/03/07
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]]> 90619 Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkwater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.]]> 538 John Crowley 0061120057 Wade 0 to-read 3.81 1981
author: John Crowley
name: Wade
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/02/07
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]]> 26259534
Throughout the long centuries men have fished around their coastlines and beyond, the herring has done much to shape both human taste and history. Men have co-operated and come into conflict over its shoals, setting out in boats to catch them, straying, too, from their home ports to bring full nets to shore. Women have also often been at the centre of the industry, gutting and salting the catch when the annual harvest had taken place, knitting, too, the garments fishermen wore to protect them from the ocean's chill.

Following a journey from the western edge of Norway to the east of England, from Shetland and the Outer Hebrides to the fishing ports of the Baltic coast of Germany and the Netherlands, culminating in a visit to Iceland's Herring Era Museum, Donald S. Murray has stitched together tales of the fish that was of central importance to the lives of our ancestors, noting how both it - and those involved in their capture - were celebrated in the art, literature, craft, music and folklore of life in northern Europe.

Blending together politics, science, history, religious and commercial life, Donald contemplates, too, the possibility of restoring the silver darlings of legend to these shores.]]> 289 Donald S. Murray 1472912187 Wade 0 to-read 3.59 2015
author: Donald S. Murray
name: Wade
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 48829708 move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn't at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity's greatest and final hope...]]> 880 Christopher Paolini 1250762847 Wade 0 to-read 3.77 2020
author: Christopher Paolini
name: Wade
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/24
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]]> 58798061
Set against the backdrop of Glome, a barbaric, pre-Christian world, the struggles between sacred and profane love are illuminated as Orual learns that we cannot understand the intent of the gods "till we have faces" and sincerity in our souls and selves.]]> C.S. Lewis Wade 0 to-read 4.50 1956
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Wade
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/20
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]]> 224579 272 Wayne Koestenbaum 0306810085 Wade 0 to-read 3.98 1993
author: Wayne Koestenbaum
name: Wade
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/19
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]]> 13547234
In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel—her keepers, who provide her with food and shelter and visit her regularly. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was “worth it;� nor that the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye,� were holy disciples. Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the Cross until her son died—she fled, to save herself), and is equally harsh on her judgment of others. This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes, in Toibin’s searing evocation, a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. This tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.]]> 81 Colm Tóibín 1451688385 Wade 0 to-read 3.65 2012
author: Colm Tóibín
name: Wade
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/19
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]]> 15049
In "Atlantic Crossing," Winterson becomes a middle-aged businessman of the mid-20th century, accidentally assigned to share his second-class cabin with a young black woman on a transatlantic crossing. In the realm of event, little happens, but in its depth of perception and what it tells of the nuances of regret, the story is as rich as a novel in another writer's hands. A few scant pages later, Winterson becomes a kind of lost female Homer, telling Orion's story from Artemis's point of view: "When she returned she saw this huge rag of a man eating her goat, raw.... His reputation hung about him like bad breath." In "The Poetics of Sex," she creates a lesbian love story that evokes her characters' personalities as explicitly as their erotic pleasures. "The 24-Hour Dog," the story of a woman writer returning a puppy she had thought to adopt, is remorseless as a psychological thriller in the squirmy depths it plumbs: "I had made every preparation, every calculation, except for those two essentials that could not be calculated: his heart and mine." Read The World and Other Places twice, once for instruction, once for joy. --Joyce Thompson]]> 240 Jeanette Winterson 0375702369 Wade 0 to-read 3.91 1998
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: Wade
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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]]> 33931
In Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle his subject is nothing less than geology's signal contribution to human thought--the discovery of "deep time," the vastness of earth's history, a history so ancient that we can comprehend it only as metaphor. He follows a single thread through three documents that mark the transition in our thinking from thousands to billions of years: Thomas Burnet's four-volume Sacred Theory of the Earth (1680-1690), James Hutton's Theory of the Earth (1795), and Charles Lyell's three-volume Principles of Geology (1830-1833).

