en-US Fri, 02 May 2025 11:39:21 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 505556 77 Wole Soyinka 0393322998 Patrick 0 to-read 3.80 1975
author: Wole Soyinka
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 247000 The Mezzanine occurs on the escalator of an office building, where its narrator is returning to work after buying shoelaces, this startlingly inventive and witty novel takes us farther than most fiction written today. It lends to milk cartons the associative richness of Marcel Proust's madeleines. It names the eight most significant advances in a human life —beginning with shoe-tying. It asks whether the hot air blowers in bathrooms really are more sanitary than towels. And it casts a dazzling light on our relations with the objects and people we usually take for granted.]]> 135 Nicholson Baker 0679725768 Patrick 4
A nice intro to footnotes as part of a novel’s form. Haven’t read Infinite Jest but heard that’s a footnote-imperium; this book is a quaint little footnote-principality.

A sentence that amused me: “A bee rose up from a sun-filled paper cup, off to make slum honey from some diet root beer it had found inside.��

I like bees.]]> 3.85 1988
author: Nicholson Baker
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:
Monologue of everyday life, and some everyday thoughts about everyday things. Quirky, no-holds-barred narrator. He slightly reminds me of Babbitt.

A nice intro to footnotes as part of a novel’s form. Haven’t read Infinite Jest but heard that’s a footnote-imperium; this book is a quaint little footnote-principality.

A sentence that amused me: “A bee rose up from a sun-filled paper cup, off to make slum honey from some diet root beer it had found inside.��

I like bees.
]]> 529243 1534 Samuel Richardson 0140432159 Patrick 0 to-read 3.39 1748
author: Samuel Richardson
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1748
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 516570 272 Samuel Butler 0543899462 Patrick 0 to-read 3.32 1872
author: Samuel Butler
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56034 470 John Fowles 0099478331 Patrick 0 to-read 3.88 1969
author: John Fowles
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 73725 466 Miguel Ángel Asturias 0822955148 Patrick 0 to-read 4.09 1949
author: Miguel Ángel Asturias
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 242772 624 Andrei Bely 0140186964 Patrick 0 to-read 3.88 1913
author: Andrei Bely
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1913
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18938315 Adam Buenosayres is a tour-de-force that does for Buenos Aires what Carlos Fuentes did for Mexico City or José Lezama Lima did for Havana - chronicles a city teeming with life in all its clever and crass, rude and intelligent forms. Employing a range of literary styles and a variety of voices, Leopoldo Marechal parodies and celebrates Argentina's most brilliant literary and artistic generation, the martinfierristas of the 1920s, among them Jorge Luis Borges.

First published in 1948 during the polarizing reign of Juan Perón, the novel was hailed by Julio Cortázar as an extraordinary event in twentieth-century Argentine literature. Set over the course of three break-neck days, Adam Buenosayres follows the protagonist through an apparent metaphysical awakening, a battle for his soul fought by angels and demons, and a descent through a place resembling a comic version of Dante's hell.

Presenting both a breathtaking translation and thorough explanatory notes, Norman Cheadle captures the limitless language of Marechal's original and guides the reader along an unmatched journey through the culture of Buenos Aires. This first-ever English translation brings to light Marechal's masterwork with an introduction outlining the novel's importance in various contexts - Argentine, Latin American, and world literature - and with notes illuminating its literary, cultural, and historical references.

A salient feature of the Argentine canon, Adam Buenosayres is both a path-breaking novel and a key text for understanding Argentina's cultural and political history.]]> 739 Leopoldo Marechal 0773543090 Patrick 0 to-read 4.09 1948
author: Leopoldo Marechal
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1013983 435 Joseph McElroy 0881841463 Patrick 0 to-read 4.17 1966
author: Joseph McElroy
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127499
One was a distant relative, one his orderly, and the third who had been a jockey in his stable before the war, had also been his wife's secret lover.]]> 231 Claude Simon 0714539945 Patrick 0 to-read 3.92 1960
author: Claude Simon
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13643718 (131+xxx pp.)]]> 131 Robert Maynard Hutchins Patrick 0 to-read 4.13 1952
author: Robert Maynard Hutchins
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210825 305 William Faulkner 0679741925 Patrick 0 to-read 3.78 1962
author: William Faulkner
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 964338
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 222 John Mandeville 0141441437 Patrick 0 to-read 3.39 1357
author: John Mandeville
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1357
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 47059 Hawthorne's 'International Novel' dramatizes the confrontation of the Old World and the New and the uncertain relationship between the 'authentic' and the 'fake' in life as in art. The author's evocative descriptions of classic sites made The Marble Faun a favorite guidebook to Rome for Victorian tourists, but this richly ambiguous symbolic romance is also the story of a murder, and a parable of the Fall of Man. As the characters find their civilized existence disrupted by the awful consequences of impulse, Hawthorne leads his readers to question the value of Art and Culture and addresses the great evolutionary debate which was beginning to shake Victorian society.]]> 432 Nathaniel Hawthorne 0192839764 Patrick 0 to-read 3.49 1860
author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1860
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2229006 336 Peter Lombard 0888442920 Patrick 0 to-read 4.29 1150
author: Peter Lombard
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1150
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 786699 325 Derek Walcott 0374523509 Patrick 0 currently-reading 3.97 1990
author: Derek Walcott
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 74085 416 Harold Pinter 0802142699 Patrick 0 to-read 4.14 2005
author: Harold Pinter
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 383022 A novel of rare genius, The Man with the Golden Arm describes the dissolution of a card-dealing WWII veteran named Frankie Machine, caught in the act of slowly cutting his own heart into wafer-thin slices. For Frankie, a murder committed may be the least of his problems.
The literary critic Malcolm Cowley called The Man with the Golden Arm Algren's defense of the individual, while Carl Sandburg wrote of its strange midnight dignity. A literary tour de force, here is a novel unlike any other, one in which drug addiction, poverty, and human failure somehow suggest a defense of human dignity and a reason for hope.
Special contributions by Russell Banks, Bettina Drew, James R. Giles, Carlo Rotella, William Savage, Lee Stringer, Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut, and others.]]> 464 Nelson Algren 1583220089 Patrick 0 to-read 3.88 1949
author: Nelson Algren
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1666 448 Ernesto Sabato 0345349288 Patrick 0 to-read 4.22 1961
author: Ernesto Sabato
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30200112
Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and speculating on what will rise from the ashes of Communism.

