Leanne's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 11 Jun 2025 08:07:03 -0700 60 Leanne's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing]]> 33926 The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, and relationships as well as the treacherous waters of the workplace. With an unforgettable comic touch, Melissa Bank skillfully teases out issues of the heart; puts a new spin on the mating dance; and captures what it's like to be a young woman coming of age in America today.]]> 274 Melissa Bank 0143035479 Leanne 5 3.36 1998 The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
author: Melissa Bank
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.36
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2025/06/11
date added: 2025/06/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How To Cook Everything Kids: Empowering Young Chefs with Essential Kitchen Skills, Adventurous Eating, and Customizable Recipes for Joyful Discovery ... Kitchen (How to Cook Everything Series, 9)]]> 199531677 Mark Bittman’s first cookbook for kids is here! His newest in the beloved How to Cook Everything series focuses on empowering children with all the kitchen skills they need to choose, prepare, and cook the foods they like with the people they love.

Mark Bittman inspires kids to be more adventurous eaters by teaching them first how to identify and cook their favorite foods, then build from there. With flexible recipes designed for all the ways kids approach meals and snacks, How to Cook Everything Kids promises to turn the kitchen into a place of joy and discovery. The detailed recipe directions and fun features for key ingredients, techniques, and basics are all written specifically with little hands in mind, while Bittman covers navigating your kitchen, what different tools do, and preparing and measuring ingredients. These tools help kids ages 8 to 12 (give or take) develop confidence and independence in the kitchen so they learn when to lean on adults, and how to make their own simple swaps and variations. The result is a cookbook that can be customized for every individual child.

How to Cook Everything Kids includes:

-Chapters covering every meal and food group: Breakfast Any Time; Flavor Bursts (sauces); Hold On! (sandwiches and other finger foods); Sips and Spoonfuls (soups); Edible Colors (a vegetable primer with flexible recipes for all the basic techniques); Pasta and Noodles; Grains and Beans; The Big Stuff (satisfying mains); Now Bake Something; and Sweets.
-Make Friends with Your Kitchen, an expanded opening chapter designed to familiarize kids with their equipment and ingredients, and all the cooking words they need to know.
-Visual guides from photography and cartoons to snapshots of everyday kids cooking Bittman’s recipes in their kitchens encourage the next generation of home cooks to explore and create.
-Recipes for every skill level: Bittman covers everything from kid go-to’s like Scrambled Eggs, Quesadillas, and Popcorn in a Pot, into more complex dishes like Roasted Veggies, Chicken Mark Nuggets, and Banana Bread. Features on skills like frosting a cake, building a grain bowl, and making an epic sandwich teach kids how to try even more as their knowledge and skills grow.

How to Cook Everything Kids is a perfect introduction for kids looking to get into the kitchen and start cooking.]]> 320 Mark Bittman 0544790324 Leanne 0 currently-reading 4.26 How To Cook Everything Kids: Empowering Young Chefs with Essential Kitchen Skills, Adventurous Eating, and Customizable Recipes for Joyful Discovery ... Kitchen (How to Cook Everything Series, 9)
author: Mark Bittman
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids]]> 40611244 "Get this for your pregnant friends, or yourself" (People): a hilariously candid account of one woman's quest to bring her post-baby marriage back from the brink, with life-changing, real-world advice.


Recommended by Nicole Cliffe in Slate

Featured in People Picks
A Red Tricycle Best Baby and Toddler Parenting Book of the Year
One of Mother magazine's favorite parenting books of the Year

How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids tackles the last taboo subject of parenthood: the startling, white-hot fury that new (and not-so-new) mothers often have for their mates. After Jancee Dunn had her baby, she found that she was doing virtually all the household chores, even though she and her husband worked equal hours. She asked herself: How did I become the 'expert' at changing a diaper?

Many expectant parents spend weeks researching the best crib or safest car seat, but spend little if any time thinking about the titanic impact the baby will have on their marriage - and the way their marriage will affect their child.