Gould's major theme is the role of metaphor in the formulation and testing of scientific theories--in this case the insight provided by the oldest traditional dichotomy of Judeo-Christian thought: the directionality of time's arrow or the immanence of time's cycle. Gould follows these metaphors through these three great documents and shows how their influence, more than the empirical observation of rocks in the field, provoked the supposed discovery of deep time by Hutton and Lyell. Gould breaks through the traditional "cardboard" history of geological textbooks (the progressive march to truth inspired by more and better observations) by showing that Burnet, the villain of conventional accounts, was a rationalist (not a theologically driven miracle-monger) whose rich reconstruction of earth history emphasized the need for both time's arrow (narrative history) and time's cycle (immanent laws), while Hutton and Lyell, our traditional heroes, denied the richness of history by their exclusive focus upon time's Arrow.]]> 222 Stephen Jay Gould 0674891996 Wade 0 to-read 3.93 1987
author: Stephen Jay Gould
name: Wade
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/11/29
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]]> 31920820
When an unexpected crisis forces Lockwood and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, she must learn to live again with the family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of her religious upbringing. Pivoting from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the serious, Priestdaddy is an unforgettable story of how we balance tradition against hard-won identity—and of how, having journeyed in the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.]]> 336 Patricia Lockwood 1594633738 Wade 0 to-read 3.84 2017
author: Patricia Lockwood
name: Wade
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/11/16
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]]> 121732 Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life is a partial autobiography describing Lewis' conversion to Christianity. The book overall contains less detail concerning specific events than typical autobiographies. This is because his purpose in writing wasn't primarily historical. His aim was to identify & describe the events surrounding his accidental discovery of & consequent search for the phenomenon he labelled "Joy". This word was the best translation he could make of the German idea of Sehnsucht, longing. That isn't to say the book is devoid of information about his life. He recounts his early years with a measure of amusement sometimes mixed with pain.

However, while he does describe his life, the principal theme of the book is Joy as he defined it. This Joy was a longing so intense for something so good & so high up it couldn't be explained with words. He's struck with "stabs of joy" throughout life. He finally finds what it's for at the end. He writes about his experiences at Malvern College in 1913, aged 15. Though he described the school as "a very furnace of impure loves" he defended the practice as being "the only chink left thru which something spontaneous & uncalculating could creep in." The book's last two chapters cover the end of his search as he moves from atheism to theism & then from theism to Christianity. He ultimately discovers the true nature & purpose of Joy & its place in his own life.

The book isn't connected with his unexpected marriage in later life to Joy Gresham. The marriage occurred long after the period described, though not long after the book was published. His friends were quick to notice the coincidence, remarking he'd really been "Surprised by Joy". "Surprised by Joy" is also an allusion to Wordsworth's poem, "Surprised by Joy-Impatient As The Wind", relating an incident when Wordsworth forgot the death of his beloved daughter.]]> 185 C.S. Lewis 0006280838 Wade 0 to-read 4.07 1955
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Wade
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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]]> 26077627
Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the "mad midnight moments" of Lewis's mourning and loss, moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. Indecision and self-pity assailed Lewis. "We are under the harrow and can't escape," he writes. "I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace." Writing A Grief Observed as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve," he came to recognize that "bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."

Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. Yet neither is Lewis reluctant to confess his continuing doubts and his awareness of his own human frailty. This is precisely the quality which suggests that A Grief Observed may become "among the great devotional books of our age."]]> 76 C.S. Lewis Wade 0 to-read 4.31 1961
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Wade
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/11/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 80005 231 C.S. Lewis 0521477352 Wade 0 to-read 4.26 1964
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Wade
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 207546 143 C.S. Lewis 0195003454 Wade 0 to-read 4.28 1942
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Wade
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 56304414 David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas meets Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series, as acclaimed author Monica Byrne (The Girl in the Road) crafts an unforgettable piece of speculative fiction about where humanity came from, where we are now, and where we’re going—and how, in every age, the same forces that drive us apart also bind us together.