As in all her books, Alexievich gives voice to women and men whose stories are lost in the official narratives of nation-states, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private stories of individuals.]]> 496 Svetlana Alexievich 1922253995 Patrick 5 4.44 2013
author: Svetlana Alexievich
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: nobel-literature-laureate-reads
review:
I feel a bit weird rating a book that consists of people telling their life stories. It was really good, thought-provoking, painful, and sad. A bit on the long side. Although I feel it’s the kind of book that could quite possibly go on forever almost because of the very subject matter itself; there’s always more people who could’ve told their story but did not get the chance to do so. I was hesitant to read this book because I worried maybe it wouldn’t be as relevant anymore but I was absolutely wrong. In fact, it’s perhaps more relevant than ever. (Not that “relevance�� deems a book worthy to read, but still). It’s the kind of book that definitely makes one feel empathy, which I think is especially important nowadays. She deserved that Nobel win!
]]> 337433 170 Pierre Klossowski 1568860560 Patrick 0 to-read 3.81 1965
author: Pierre Klossowski
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12956786 261 Władysław Stanisław Reymont Patrick 5 The descriptions of nature were pleasant and not overbearing and the fact that in this part it was focused on Autumn(my favourite season), was something I especially found enjoyable. I was surprised I didn’t struggle to remember the characters; this wasn’t a case of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I plan to in-time read the rest of the books/seasons.

Favorite character: Jambroży. Also Lapa the Dog : D ]]> 3.54 1904
author: Władysław Stanisław Reymont
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1904
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: nobel-literature-laureate-reads
review:
Greatly enjoyed this. The lack of a main character is pleasant, and the obvious imperfections of all the characters makes them endearing. Pretty nitty-gritty. The ending was unexpected and pretty sad. A surprisingly enjoyable thing was reading the women gossiping, and the reader getting snippets of fact(or fiction?) about different characters from it, and the surprising lack of filter of what they’d say. They’ll complement someone but later on, they’ll be quick to insult or say something they dislike about the very same person or the person’s actions. It almost felt like no one was deemed too “high class�� to be a target of criticism; which was pleasant and overturned any thoughts I had of “meek country folk��. Perhaps the main character is The Village itself.
The descriptions of nature were pleasant and not overbearing and the fact that in this part it was focused on Autumn(my favourite season), was something I especially found enjoyable. I was surprised I didn’t struggle to remember the characters; this wasn’t a case of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I plan to in-time read the rest of the books/seasons.

Favorite character: Jambroży. Also Lapa the Dog : D
]]> 12083
The play is autobiographical, and O'Neill draws his drug-addicted mother, his close-fisted father, his drunken and degenerate elder brother, and his tormented self, with terrifying veracity.]]> 179 Eugene O'Neill 0300093055 Patrick 0 to-read 4.05 1956
author: Eugene O'Neill
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123136728
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?]]> 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Patrick 0 to-read 3.55 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 145625252 Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist’s defining work and a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008.

The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries.

Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for the ever-proliferating objects, are given voice here. The voice we recognize as the author’s continually dissolves and re-emerges. Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective.

On its 2008 publication in France, The Years came as a surprise. Though Ernaux had for years been hailed as a beloved, bestselling and award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir “written�� by entire generations, and a story of generations telling a very personal story. Like the generation before hers, the narrator eschews the “I�� for the “we�� (or “they��, or “one��) as if collective life were inextricably intertwined with a private life that in her parents�� generation ceased to exist. She writes of her parents�� generation (and could be writing of her own book): “From a common fund of hunger and fear, everything was told in the “we�� and impersonal pronouns.”]]> 240 Annie Ernaux 1609807871 Patrick 0 to-read 4.22 2008
author: Annie Ernaux
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18163460
Translated from the Danish by A. G. Chater