Enter Dunn, her well-meaning but blithely unhelpful husband, their daughter, and her boisterous extended family, who show us the ways in which outmoded family patterns and traditions thwart the overworked, overloaded parents of today.

On the brink of marital Armageddon, Dunn plunges into the latest relationship research, solicits the counsel of the country's most renowned couples' and sex therapists, canvasses fellow parents, and even consults an FBI hostage negotiator on how to effectively contain an "explosive situation." Instead of having the same fights over and over, Dunn and her husband must figure out a way to resolve their larger issues and fix their family while there is still time. As they discover, adding a demanding new person to your relationship means you have to reevaluate -- and rebuild -- your marriage. In an exhilarating twist, they work together to save the day, happily returning to the kind of peaceful life they previously thought was the sole province of couples without children.

Part memoir, part self-help book with actionable and achievable advice, How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids is an eye-opening look at how the man who got you into this position in this first place is the ally you didn't know you had.
]]> 289 Jancee Dunn Leanne 0 4.07 2017 How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids
author: Jancee Dunn
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/06
shelves: book-club, non-fiction, parenting, self-help, z-jen-brody, z-ny-times, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Whole-Brain Child: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind]]> 10353369
In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson demystify the meltdowns and aggravation, explaining the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. The “upstairs brain,� which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids can seem—and feel—so out of control. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth. Raise calmer, happier children using twelve key strategies, including
Ěý
� Name It to Tame It: Corral raging right-brain behavior through left-brain storytelling, appealing to the left brain’s affinity for words and reasoning to calm emotional storms and bodily tension.
� Engage, Don’t Enrage: Keep your child thinking and listening, instead of purely reacting.
� Move It or Lose It: Use physical activities to shift your child’s emotional state.
� Let the Clouds of Emotion Roll By: Guide your children when they are stuck on a negative emotion, and help them understand that feelings come and go.
� SIFT: Help children pay attention to the Sensations, Images, Feelings, and Thoughts within them so that they can make better decisions and be more flexible.
� Connect Through Conflict: Use discord to encourage empathy and greater social success.
Ěý
Complete with clear explanations, age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles, and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child shows you how to cultivate healthy emotional and intellectual development so that your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.]]> 192 Daniel J. Siegel 0553807919 Leanne 4 4.25 2011 The Whole-Brain Child: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind
author: Daniel J. Siegel
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/06
date added: 2025/06/06
shelves: non-fiction, parenting, z-terrible-thanks-for-asking, z-visible-child
review:

]]> This Is How You Lose Her 13503109
In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”]]> 217 Junot Díaz 1594487367 Leanne 3 fiction 3.74 2010 This Is How You Lose Her
author: Junot DĂ­az
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/04
date added: 2025/06/04
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Calypso 38348476
If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong.

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.

With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny--it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.

This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet--and it just might be his very best.]]> 272 David Sedaris 0316392359 Leanne 0 currently-reading 4.11 2018 Calypso
author: David Sedaris
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Less (Arthur Less, #1) 39927096 You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes--it would all be too awkward--and you can’t say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

If you are Arthur Less.

Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face. What could possibly go wrong?

Well: Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Sahara sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and arrive in Japan too late for the cherry blossoms. In between: science fiction fans, crazed academics, emergency rooms, starlets, doctors, exes and, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to see. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. The second phase of life, as he thinks of it, falling behind him like the second phase of a rocket. There will be his first love. And there will be his last.

A love story, a satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, by an author The New York Times has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,� “elegiac,� “ingenious,� as well as “too sappy by half,� Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.]]> 273 Andrew Sean Greer Leanne 4 3.61 2017 Less (Arthur Less, #1)
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/28
date added: 2025/05/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted]]> 50743767
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter "the real world". She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like 1,000 invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward - after three and a half years of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant - she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal - to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked - with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt - on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.]]> 352 Suleika Jaouad 0399588582 Leanne 4 4.40 2021 Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
author: Suleika Jaouad
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/16
date added: 2025/05/16
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir]]> 221289749 Award-winning comedian Zarna Garg turns her astonishing life story into aĚýhilarious memoir—from narrowly escaping an arranged marriage in India to carving her own path in America and launching a dazzling second act in midlife.