"A stone-cold masterpiece."� New Scientist

The Actual Star takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents—telling three powerful tales a thousand years apart, all of them converging in the same cave in the Belizean jungle.

Braided together are the stories ofÌýa pair of teenage twins whoÌýascend the throne of a Maya kingdom; a young American woman on a trip of self-discovery in Belize; and two dangerous charismatics vying for the leadership of a new religion, racing toward a confrontation that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.

In each era, a reincarnated trinity of souls navigates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, and love and hate—until all of their age-old questions about the nature of existence converge deep underground, where only in complete darkness can they truly see.]]> 624 Monica Byrne 0063002892 Wade 0 to-read 3.83 2021
author: Monica Byrne
name: Wade
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/11/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 39850360 Ian Hamilton Finlay Wade 0 to-read 4.00
author: Ian Hamilton Finlay
name: Wade
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/10/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 36627347 C.S. Lewis Wade 3 coming-back-in-2020 He is so........ 3.04
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Wade
average rating: 3.04
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2021/10/24
date added: 2021/10/23
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
review:
He is so........
]]> 65610
Hurtled into the Wood between the Worlds, the children soon find that they can enter many worlds through the mysterious pools there. In one world they encounter the evil Queen Jadis, who wreaks havoc in the streets of London when she is accidentally brought back with them. When they finally manage to pull her out of London, unintentionally taking along Uncle Andrew and a coachman with his horse, they find themselves in what will come to be known as the land of Narnia.]]> 202 C.S. Lewis 0061125261 Wade 5 coming-back-in-2020 3.97 1955
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Wade
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/18
date added: 2021/10/18
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
review:

]]> 32821336 Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West depicts the environmental destruction plaguing the most maligned creatures in our midst while subtly interweaving Spitzer’s experiences of personal tragedy and self-discovery.

Join Spitzer as he noodles for flathead catfish in Oklahoma, snags paddlefish in Missouri, trotline- and electro-fishes American eels in Arkansas, studies razorback suckers in Arizona, bounty hunts for pikeminnows in Washington State, attends a burbot festival in Utah, stirs up Asian carp in Kansas, and breaks the state record for the largest yellow bullhead ever caught in Nebraska.

By examining freakish links in a vital chain and working with specialists in the field, Spitzer portrays a planet in environmental crisis and dispels the illusion that our actions don’t result in long-term, toxic consequences. Spitzer offers models for fisheries and provides other sources of hope in this informative epic of redemption that ultimately celebrates the wild and resilient beauty and remaining possibilities of the American West.]]> Mark Spitzer 1496200047 Wade 0 to-read 4.33
author: Mark Spitzer
name: Wade
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/09/28
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]]> 513348
The story of this strong, vulnerable man is told in counterpoint with the story of one of the most interesting men in the whole of English history, Reginald Pole, a nobleman, scholar and theologian who was exiled in Italy for twenty years. He was a Cardinal, papal legate at the Council of Trent, and as Archbishop of Canterbury, with his cousin Queen Mary Tudor, they tried, in too short a time, to renew Catholic England. Pole, in the tragic last months of his life, becomes in the novel the friend of Robert Fletcher, now condemned as a heretic.

Readers will learn much about this anguished period which gave birth to Tridentine Catholicism as well as to the Anglican and other Protestant churches, and which martyred Carthusian monks and many others.]]> 331 Lucy Beckett 0898707439 Wade 0 to-read 3.80 1999
author: Lucy Beckett
name: Wade
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201930 The Cloud of Unknowing represents the first expression in our own tongue of the soul's quest for God. A literary work of great beauty in both style and message, it offers a practical guide to the path of contemplation. The author explains how all thoughts and concepts must be buried beneath a 'cloud of forgetting,' while our love must rise toward God hidden in the 'cloud of unknowing.' William Johnston � an authority on fourteenth-century spirituality and on the writings of this unknown author � provides a substantive and accessible introduction detailing what is known about the history of this text and its relevance throughout the ages. Also included here is the author's other principal work, The Book of Privy Counseling � a short and moving text on the way to enlightenment through a total loss of self and consciousness only of the divine.