Introduction by Francis Hackett

A Borzoi Book]]> 677 Johannes V. Jensen Patrick 0 to-read 4.31 1933
author: Johannes V. Jensen
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1933
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 29906980 Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?]]> 368 George Saunders 0812995341 Patrick 0 to-read 3.75 2017
author: George Saunders
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 69882 280 Heinrich Böll 0140187243 Patrick 4 3.97 1959
author: Heinrich Böll
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: nobel-literature-laureate-reads
review:
Probably the least confusing stream-of-consciousness narration that I recollect reading. And I actually didn’t even get to read this penguin edition, but instead some other one that had several spelling errors(including some crucial ones- pronouns), but it didn’t hamper the read much, surprisingly. I would say it’s in general, a good introduction to stream-of-consciousness in novel form. It shows a reader what a writer can do; and in a pretty succinct manner of only ~258 pages. I was surprised at the pleasantness of reading this. I thought it would be this dull, phlegmatic read, but it was actually better than I thought!
]]> 76660 THE WOMAN WHO WANTED REVENGE

When the man Niobe loved was shot, she learned that she had been the target, in a devious plot of the Devil's.

Hoping for revenge, Niobe accepted a position as one of the three Aspects of Fate, only to find that Satan's plots were tangled into the very Tapestry of Fate. Now the Evil One was laying a trap to ruin Niobe's granddaughter Luna, who threatened his plans—and he had tricked her son into Hell.

Niobe's only chance to save her son and Luna was to accept a challenge by the Prince of Deceit—a challenge to be decided in Hell and in a maze of Satan's devising.]]> 405 Piers Anthony 0345318854 Patrick 0 4.00 1985
author: Piers Anthony
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 76658 325 Piers Anthony 0345338588 Patrick 0 4.13 1983
author: Piers Anthony
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 101668 120 René Daumal 0715633791 Patrick 0 to-read 4.20 1952
author: René Daumal
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 337113 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful depiction of a woman's fight for domestic independence and creative freedom.]]> 576 Anne Brontë 0140434747 Patrick 0 to-read 4.00 1848
author: Anne Brontë
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1848
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Patrick 0 to-read 4.22 2020
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7103064 Rig Veda, the oldest of the central books from which Hinduism emerged. Part of a 6-volume set which helps us understand the world's religions.]]> 656 Jaroslav Pelikan 0737232218 Patrick 0 to-read 4.09 1992
author: Jaroslav Pelikan
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 376160 396 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0691043442 Patrick 5 3.81 1795
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1795
rating: 5
read at: 2017/10/04
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves:
review:
Funny how this book is considered the “father�� of the Bildungsroman genre, yet it’s so surreal, cryptic, and almost dreamlike at times. In my opinion, way different, better, and more interesting than novels typically considered Bildungsroman novels. It’s a great book. Idc if I’m writing this review many years later, for, some books just stay in your mind.
]]> 7042 1182 Murasaki Shikibu 014243714X Patrick 5 3.72 1000
author: Murasaki Shikibu
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1000
rating: 5
read at: 2021/04/16
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves:
review:
Anything pertaining to this book takes time for me. It took me 13 years of on-and-off reading to finish it, and now 4 years to write a review. This is not all necessarily bad. It’s just Such A Major Book. So much psychology in it(the emotional depth is always surprising given how old of a book it is, and when you compare it to writings from around the world during the same time period), poetry, and fairytale-esque parts. It’s such a great book. One of the translators of the book theorized that Murasaki would’ve likely continued to write the novel as long as she could, and I can believe that. It’s a book that is beautiful, painful, painless, disturbing at times, unrelenting, full of heart, full of intrigue, harshness, and yet also delicate.
]]> 342049 435 Knut Hamsun 0394717813 Patrick 0 currently-reading 4.27 1917
author: Knut Hamsun
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1917
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 148807898 0 H Haddawy Patrick 0 3.62
author: H Haddawy
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.62
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 228264 to be complex and impenetrable.
Jonathan Culler, an extremely lucid commentator and much admired in the field of literary theory, offers discerning insights into such theories as the nature of language and meaning, and whether literature is a form of self-expression or a method of appeal to an audience. Concise yet thorough,
Literary Theory also outlines the ideas behind a number of different deconstruction, semiotics, postcolonial theory, and structuralism, among others.
From topics such as literature and social identity to poetry, poetics, and rhetoric, Literary A Very Short Introduction is a welcome guide for anyone interested in the importance of literature and the debates surrounding it.