Growing up in India, everyone called Zarna “so Americanâ€� just for reading the newspaper, having deep thoughts, and talking back to anyone over the age ofĚýthirty. When Zarna’s dad tried to marry her off at ageĚýfourteen, Zarna fled the whole subcontinent for the glittering paradise of Akron, Ohio, where she got to become American for real.

On Zarna’s very American quest to find herself and her calling, she threw herself whole-heartedly into roles like dog-bite lawyer, crazy perfectionist stay-at-home mom, Indian matchmaker, prize-winning screenwriter, and more. It wasn’t until a dare led her to a stand-up comedy open mic that Zarna finally found her spiritual getting paid cold hard cash for her big fat mouth.

And as Zarna discovered,Ěýafter surviving the brutal streets of Mumbai, the cutthroat world of stand-up comedy is nothing.

This American Woman is an exuberant story of fighting for your right to determine your own destiny and triumphing beyond what you ever dreamed was possible. And as Zarna always reminds If Zarna can do it, you can too.]]> 320 Zarna Garg 0593975022 Leanne 5 4.45 This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir
author: Zarna Garg
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/14
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Keep House While Drowning]]> 60139504 How to Keep House While Drowning will introduce you to six life-changing principles that will revolutionize the way you approach home care—without endless to-do lists. Presented in 31 daily thoughts, this compassionate guide will help you begin to get free of the shame and anxiety you feel over home care.

Inside you will learn:
· How to shift your perspective of care tasks from moral to functional;
· How to stop negative self-talk and shame around care tasks;
· How to give yourself permission to rest, even when things aren’t finished;
· How to motivate yourself to care for your space.]]> 151 KC Davis LPC 166800285X Leanne 5 currently-reading 4.21 2022 How to Keep House While Drowning
author: KC Davis LPC
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/12
date added: 2025/05/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life]]> 217245588 A guide to the art of journaling—and a meditation on the central questions of life—by the bestselling author of Between Two Kingdoms, with contributions from Hanif Abdurraqib, Jon Batiste, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, George Saunders, and many more

“The Book of Alchemy proves on every page that a creative response can be found in every moment of life—regardless of what is happening in the world.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love

From the time she was young, Suleika Jaouad has kept a journal. She’s used it to mark life's biggest occasions and to weather its most ferocious storms. Journaling has buoyed her through illness, heartbreak, and the deepest uncertainty. And she is not alone: for so many people, keeping a journal is an essential tool for navigating both the personal peaks and valleys and the collective challenges of modern life. More than ever, we need a space for puzzling through.

In The Book of Alchemy, Suleika explores the art of journaling and shares everything she’s learned about how this life-altering practice can help us tap into that mystical trait that exists in every human: creativity. She has gathered wisdom from one hundred writers, artists, and thinkers in the form of essays and writing prompts. Their insights invite us to inhabit a more inspired life.

A companion through challenging times, The Book of Alchemy is broken into themes ranging from new beginnings to love, loss, and rebuilding. Whether you’re a lifelong journaler or new to the practice, this book gives you the tools, direction, and encouragement to engage with discomfort, ask questions, peel back the layers, dream daringly, uncover your truest self—and in doing so, to learn to hold the unbearably brutal and astonishingly beautiful facts of life in the same palm.