In a new foreword, Huston Smith shows The Cloud of Unknowing as a highly relevant text for today's spirituality, containing essential elements from the varieties of religious experience.]]> 224 Anonymous 0385030975 Wade 5 coming-back-in-2020 The book. 4.32 1375
author: Anonymous
name: Wade
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1375
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/26
date added: 2021/09/26
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
review:
The book.
]]> 48749235 46 Ted Chiang Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.47 1998
author: Ted Chiang
name: Wade
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2021/09/10
date added: 2021/09/10
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
review:

]]> 25838579 Lora Mathis Wade 0 to-read 4.07 2015
author: Lora Mathis
name: Wade
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11389997 In this companion volume to his bestselling Into the Silent Land , Laird focuses on a quality often overlooked by books on Christian a vast and flowing spaciousness that embraces both silence and sound, and transcends all subject/object dualisms. Drawing on the wisdom of great contemplatives from St. Augustine and St. Teresa of Avila to St. Hesychios, Simone Weil, and many others, Laird shows how we can uncover the deeper levels of awareness that rest within us like buried treasure waiting to be found. The key insight of the book is that as our practice matures, so will our experience of life's ordeals, sorrows, and joys expand into generous, receptive maturity. We learn to see whatever difficulties we experience in meditation--boredom, lethargy, arrogance, depression, grief, anxiety--not as obstacles to be overcome but as opportunities to practice surrender to what is. With clarity and grace Laird shows how we can move away from identifying with our turbulent, ever-changing thoughts and emotions to the cultivation of a "sunlit absence"--the luminous awareness in which God's presence can most profoundly be felt.
Addressed to both beginners and intermediates on the pathless path of still prayer, A Sunlit Absence offers wise guidance on the specifics of contemplative practice as well as an inspiring vision of the purpose of such practice and the central role it can play in our spiritual lives.]]> 208 Martin Laird 0195378725 Wade 0 to-read 4.41 2011
author: Martin Laird
name: Wade
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23995249
In this illuminating biography, Andrea Wulf brings Humboldt’s extraordinary life back into focus: his prediction of human-induced climate change; his daring expeditions to the highest peaks of South America and to the anthrax-infected steppes of Siberia; his relationships with iconic figures, including Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson; and the lasting influence of his writings on Darwin, Wordsworth, Goethe, Muir, Thoreau, and many others. Brilliantly researched and stunningly written, The Invention of Nature reveals the myriad ways in which Humboldt’s ideas form the foundation of modern environmentalism—and reminds us why they are as prescient and vital as ever.]]> 473 Andrea Wulf 038535066X Wade 0 to-read 4.28 2015
author: Andrea Wulf
name: Wade
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 16948 The Sparrow, took us on a journey to a distant planet and into the center of the human soul. A critically acclaimed bestseller, The Sparrow was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly's Ten Best Books of the Year, a finalist for the Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction Prize and the winner of the James M. Tiptree Memorial Award. Now, in Children of God, Russell further establishes herself as one of the most innovative, entertaining and philosophically provocative novelists writing today.

The only member of the original mission to the planet Rakhat to return to Earth, Father Emilio Sandoz has barely begun to recover from his ordeal when the Society of Jesus calls upon him for help in preparing for another mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite his objections and fear, he cannot escape his past or the future.

Old friends, new discoveries and difficult questions await Emilio as he struggles for inner peace and understanding in a moral universe whose boundaries now extend beyond the solar system and whose future lies with children born in a faraway place.