About the Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds
of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.]]> 144 Jonathan D. Culler 019285383X Patrick 3 3.65 1997
author: Jonathan D. Culler
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/23
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:
I was tempted to give this 2 stars but decided to be nice. My biggest complaint is that, for an introduction to literary theory I feel the book is a bit too dense, and I feel the structure could’ve been tweaked with as well. I will also say, the book asks more questions of you than it provides answers to you.
]]> 420692 560 Géza Gárdonyi 9631333728 Patrick 5 hungarian-literature 3.89 1899
author: Géza Gárdonyi
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1899
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: hungarian-literature
review:
I still think about this book. It was so engaging and great. It’s a longish book but it definitely didn’t feel that way. Memorable characters, memorable plot, etc, not much more one can ask for! A favourite work of Hungarian literature.
]]> 1078
Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought force them to seek work in the city. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.]]> 418 Pearl S. Buck 1416500189 Patrick 2 4.00 1931
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1931
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: nobel-literature-laureate-reads
review:
Took me almost 2 years of on-and-off reading to finish this book. Not because it’s long, but because of it being generally unenjoyable. I do think it’s probably realistic how people in the book’s setting felt about fellow humans(and women), but Wang Lung seems to be a pretty static character overall. Read the book for the sake of O-lan, and for the sake of no one else, I guess.
]]> 28862
1. So it is that to know the nature of a people, one need be a Prince; to know the nature of a Prince, one need to be of the people.
2. If a Prince is not given to vices that make him hated, it is unsusal for his subjects to show their affection for him.
3. Opportunity made Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and others; their virtue domi-nated the opportunity, making their homelands noble and happy. Armed prophets win; the disarmed lose.
4. Without faith and religion, man achieves power but not glory.
5. Prominent citizens want to command and oppress; the populace only wants to be free of oppression.
6. A Prince needs a friendly populace; otherwise in diversity there is no hope.
7. A Prince, who rules as a man of valor, avoids disasters,
8. Nations based on mercenary forces will never be solid or secure.
9. Mercenaries are dangerous because of their cowardice
10. There are two ways to fight: one with laws, the other with force. The first is rightly man’s way; the second, the way of beasts.]]> 144 Niccolò Machiavelli 0937832383 Patrick 5 3.85 1513
author: Niccolò Machiavelli
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1513
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 26095227 307 Anonymous 0834823667 Patrick 0 currently-reading 4.42 1375
author: Anonymous
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1375
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 145660
The four chapters at the heart of the book then follow, each a portrayal of a gifted Polish man who capitulated, in some fashion, to the demands of the Communist state. They are identified only as Alpha, the Moralist; Beta, The Disappointed Lover; Gamma, the Slave of History; and Delta, the Troubadour. However, each of the four portraits were easily identifiable: Alpha is Jerzy Andrzejewski, Beta is Tadeusz Borowski, Gamma is Jerzy Putrament and Delta is Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński.

The book moves toward its climax with an elaboration of "enslavement through consciousness" in the penultimate chapter and closes with a pained and personal assessment of the fate of the Baltic nations in particular.]]> 272 Czesław Miłosz 0679728562 Patrick 0 4.27 1953
author: Czesław Miłosz
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
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]]> 20360347 and a history of Indian culture rolled into one.

Exhumed from dust, Manto’s unpublished novel surfaces in Lucknow. Is it real or is it a fake? In this dastan, Manto and Ghalib converse, entwining their lives in shared dreams. The result is an intellectual journey that takes us into the people and events that shape us as a culture. As one writer describes it, ‘I discovered Rabisankar Bal like a torch in the darkness of the history of this subcontinent. This is the real story of two centuries of our own country.��

Rabisankar Bal’s audacious novel, told by reflections in a mirror and forged in the fires of hell, is both an oral tale and a shield against oblivion. An echo of distant screams. Inscribed by the devil’s quill, Dozakhnama is an outstanding performance of subterranean memory.]]> 465 Rabisankar Bal 8184003803 Patrick 0 to-read 4.32
author: Rabisankar Bal
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 314582 470 Baldassare Castiglione 0486427021 Patrick 0 currently-reading 3.67 1528
author: Baldassare Castiglione
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1528
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 10778139
Learn to increase the effectiveness, conversion rates, and usability of your own design projects by finding the answers to questions such as:

What grabs and holds attention on a page or screen?
What makes memories stick?
What is more important, peripheral or central vision?
How can you predict the types of errors that people will make?
What is the limit to someone's social circle?
How do you motivate people to continue on to (the next step?
What line length for text is best?
Are some fonts better than others? These are just a few of the questions that the book answers in its deep-dive exploration of what makes people tick.]]> 242 Susan M. Weinschenk 0321767535 Patrick 0 to-read 4.09 2011
author: Susan M. Weinschenk
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 261441 U.S.A.�ٰ������Dz�����The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—Dos Passos creates an unforgettable collective portrait of America, shot through with sardonic comedy and brilliant social observation. He interweaves the careers of his characters and the events of their time with a narrative verve and breathtaking technical skill that make U.S.A. among the most compulsively readable of modern classics.

A startling range of experimental devices captures the textures and background noises of 20th-century life: "Newsreels" with blaring headlines; autobiographical "Camera Eye" sections with poetic stream-of-consciousness; "biographies" evoking emblematic historical figures like J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, John Reed, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thorstein Veblen, and the Unknown Soldier. Holding everything together is sheer storytelling power, tracing dozens of characters from the Spanish-American War to the onset of the Depression.