Also includes essays from: Martha Beck � Nadia Bolz-Weber � Alain de Botton � Susan Cheever � Lena Dunham � Melissa Febos � Liana Finck � John Green � Marie Howe � Pico Iyer � Oliver Jeffers � Quintin Jones � Michael Koryta � Hanif Kureishi � Kiese Laymon � Cleyvis Natera � Ann Patchett � Esther Perel � Adrienne Raphel � Jenny Rosenstrach � Sarah Ruhl � Sharon Salzberg � Dani Shapiro � Mavis Staples � Linda Sue Park � Nafissa Thompson-Spires � Jia Tolentino � Lindy West � Lidia Yuknavitch � And many others]]> 305 Suleika Jaouad 0593734637 Leanne 0 currently-reading 4.33 2025 The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life
author: Suleika Jaouad
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Sandwich 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 Leanne 5 fiction 3.53 2024 Sandwich
author: Catherine Newman
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> All About Love: New Visions 17607 All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.

Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.

For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.]]> 240 bell hooks 0688168442 Leanne 0 to-read 4.05 1999 All About Love: New Visions
author: bell hooks
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Leanne 0 to-read 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver Leanne 0 to-read 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Everything is Illuminated 256566 276 Jonathan Safran Foer 0060529709 Leanne 5 3.91 2002 Everything is Illuminated
author: Jonathan Safran Foer
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/07
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff: Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life]]> 58933265 America's top cleaning expert and star of the hit series Legacy List with Matt Paxton distills his fail-proof approach to decluttering and downsizing.

Your boxes of photos, family's china, and even the kids' height charts aren't just stuff; they're attached to a lifetime of memories--and letting them go can be scary. With empathy, expertise, and humor, Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff, written in collaboration with AARP, helps you sift through years of clutter, let go of what no longer serves you, and identify the items worth keeping so that you can focus on living in the present.

For over 20 years, Matt Paxton has helped people from all walks of life who want to live more simply declutter and downsize. As a featured cleaner on Hoarders and host of the Emmy-nominated Legacy List with Matt Paxton on PBS, he has identified the psychological roadblocks that most organizational experts routinely miss but that prevent so many of us from lightening our material load. Using poignant stories from the thousands of individuals and families he has worked with, Paxton brings his signature insight to a necessary task.

Whether you're tired of living with clutter, making space for a loved one, or moving to a smaller home or retirement community, this book is for you. Paxton's unique, step-by-step process gives you the tools you need to get the job done.]]> 320 Matt Paxton 0593418972 Leanne 0 to-read 3.71 2022 Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff: Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life
author: Matt Paxton
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1)]]> 8667848
Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their alliance deepens into an intimacy that violates age-old taboos. This smart, sophisticated story harks back to the novels of Anne Rice, but it is as contemporary and sensual as the Twilight series-with an extra serving of historical realism.]]> 592 Deborah Harkness 0670022411 Leanne 0 to-read 4.01 2011 A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1)
author: Deborah Harkness
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Delivery 53317494 Enter the world of the Delivery Boy, who must pedal his way to 5-star customer ratings--and, perhaps, freedom--in novelist and graphic designer Peter Mendelsund's The Delivery.

Countries go wrong, sometimes, and sometimes the luckier citizens of those countries have a chance to escape and seek refuge in another country--a country that might itself be in the process of going wrong.

In the bustling indifference of an unnamed city, one such citizen finds himself trapped working for a company that makes its money dispatching an army of undocumented refugees to bring the well-off men and women of this confounding metropolis their dinners. Whatever he might have been at home, this citizen is now a Delivery Boy: member of a new and invisible working class, pedaling his power-assist bike through traffic hoping for a decent tip and a five star rating.

He is decidedly a Delivery Boy; sometimes he even feels like a Delivery Baby; certainly he's not yet a Delivery Man, though he'll have to man-up if he wants to impress N.--the aloof dispatcher who sends him his orders and helps him with his English.

Can our hero avoid the wrath of his Supervisor, get the girl, and escape his indentured servitude? Can someone in his predicament ever get a happy ending? Who gets to decide? And who's telling this story, anyway?