Strikingly original, richly plotted, replete with memorable characters and filled with humanity and humor, Children of God is an unforgettable and uplifting novel that is a potent successor to The Sparrow and a startlingly imaginative adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell’s special literary magic.]]> 451 Mary Doria Russell 044900483X Wade 0 to-read 4.07 1998
author: Mary Doria Russell
name: Wade
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 334176 419 Mary Doria Russell 0449912558 Wade 5 coming-back-in-2020 4.13 1996
author: Mary Doria Russell
name: Wade
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/18
date added: 2021/08/18
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 5310515 199 Rebecca Stead 0385737424 Wade 5 4.08 2009
author: Rebecca Stead
name: Wade
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/16
date added: 2021/08/16
shelves: faves, coming-back-in-2020, still-reading
review:

]]> 57499417
And yet . . . There is still so much we don’t know about eels. No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one can give a complete account of the eel’s metamorphoses or say why they are born and die in the Sargasso Sea; no human has even seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea. Ever. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don’t know exactly why.

What we do know is that eels and their mysterious lives captivate us.

This is the basis for The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson’s quite unique natural science memoir; his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, but also the equally perplexing and often murky relationship he shared with his father, whose only passion in life was fishing for this obscure creature.

Through the exploration of eels in literature (Günter Grass and Graham Swift feature, amongst others) and the history of science (we learn about Aristotle’s and Sigmund Freud’s complicated relationships with eels) as well as modern marine biology (Rachel Carson and others) we get to know this peculiar animal. In this exploration, we also learn about the human condition, life and death, through natural science and nature writing at its very best.

As Patrik Svensson concludes: 'by writing about eels, I have in some ways found my way home again.']]> 241 Patrik Svensson 1529030684 Wade 0 to-read 3.91 2019
author: Patrik Svensson
name: Wade
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/10
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]]> 17333230 The Luminaries is a brilliantly constructed, fiendishly clever ghost story and a gripping page-turner.]]> 848 Eleanor Catton 0316074314 Wade 0 to-read 3.73 2013
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Wade
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 321950
In the Mexican city of Merida, ten-year-old Janey lives with Johnny--her "boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father"--until he leaves her for another woman. Bereft, Janey travels to New York City, plunging into an underworld of gangs and prostitution. After escaping imprisonment, she flees to Tangiers where she meets Jean Genet, and they begin a torrid affair that will lead Janey to her demise.

Fantastical, sensual, and fearlessly radical, this hallucinatory collage is both a comic and tragic portrait of erotic awakening.]]> 165 Kathy Acker 080213193X Wade 0 to-read 3.50 1984
author: Kathy Acker
name: Wade
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 7957 Meet Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the unforgettable boy-hero of Ender's Game--winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel--and enter his Universe through this collection of stories.

"The Polish Boy" is John Paul Wiggin, the future father of Ender. In the years between the first two Bugger Wars, the Hegemony is desperate to recruit brilliant military commanders to repel the alien invasion. They may have found their man--or boy--in John Paul Wiggin....

In "Teacher's Pest"-a novella written especially for this collection--a brilliant but arrogant John Paul Wiggin, now a university student, matches wits with an equally brilliant graduate student.

"The Investment Counselor" is set after the end of the Bugger Wars. Banished from Earth and slandered as a mass murderer, twenty-year-old Andrew Wiggin wanders incognito from planet to planet as a fugitive--until a blackmailing tax inspector compromises his identity and threatens to expose Ender the Xeoncide.

Also reprinted here is the original award-winning novella, "Ender's Game," which first appeared in 1977.
]]> 212 Orson Scott Card 0765347989 Wade 2 coming-back-in-2020 3.84 1999
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Wade
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1999
rating: 2
read at: 2021/07/29
date added: 2021/07/29
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 12040447
At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean flees to the stars with three of his children--the three who share the engineered genes that gave him both hyper-intelligence and a short, cruel physical life. The time dilation granted by the speed of their travel gives Earth's scientists generations to seek a cure, to no avail. In time, they are forgotten--a fading ansible signal speaking of events lost to Earth's history. But the Delphikis are about to make a discovery that will let them save themselves, and perhaps all of humanity in days to come.

