en-US Thu, 13 Jun 2024 19:24:56 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 200028726 From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.

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

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

It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family’s history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.]]> 240 Catherine Newman 0063345161 Kate 5 3.54 2024
author: Catherine Newman
name: Kate
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/06/13
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]]> 11886698 From the author of the Claire DeWitt This “witty and poignantâ€� novel of a woman moving on to a new stage of life, as her mother does the same (Rocky Mountain News). Ěý Mary Forrest is in her late twenties and comes from a literary family—her widowed mother still runs a prominent journal and shows up at Manhattan book parties packed with writers and intellectuals. Decades ago, Evelyn Forrest faced the kind of harassment that would make headlines in later times, but now her daughter works in publishing in an era that’s a little easier for women. Yet, young Mary is about to face some challenges of her own. Ěý Evelyn’s memory has been giving her problems—like “going homeâ€� to the place on Twelfth Street where she hasn’t lived since 1977. As Mary tries to support her mother, she struggles with personal relationships, and discovers that a coworker is brazenly trying to steal her job. At an astrological reading that she got as a birthday gift, a psychic explained that this is Mary’s Saturn Return year, her twenty-ninth; the year that the planet Saturn returns to exact spot it was in when she was born. It presages a time of change, and the last painful struggle before finally entering genuine adulthood. So far, it appears to be an accurate predictionĚý.Ěý.Ěý. Ěý]]> 241 Sara Gran 1569479240 Kate 5 3.87 2001
author: Sara Gran
name: Kate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/18
date added: 2024/05/18
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]]> 201626978
A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most is an epic story in one single day, masterly breaching the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath.]]> 144 Jessica Anthony 0316576379 Kate 5 3.30 2024
author: Jessica Anthony
name: Kate
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/05/07
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]]> 201627005 In the tradition of Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures, an ebullient, funny—and hugely original� novel about the friendship between a brilliant young girl and a perceptive squirrel monkey, the power of youth, and the way forward for a planet in crisis.

This immensely enjoyable novel takes a sweet and personable squirrel monkey, Beep, to help us see the world we live in more clearly. While intending only to go deeper and higher into the Costa Rican rain forest to find a mate, he instead meets Inga, a kindly and loving American teenager on vacation with her family. Inadvertently, often hilariously, Beep makes his way back to New York with Inga, and with her courageously devoted help—and a bit of inspiration from a visiting Greta Thunberg, along with a dramatic zoo escape—and with the help of just about every animal on earth, Beep manages to change the destiny of the world. Along the way, he has a great deal to say about humanity and the divisions among us, our alien cities, our strange practices, our false superiority, our vanity, our entitlement, our folly, as well as our beauty, and our promise, unfulfilled.

With a cast of equally engaging and perceptive animals, Beep is irresistibly appealing. Neither earnest nor preachy, it is full of humor and inspiration and remarkable new ways of understanding how we live. Beep conveys an urgent message—the increasing threats to our planet—lightly, urging us to wake up while there is still time.]]> 240 Bill Roorbach 1643755617 Kate 5 3.31
author: Bill Roorbach
name: Kate
average rating: 3.31
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/04/07
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]]> 56271459 In this love story, a teenage girl with a checkered past finds instant chemistry with a mysterious stranger.�

When sixteen-year-old Cindra Zoeller is sent to a reform camp in Montana after being involved in an armed robbery, sheĚýis thrust into a world of mountains and cowboys and prayers and miscreants and people from all walks of life like she’s never seen in suburban Massachusetts. At Camp Challenge, she becomes transfixed by Lucky, a camp employee of mysterious origin—an origin of constant speculation—and the chemistry between them is instant, and profound. The pair escape together into the wilderness to create an idyllic life far from the reach of the law, living off their resounding love, Lucky’s vast knowledge of the wilderness, and a little help from some friends.
Ěý
But they can run from the outside world for only so long, and the consequences of their naïve fantasy of a future together—and circumstances shaped by skin color—will keep them apart for decades. Cindra gets trapped in a relationship, safely if stultifying suburban, where she is both cosseted and controlled by a man who claims to be her rescuer. But for Cindra, there will never be another Lucky, and she dreams of one day finding him, the only man she’s ever fully trusted, her soulmate.

Page-turning, full of vivid characters, delicious suspense, and ultimately joy, Lucky Turtle is a big- hearted, deeply engrossing love story from one of our most entertaining and perceptive writers.]]> 416 Bill Roorbach 1643750976 Kate 5 3.76 2022
author: Bill Roorbach
name: Kate
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/02/28
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]]> 62365896 A charming, deeply moving novel about second chances, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.

Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle�

Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.

When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.

How to Read a Book Ěýis an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.Ěý .Ěý]]> 288 Monica Wood 0063243679 Kate 5 4.21 2024
author: Monica Wood
name: Kate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/02/28
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]]> 150778707
A shrewd, page-turning caper that explores one woman’s search for agency and ultimate reckoning with the kind of animal she is.]]> 304 Sarah Braunstein 1324051043 Kate 5 3.43
author: Sarah Braunstein
name: Kate
average rating: 3.43
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/12/28
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]]> 43862305 The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan.

In an unnamed Japanese city, three seemingly normal and unrelated characters find work at a sprawling industrial factory. They each focus intently on their specific jobs: one studies moss, one shreds paper, and the other proofreads incomprehensible documents. Life in the factory has its own logic and momentum, and, eventually, the factory slowly expands and begins to take over everything, enveloping these poor workers. The very margins of reality seem to be dissolving: all forms of life capriciously evolve, strange creatures begin to appear� After a while—it could be weeks or years—the workers don’t even have the ability to ask themselves: where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin?

Told in three alternating first-person narratives, The Factory casts a vivid—if sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of modern life. With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, Hiroko Oyamada is one of the boldest writers of her generation.]]> 116 Hiroko Oyamada 0811228851 Kate 5 3.35 2010
author: Hiroko Oyamada
name: Kate
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/11/05
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