Harrowing and hilarious, The Delivery is a fable for and about our times: an exploration of the ways language and commerce unites and isolates every one of us, native and immigrant both.]]> 304 Peter Mendelsund 0374600422 Leanne 4 3.37 2021 The Delivery
author: Peter Mendelsund
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art]]> 48890486
There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.]]> 280 James Nestor 0735213615 Leanne 0 to-read 4.13 2020 Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
author: James Nestor
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Twelve Monotasks: Do One Thing at a Time to Do Everything Better]]> 57653203 Reclaim your attention, productivity, and happiness with this “captivating, informative and beautifully written”Ěýbook by learning how to keep your focus on one familiar task at a time (Nate Berkus).

Modern life is full of to-do lists, all-consuming technology and the constant pressure to be doing and striving for more. What if you could train your brain to focus on one thing at a time? What if the secret to better productivity involved doingĚýless, not more?Ěý
Ěý
Drawing on research in psychology, neuroscience, and mindfulness,ĚýThe Twelve Monotasks provides a clear and accessible plan for life in the twenty-first century. Practice resisting distractions and building focus by doing the things you already do—like reading, sleeping, eating, and listening—with renewed attention. For example, the next time you go for a walk, don’t try to run an errand or squeeze in a phone call, but instead, notice the cool breeze on your face and the plants and birds that may cross your path. Immerse yourself in the activity and let time melt away, even if you’re only actually out for 20 minutes. Notice how much clearer your head feels when you return home. This is the magic of monotasking.ĚýWith monotasking you will:


Become more productive
Produce higher quality work
Reduce stressĚý
And increase happiness.
Ěý
Thatcher Wine’sĚýThe Twelve MonotasksĚýwill help you do one thing at a time, and do it well, so you can enjoy all of your life!]]> 263 Thatcher Wine 0316705543 Leanne 0 to-read 3.31 The Twelve Monotasks: Do One Thing at a Time to Do Everything Better
author: Thatcher Wine
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.31
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/02
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]]> The Leftovers 10762469
Kevin Garvey, Mapleton's new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin's own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne. Only Kevin's teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she's definitely not the sweet "A" student she used to be. Kevin wants to help her, but he's distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start.

With heart, intelligence and a rare ability to illuminate the struggles inherent in ordinary lives, Tom Perrotta has written a startling, thought-provoking novel about love, connection and loss.]]> 355 Tom Perrotta 0312358342 Leanne 5 3.41 2011 The Leftovers
author: Tom Perrotta
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> Sometimes I Lie 32326398 1. I’m in a coma.
2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore.
3. Sometimes I lie

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?]]> 387 Alice Feeney 0008225354 Leanne 4 3.72 2017 Sometimes I Lie
author: Alice Feeney
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
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]]> You Bring the Distant Near 33155334
Ranee, worried that her children are losing their Indian culture; Sonia, wrapped up in a forbidden biracial love affair; Tara, seeking the limelight to hide her true self; Shanti, desperately trying to make peace in the family; Anna, fighting to preserve her Bengali identity.]]> 303 Mitali Perkins 0374304904 Leanne 4 3.96 2017 You Bring the Distant Near
author: Mitali Perkins
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
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]]> The Interestings 15815333
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.

The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules's now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.

Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.]]> 468 Meg Wolitzer 1594488398 Leanne 5 inactive 3.58 2013 The Interestings
author: Meg Wolitzer
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: inactive
review:

]]> Cockeyed: A Memoir 812811 272 Ryan Knighton 1586483293 Leanne 0 to-read 3.81 2006 Cockeyed: A Memoir
author: Ryan Knighton
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[C'mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark]]> 8051371
C'mon Papa is Ryan Knighton's heartbreaking and hilarious voyage through the first year of fatherhood. Becoming a father is a stressful, daunting rite of passage to be sure, but for a blind father, the fears are unimaginably heightened. Ryan will have to find novel ways to adapt to nearly every aspect of the most basic skills are nearly impossible to contemplate, let alone master. And how will Ryan get to know this pre-verbal bundle of coos and burps when he can't see her smile, or look into her eyes for hints of the person to come?