For there in space before them lies a derelict Formic colony ship. Aboard it, they will find both death and wonders--the life support that is failing on their own ship, room to grow, and labs in which to explore their own genetic anomaly and the mysterious disease that killed the ship's colony.
Shadows in Flight is the fifth novel in Orson Scott Card's Shadow Series.]]> 237 Orson Scott Card 0765332000 Wade 0 currently-reading 3.80 2011
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Wade
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 76625
“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six,� begins Alda’s irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession.

Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow.

It is the story of turning points in Alda’s life, events that would make him what he is–if only he could survive them.

From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist’s shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can’t be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness is found in embracing them.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed , filled with curiosity about nature, good humor, and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda has ever played on the stage or screen.]]> 235 Alan Alda 0812974409 Wade 0 to-read 3.88 2005
author: Alan Alda
name: Wade
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 8647 388 Orson Scott Card 1841492051 Wade 3 coming-back-in-2020 4.01 2005
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Wade
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2021/07/28
date added: 2021/07/28
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
review:

]]> 234724
Earth and its society have been changed irrevocably in the aftermath of Ender Wiggin's victory over the Formics. The unity forced upon the warring nations by an alien enemy has shattered. Nations are rising again, seeking territory and influence, and most of all, seeking to control the skills and loyalty of the children from the Battle School.

But one person has a better idea. Peter Wiggin, Ender's older, more ruthless, brother, sees that any hope for the future of Earth lies in restoring a sense of unity and purpose. And he has an irresistible call on the loyalty of Earth's young warriors. With Bean at his side, the two will reshape our future.

Here is the continuing story of Bean and Petra, and the rest of Ender's Dragon Army, as they take their places in the new government of Earth.]]> 375 Orson Scott Card 0765340054 Wade 3 coming-back-in-2020 3.89 2002
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Wade
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/07/28
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 9534
But with the external threat gone, the Earth has become a battlefield once more. The children of the Battle School are more than heroes; they are potential weapons that can bring power to the countries that control them. One by one, all of Ender's Dragon Army are kidnapped. Only Bean escapes; and he turns for help to Ender's brother Peter.

Peter Wiggin, Ender's older brother, has already been manipulating the politics of Earth from behind the scenes. With Bean's help, he will eventually rule the world.]]> 451 Orson Scott Card 0812565959 Wade 2 coming-back-in-2020 3.96 2000
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Wade
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at: 2021/07/27
date added: 2021/07/27
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
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]]> 502601 ENDER'S GAME, ONE THAT EXPANDS AND COMPLIMENTS THE FIRST, ENHANCING ITS POWER, ILLUMINATING ITS EVENTS AND ITS POWERFUL CONCLUSION.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin was not the only child in the Battle School; he was just the best of the best. In this new book, card tells the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean--the one who became Ender's right hand, part of his team, in the final battle against the Buggers.

Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He was a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else's. Bean's desperate struggle to live, and his success, brought him to the attention of the Battle School's recruiters, those people scouring the planet for leaders, tacticians, and generals to save Earth from the threat of alien invasion. Bean was sent into orbit, to the Battle School. And there he met Ender....]]> 469 Orson Scott Card 0812575717 Wade 5 coming-back-in-2020 4.25 1999
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Wade
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2021/07/26
date added: 2021/07/26
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
review:

]]> 6164358 ALL IS
LOST.

Join the Mysterious Benedict Society as Reynie, Kate, Sticky, and Constance embark on a daring new adventure that threatens to force them apart from their families, friends, and even each other. When an unexplained blackout engulfs Stonetown, the foursome must unravel clues relating to a nefarious new plot, while their search for answers brings them closer to danger than ever before.]]> 400 Trenton Lee Stewart 0307582396 Wade 5 faves, coming-back-in-2020 4.29 2009
author: Trenton Lee Stewart
name: Wade
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2021/07/17
date added: 2021/07/26
shelves: faves, coming-back-in-2020
review:

]]> 375802
But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.]]> 324 Orson Scott Card 0812550706 Wade 4 coming-back-in-2020 4.31 1985
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Wade
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2021/07/26
date added: 2021/07/26
shelves: coming-back-in-2020
review:

]]>