The U.S.A. trilogy is filled with American speech: labor radicals and advertising executives, sailors and stenographers, interior decorators and movie stars. Their crisscrossing destinies take in wars and revolutions, desperate love affairs and harrowing family crises, corrupt public triumphs and private catastrophes, in settings that include the trenches of World War I, insurgent Mexico, Hollywood studios in the silent era, Wall Street boardrooms, and the tumultuous streets of Boston just before the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.]]> 1288 John Dos Passos 1883011140 Patrick 0 to-read 4.11 1930
author: John Dos Passos
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1930
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 103159 872 John Galsworthy 0192838628 Patrick 0 currently-reading 4.17 1921
author: John Galsworthy
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1921
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Patrick 0 3.61 2007
author: Han Kang
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: nobel-literature-laureate-reads
review:
Not sure what to rate it. May rate later after some more thought. It was a pretty good book overall. I can totally see it becoming a movie. Some kind of psychological thriller/slight horror. Very strange.
]]> 132007284 Sur le chemin mystique, l’expérience de la nuit n’est ni noire, ni dramatique, ni tragique. Ce magnifique traité poétique montre au contraire qu’elle est réceptrice de leçons divines. Une œuvre majeure de la voie négative.]]> 0 John of the Cross Patrick 0 to-read 4.30 1584
author: John of the Cross
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1584
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 219879 The Piano Teacher, the most famous novel of Elfriede Jelinek, who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a shocking, searing, aching portrait of a woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires.

Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears to be a seamless tissue of boredom, but Erika, a quiet thirty-eight-year-old, secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night to watch live sex shows and sadomasochistic films. Meanwhile, a handsome, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old student has become enamored with Erika and sets out to seduce her. She resists him at first, but then the dark passions roiling under the piano teacher's subdued exterior explode in a release of sexual perversity, suppressed violence, and human degradation.

Celebrated throughout Europe for the intensity and frankness of her writings and awarded the Heinrich Böll Prize for her outstanding contribution to German letters, Elfriede Jelinek is one of the most original and controversial writers in the world today. The Piano Teacher was made into a film, released in the United States in 2001, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.]]> 288 Elfriede Jelinek 0802118062 Patrick 2 Favorite quote: “The misunderstandings solidify into granite�� p.205.
]]> 3.65 1983
author: Elfriede Jelinek
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1983
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: nobel-literature-laureate-reads
review:
Oh gosh. This book. Judging purely based on this book, I don’t know if she’s a bad writer; I think that this book is clearly intentionally supposed to be an unpleasant read. I will say, my biggest issue is that trend I sometimes see(that is in this book): the trend of not including quotation marks or even dashes for dialogue. I always find it a stylistic annoyance. There isn’t much else to say about this book that hasn’t probably been said already. Like I said, unpleasant read. Unpleasant plot and characters.
Favorite quote: “The misunderstandings solidify into granite�� p.205.

]]> 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 Patrick 0 to-read 4.32 1375
author: Anonymous
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1375
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 242655 A wealth of texts drawn from theologians and spiritual writers of all ages accompanies Father Ware's presentation. They too reveal Orthodoxy not just as a system of beliefs, practices and customs but indeed as the Way.]]> 164 Kallistos Ware 0913836583 Patrick 0 to-read 4.38 1979
author: Kallistos Ware
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40388177
The pricing, he insisted on against all advice. It refers to the lucky 969 Movement of Burma, led by the noble monk Wirathu.

Praise be to the Pervert. Praise be to his teaching of peace.

Be careful.]]> 198 Bronze Age Pervert Patrick 0 3.83 2018
author: Bronze Age Pervert
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
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review:

]]> 12158480 Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?

Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.

Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including:

   - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West?
   - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority?
   - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More
philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions?

Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.]]> 529 Daron Acemoğlu 0307719219 Patrick 5 4.06 2012
author: Daron Acemoğlu
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
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review:
This book was so good. Economics/Economic History doesn’t sound like the most exciting topic but this book does it well and is a really fun and informative read. Of course, the only thing one has to keep in mind is the book is 13 years old, so, certain countries have changed in that time, such as Uzbekistan(where supposedly the child labor has fortunately been ended), and Egypt(I don’t think I need to explain this one). Regardless, my first book read this year and what a great first book of the year too!
]]> 21413849 A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia, where even dictatorship is a reality show

Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell’s Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the wild and bizarre heart of twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship-far subtler than twentieth-century strains-that is rapidly rising to challenge the West.

When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system.

Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.]]> 256 Peter Pomerantsev 1610394550 Patrick 0 to-read 3.96 2014
author: Peter Pomerantsev
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 314161 102 Seraphim Rose 1887904069 Patrick 0 to-read 4.25 1994
author: Seraphim Rose
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 209543060 Rising star New York Times technology reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac tell for the first time the full and shocking inside story of Elon Musk’s unprecedented hostile takeover of Twitter and the forty-four-billion-dollar deal’s seismic political, social, and financial fallout
The billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. Started in the mid-2000s as a playful microblogging platform, Twitter quickly became a vital nexus of global politics, culture, and media—where the retweet button could instantly catapult any idea to hundreds of millions of screens around the world, unleashing raw collective emotion like nothing else before. While its founder had idealistically dreamed of building a "digital town square," he detested Wall Street and never focused on building a profitable business.
Musk joined the platform in 2010 and, by 2022, had become one of the site’s most influential users, hooking over 80 million followers with a mix of provocations, promotion of his companies, and attacks on his enemies. To Musk, Twitter—once known for its almost absolute commitment to free speech—had badly lost its way. He blamed it for the proliferation of what he called the “woke mind virus�� and claimed that the survival of democracy and the human race itself depended on the future of the site. In January of 2022, Musk began secretly accumulating Twitter stock. By April, he was its largest shareholder, and soon after, made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company for the unimaginable sum of $44 billion dollars. Backed into a corner, Twitter’s board accepted his offer—but Musk quickly changed his mind, forcing Twitter to sue him to close the deal in October. The richest man on earth controlled one of the most powerful media platforms in the world—but at what price? Before long Twitter would be gone for good, replaced by something radically different, as Musk remade the company in his own image from the ground up.
The story of the showdown between Musk and Twitter and his eventual takeover of the company is unlike anything in business or media that has come before. In vivid, cinematic detail, Conger and Mac follow the inner workings of the company as Musk lays siege to it, first from the outside as one of its most vocal users, and then finally from within as a contentious and mercurial leader. Musk has shared some of his version of events, but Conger and Mac have uncovered the full story through exclusive interviews, unreported documents, and internal recordings at Twitter following the billionaire’s takeover. With unparalleled sources from within and around the company, they provide a revelatory, three-dimensional, and definitive account of what really happened when Musk showed up, spoiling for a brawl and intent on revolution, with his merciless, sycophantic cadre of lawyers, investors, and bankers.
This is the defining story of our time told with uncommon style and peerless rigor. In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost?]]> 480 Kate Conger 059365613X Patrick 0 to-read 4.26 2024
author: Kate Conger
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 222915 173 Charles de Lint 159606126X Patrick 0 4.15 2007
author: Charles de Lint
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 2758422 304 Lydia McDermott 0340871199 Patrick 0 to-read 3.57 2005
author: Lydia McDermott
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 743516 * clear - with concise grammar notes
* practical - with useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
* complete - includes answer key and special reference section. By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Amharic in a broad range of everyday situations. Accompanying audio material is available to purchase separately on CD/MP3 format, or comes included in the great value Colloquials Pack.]]> 384 David Appleyard 0415100038 Patrick 0 to-read 3.60 1995
author: David Appleyard
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8643528 336 Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo 1146644310 Patrick 0 to-read 3.52 1508
author: Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1508
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 661798 The Golden Legend deeply influenced the imagery of poetry, painting and stained glass with its fascinating descriptions of saints' lives and religious festivals. By creating a single-volume sourcebook of core Christian stories, Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1229-98) attracted a huge audience across Europe. This selection of over seventy biographies ranges from the first Apostles and Roman martyrs to near-contemporaries such as St Dominic, St Francis of Assissi and St Elizabeth of Hungary. Here, witnesses to the true faith endure horrific tortures; reformed prostitutes win divine forgiveness; while other women live disguised as monks or nobly resist lustful tyrants. Lucid and compelling, The Golden Legend offers an enthralling insight into the medieval mind.]]> 432 Jacobus de Voragine 0140446486 Patrick 0 currently-reading 3.87 1260
author: Jacobus de Voragine
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1260
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 28320522 210 Carlos Labbé 1940953251 Patrick 0 to-read 2.50 2009
author: Carlos Labbé
name: Patrick
average rating: 2.50
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 868267 "Mr & Mrs Durant are admirably lucid...This is a book that can be commended very warmly."--The New York Times]]> 729 Will Durant 0671013203 Patrick 0 to-read 4.37 1961
author: Will Durant
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 364270 322 Claude Simon 0714538973 Patrick 0 to-read 4.06 1981
author: Claude Simon
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 274230 different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that living matter is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the earth's living matter-air, ocean, and land surfaces-forms a complex system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit
place for life.
Since Gaia was first published, many of Jim Lovelock's predictions have come true, and his theory has become a hotly argued topic in scientific circles. Here, in a new Preface, Lovelock outlines his present state of the debate.]]> 176 James E. Lovelock 0192862189 Patrick 0 to-read 3.82 1979
author: James E. Lovelock
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8805689
The Sprawl Repair Manual draws on more than two decades of practical experience in the field of repairing and building communities to analyze the current pattern of sprawl development, disassemble it into its elemental components, and present a process for transforming them into human-scale, sustainable elements. The techniques are illustrated both two- and three-dimensionally, providing users with clear methodologies for the sprawl repair interventions, some of which are radical, but all of which will produce positive results.]]> 304 Galina Tachieva 1597267325 Patrick 0 to-read 3.84 2010
author: Galina Tachieva
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1588036 Book by De Riencourt, Amaury 340 Amaury De Riencourt 0907855083 Patrick 0 to-read 4.58 1965
author: Amaury De Riencourt
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.58
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3407772 Book by Amaury De Riencourt 416 Amaury De Riencourt 0907855032 Patrick 0 to-read 4.38 1986
author: Amaury De Riencourt
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43886256 From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age

Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative.

Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs.

Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.]]> 448 Tamim Ansary 1610397967 Patrick 0 to-read 4.30 2019
author: Tamim Ansary
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 209102 516 Thomas Sowell 0465014003 Patrick 0 to-read 4.39 1998
author: Thomas Sowell
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Patrick 0 to-read 3.95 1872
author: Jules Verne
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 136201134 0 Heinrich Kramer Patrick 0 to-read 3.33
author: Heinrich Kramer
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 96884 297 Jonathan Haidt 0465028020 Patrick 0 to-read 4.08 2006
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 37886498
The result is a set of philosophy lessons for everyone �� the most valuable wisdom of ages past made available for our times, and for all time.]]> 292 Ward Farnsworth 1567926118 Patrick 0 to-read 4.33 2018
author: Ward Farnsworth
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10203 214 Wisława Szymborska 0156002167 Patrick 5 Only the blood flows, drying quickly,
and, as always, a few rivers, a few clouds.��

“My identifying features
are rapture and despair.��

“It’s always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It has a sniper's keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.��

“Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.��

Sometimes I write reviews late like this one. But, this book was good. Many of the poems are thought-provoking and there’s quotable lines from several of them, such as the ones I just added ]]> 4.34 1995
author: Wisława Szymborska
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: nobel-literature-laureate-reads
review:
“What moral flows from this? Probably none.
Only the blood flows, drying quickly,
and, as always, a few rivers, a few clouds.��

“My identifying features
are rapture and despair.��

“It’s always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It has a sniper's keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.��

“Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.��

Sometimes I write reviews late like this one. But, this book was good. Many of the poems are thought-provoking and there’s quotable lines from several of them, such as the ones I just added
]]> 1169073 174 Amos Tutuola 0802131050 Patrick 0 to-read 3.77 1954
author: Amos Tutuola
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 381440 The Society of the Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth century. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.]]> 154 Guy Debord 0942299795 Patrick 0 to-read 4.05 1967
author: Guy Debord
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63329951 An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life—the humble parking spot

Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don’t resort to violence, we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Indeed, in the century since the advent of the car, we have deformed—and in some cases demolished—our homes and our cities in a Sisyphean quest for cheap and convenient car storage. As a result, much of the nation’s most valuable real estate is now devoted exclusively to empty and idle vehicles, even as so many Americans struggle to find affordable housing. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, patterns of traffic and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, the quality of public space, and even the course of floodwaters. Can this really be the best use of our finite resources and space? Why have we done this to the places we love? Is parking really more important than anything else?

These are the questions Slate staff writer Henry Grabar sets out to answer, telling a mesmerizing story about the strange and wonderful superorganism that is the modern American city. In a beguiling and often absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Grabar brilliantly surveys the pain points of the nation’s parking crisis, from Los Angeles to Disney World to New York, stopping at every major American city in between. He reveals how the pathological compulsion for car storage has exacerbated some of our most acute problems—from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster—ultimately, lighting the way for us to free our cities from parking’s cruel yoke.]]> 368 Henry Grabar 1984881140 Patrick 0 to-read 4.20 2023
author: Henry Grabar
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/28
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]]> 20561983
1. L'Aube ("Dawn", 1904)
2. Le Matin ("Morning", 1904)
3. L'Adolescent ("Youth", 1904)
4. La Révolte ("Revolt", 1905)
5. La Foire sur la place ("The Marketplace", 1908)
6. Antoinette (1908)
7. Dans la maison ("The House", 1908)
8. Les Amies ("Love and Friendship", 1910)
9. Le Buisson ardent ("The Burning Bush", 1911)
10. La Nouvelle Journée ("The New Dawn", 1912)]]> 1582 Romain Rolland Patrick 0 to-read 4.36 1912
author: Romain Rolland
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1912
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 78165 From: ]]> 1092 Will Durant 1567310214 Patrick 0 to-read 4.27
author: Will Durant
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.27
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/27
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]]> 713055 Paco's Story—winner of a National Book Award—plunges you into the violence and casual cruelty of the Vietnam War, and the ghostly aftermath that often dealt the harshest blows.]]> 224 Larry Heinemann 1400076838 Patrick 0 to-read 3.77 1986
author: Larry Heinemann
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 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.  

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 Patrick 0 to-read 3.57 1920
author: David Lindsay
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1920
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
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]]> 44001
Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of the immigrant's life.
]]> 441 Andrea Levy 0312424671 Patrick 0 to-read 3.99 2004
author: Andrea Levy
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
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]]> 170288 344 Kim Jong-Il 0898756138 Patrick 0 to-read 2.46 1973
author: Kim Jong-Il
name: Patrick
average rating: 2.46
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 2218102 Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.]]> 564 Jordan B. Peterson 0415922224 Patrick 0 to-read 4.04 1999
author: Jordan B. Peterson
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 544053 ]]> 657 Lewis Mumford 0156180359 Patrick 0 currently-reading 4.09 1961
author: Lewis Mumford
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 404516 124 Maurice Blanchot 0882680765 Patrick 0 to-read 4.11 1941
author: Maurice Blanchot
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1941
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 7193452
Three Days Before the Shooting . . . gathers together in one volume, for the first time, all the parts of that planned opus, including three major sequences never before published. Set in the frame of a deathbed vigil, the story is a gripping multigenerational saga centered on the assassination of the controversial, race-baiting U.S. senator Adam Sunraider, who’s being tended to by “Daddy�� Hickman, the elderly black jazz musician turned preacher who raised the orphan Sunraider as a light-skinned black in rural Georgia. Presented in their unexpurgated, provisional state, the narrative sequences form a deeply poetic, moving, and profoundly entertaining book, brimming with humor and tension, composed in Ellison’s magical jazz-inspired prose style and marked by his incomparable ear for vernacular speech.