But this is no pity party, and Ryan has no time for sentimentality. Tackling these hurdles with grace and humour, Ryan is determined to do his part - and this is where the fun starts. From holding his daughter as she wails into the night to their first nerve-wracking walk to the cafe, no activity between father and daughter is without its pitfalls. In his struggle to "see" Tess, Ryan reimagines the relationship between father and child during that first chaotic year.]]> 272 Ryan Knighton 030739669X Leanne 0 to-read 3.93 2010 C'mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark
author: Ryan Knighton
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari Leanne 5 4.33 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rental Person Who Does Nothing]]> 128183600 Need a rental person who does nothing?

Shoji Morimoto provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. After an old boss told him that he contributed nothing and that it made no difference whether he showed up to work or not, he wondered if a person who â€does nothingâ€� could still have a place in the world. With a tweet, his Rental Person service was born.
- Have a deep secret you desperately need to reveal, so deep that you can’t tell a friend or family member?
- Have you spent a long time home alone, and want to know what it’s like to have somebody with you at your apartment?
- Or for someone to simply think of you on a stressful day? Or wave to you as you leave the train station on a long journey?

Morimoto is dependable, non-judgmental and committed to remaining a stranger throughout each request, and his encounters are revelatory about both Japanese society and human psychology.

In Rental Person Who Does Nothing, Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs, and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life.]]> 160 Shoji Morimoto 1035012839 Leanne 0 to-read 3.31 2023 Rental Person Who Does Nothing
author: Shoji Morimoto
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fear of Flying 9654 The groundbreaking #1 New York Times Bestseller—updated for the 50th Anniversary with a New Foreword by Molly Jong-Fast and a New Introduction by Taffy Brodesser-Akner!

“The boundary-breaking novel that redefined sexuality.”�O Magazine

Isadora Wing is tired. Tired of being psychoanalyzed. Tired of grad school. Tired of fighting with her husband. Tired of having unfulfilled desires. She thinks she knows what she's searching for and how to achieve it. But her quest to engage in no-strings-attached sex quickly shifts into a journey of self-discovery that will leave her questioning her own mind, her ideals, and what she truly wants in life....

Originally published in 1973, the ground-breaking, uninhibited story of Isadora Wing and her desire to fly free caused a national sensation. It fueled fantasies, ignited debates, and introduced a notorious new phrase to the English language. Now, after fifty years, this revolutionary novel still stands as a timeless tale of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood.

“Smart, bold, bracing and, importantly, extremely funny.”—Meg Wolitzer]]> 461 Erica Jong Leanne 3 3.48 1973 Fear of Flying
author: Erica Jong
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Stop Trying: An Overachiever’s Guide to Self-Acceptance, Letting Go, and Other Impossible Things]]> 211004088
Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m trying to make it work,� and thought, “That sounds like a great idea�? Probably not. Because the thing about trying is that it’s tiring; it’s labor. Anyone who has tried to have fun or to relax or to fall asleep knows this to be true.

And yet: we exist within a culture that encourages us—often with a frantic urgency—to try, and try harder. We are told to try a different approach, try to do or be better, try to squeeze in a little bit more. This is especially true of women, who not only have to try harder than men to receive access to the same opportunities and resources, but who are also conditioned to try in the name of meeting others' needs and expectations, often at the expense of their own well-being.

In this galvanizing and illuminating read, Kate tackles hustle culture head-on, exploring the ways in which women are primed to become relentless strivers. From the workplace to motherhood, from relationships to “self-care”—no arena of a woman’s life is safe from the pressure to exceed expectations. This conflation of self-worth with achievement, she argues, is both toxic and counterproductive, as the qualities we most seek—happiness, meaning, purpose—are not earned but rather owned.