Beyond its richly compelling narratives, Three Days Before the Shooting . . . is perhaps most notable for its extraordinary insight into the creative process of one of this country’s greatest writers. In various stages of composition and revision, its typescripts and computer files testify to Ellison’s achievement and struggle with his material from the mid-1950s until his death forty years later. Three Days Before the Shooting . . . is an essential, fascinating piece of Ralph Ellison’s legacy, and its publication is to be welcomed as a major event for American arts and letters.]]> 1136 Ralph Ellison 0375759530 Patrick 0 to-read 3.94 2010
author: Ralph Ellison
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> 321566 338 Milorad Pavić 0679724613 Patrick 4 4.18 1983
author: Milorad Pavić
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/24
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]]> 9486433 representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations. This Very Short Introduction sheds light on the cluster of concepts and themes
that set critical theory apart from its more traditional philosophical competitors. Bronner explains and discusses concepts such as method and agency, alienation and reification, the culture industry and repressive tolerance, non-identity and utopia. He argues for the introduction of new categories
and perspectives for illuminating the obstacles to progressive change and focusing upon hidden transformative possibilities. Only a critique of critical theory can render it salient for a new age. That is precisely what this very short introduction provides.]]> 144 Stephen Eric Bronner 0199730075 Patrick 0 currently-reading 3.19 2011
author: Stephen Eric Bronner
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/22
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]]> 784175 About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.]]> 192 David F. Ford Patrick 0 to-read 3.34 1999
author: David F. Ford
name: Patrick
average rating: 3.34
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/12
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]]> 9809 165 Italo Calvino 0156453800 Patrick 5 4.16 1972
author: Italo Calvino
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/11
date added: 2024/08/11
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]]> 19083 Both heavily influenced by and critical of Plato's Republic and Laws, Politics represents the distillation of a lifetime of thought and observation. "Encyclopaedic knowledge has never, before or since, gone hand in hand with a logic so masculine or with speculation so profound," says H. W. C. Davis in his introduction. Students, teachers, and scholars will welcome this inexpensive new edition of the Benjamin Jowett translation, as will all readers interested in Greek thought, political theory, and depictions of the ideal state.]]> 368 Aristotle 0486414248 Patrick 0 to-read 4.00 -350
author: Aristotle
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.00
book published: -350
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/10
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]]> 138885093 0 Plato Patrick 4 4.33 -400
author: Plato
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.33
book published: -400
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/08
date added: 2024/08/08
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]]> 325785 Capital, one of Marx's major and most influential works, was the product of thirty years close study of the capitalist mode of production in England, the most advanced industrial society of his day. This new translation of Volume One, the only volume to be completed and edited by Marx himself, avoids some of the mistakes that have marred earlier versions and seeks to do justice to the literary qualities of the work. The introduction is by Ernest Mandel, author of Late Capitalism, one of the only comprehensive attempts to develop the theoretical legacy of Capital.]]> 1152 Karl Marx 0140445684 Patrick 0 to-read 4.28 1867
author: Karl Marx
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1867
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 78166 1196 Will Durant 0965000753 Patrick 0 to-read 4.38 1950
author: Will Durant
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1950
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 9964939 Understand where we came from.

Whether you're an avid student of the Bible or a skeptic of its relevance, The Book That Made Your World will transform your perception of its influence on virtually every facet of Western civilization.

Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi reveals the personal motivation that fueled his own study of the Bible and systematically illustrates how its precepts became the framework for societal structure throughout the last millennium.  From politics and science, to academia and technology, the Bible's sacred copy became the key that unlocked the Western mind.

Through Mangalwadi's wide-ranging and fascinating investigation, you'll discover:

What triggered the West's passion for scientific, medical, and technological advancement
How the biblical notion of human dignity informs the West's social structure and how it intersects with other worldviews
How the Bible created a fertile ground for women to find social and economic empowerment
How the Bible has uniquely equipped the West to cultivate compassion, human rights, prosperity, and strong families
The role of the Bible in the transformation of education
How the modern literary notion of a hero has been shaped by the Bible's archetypal protagonist
Journey with Mangalwadi as he examines the origins of a civilization's greatness and the misguided beliefs that threaten to unravel its progress.  Learn how the Bible transformed the social, political, and religious institutions that have sustained Western culture for the past millennium, and discover how secular corruption endangers the stability and longevity of Western civilization.

Endorsements:

“This is an extremely significant piece of work with huge global implications. Vishal brings a timely message.�� (Ravi Zacharias, author, Walking from East to West and Beyond Opinion)

“In polite society, the mere mention of the Bible often introduces a certain measure of anxiety. A serious discussion on the Bible can bring outright contempt. Therefore, it is most refreshing to encounter this engaging and informed assessment of the Bible’s profound impact on the modern world. Where Bloom laments the closing of the American mind, Mangalwadi brings a refreshing optimism.�� (Stanley Mattson, founder and president, C. S. Lewis Foundation)

“Vishal Mangalwadi recounts history in very broad strokes, always using his cross-cultural perspectives for highlighting the many benefits of biblical principles in shaping civilization.�� (George Marsden, professor, University of Notre Dame; author, Fundamentalism and American Culture)]]> 442 Vishal Mangalwadi 1595553223 Patrick 0 to-read 4.31 2011
author: Vishal Mangalwadi
name: Patrick
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
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]]>