Known for her astute cultural analysis and pitch-perfect observations of generational trends, Williams takes readers on a journey rooted in her own struggle to divest from an overachieving identity, including the realizations that came in the wake of a painful fertility challenge. Deeply felt, passionately argued, and often laugh-out-loud funny, this is a book for every woman who has ever wondered what would happen if she stopped trying so hard—and just let go.]]> 272 Kate Williams 125034090X Leanne 0 currently-reading 3.84 How to Stop Trying: An Overachiever’s Guide to Self-Acceptance, Letting Go, and Other Impossible Things
author: Kate Williams
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Declarative Language Handbook: Using a Thoughtful Language Style to Help Kids with Social Learning Challenges Feel Competent, Connected, and Understood]]> 52179264 131 Linda K. Murphy 1734516216 Leanne 0 currently-reading 4.34 Declarative Language Handbook: Using a Thoughtful Language Style to Help Kids with Social Learning Challenges Feel Competent, Connected, and Understood
author: Linda K. Murphy
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ada Lace, on the Case (Ada Lace Adventures, #1)]]> 34078847
Ada Lace—third-grade scientist and inventor extraordinaire—has discovered something her neighbor’s beloved Yorkie has been dognapped!

With the assistance of a quirky neighbor named Nina (who is convinced an alien took the doggie) and her ever-growing collection of gadgets, Ada sets out to find the wrongdoer. As their investigation becomes more and more mysterious, Ada and Nina grow closer, proving that opposites do, in fact, attract.]]> 128 Emily Calandrelli 1481485989 Leanne 0 3.91 2017 Ada Lace, on the Case (Ada Lace Adventures, #1)
author: Emily Calandrelli
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: currently-reading, children-s-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Finding Your Way: Meditations, Thoughts, and Wisdom for Living an Authentic Life]]> 103485174 Find a sense of calm and hope with this illustrated gift book from the world renowned and bestselling meditation teacher as she offers bite-sized tidbits of inspiring advice.

Finding Your WayĚýis the newest book from the one of the most beloved and bestselling meditation teachers.ĚýĚýIn dozens of clear and inspiring entries, readers will be reminded that there are many ways to stay calm and move forward.Ěý From choosing to simply "do the good that is in front of you," to reading a meaningful piece from an interview with a kind leader, to quotes from people Sharon admires, and reminders of how to practice meditation, Finding Your Way will show readers that they are always on the right path, because it is their own.Ěý Each thought, whether a single quote or a short essay, is presented in a visually calm manner, with dozens of four color illustrations to enhance and inspire the experience throughout the book.ĚýĚý]]> 112 Sharon Salzberg 1523516399 Leanne 5 4.18 Finding Your Way: Meditations, Thoughts, and Wisdom for Living an Authentic Life
author: Sharon Salzberg
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers]]> 195790789
A love letter to Western pop culture, Eastern traditions, and being a first-generation New Yorker, Abraham Chang’s dazzling debut reminds us that luck only gets us so far when it comes to matters of the heart.]]> 400 Abraham Chang 1250910781 Leanne 5 3.33 2024 888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers
author: Abraham Chang
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors]]> 122825102 '"I t most certainly does not!", is probably your first reaction.

Parenting and neuroscience expert Robyn Gobbel is here to reveal how all behavior, no matter how baffling, can be explained and remedied. You just need to look past the behavior and understand what's going on inside.

Robyn decodes the latest brain science into easy-to-understand principles and metaphors to help you become an expert in your child's behavior. She reveals simple ways to help you regulate and connect with your child, with brain-, body- and sensory-based strategies to overcome day-to-day challenges . She also provides you with the knowledge to understand and regulate your own brain so that you don't flip your lid when your child flips theirs.

Let this be your lifeline for parenting or caring for any child with baffling behaviors and hidden challenges , including kids who have experienced adversity, or with additional needs.]]> 272 Robyn Gobbel 1839974281 Leanne 0 currently-reading 4.63 Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors
author: Robyn Gobbel
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.63
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[The Explosive Child [Sixth Edition] : A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated,Chronically Inflexible Children]]> 61042746 0 Ross W.Greene 0063225344 Leanne 0 to-read 4.19 The Explosive Child [Sixth Edition] : A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated,Chronically Inflexible Children
author: Ross W.Greene
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Permission to Parent: How to Raise Your Child with Love and Limits]]> 18651979
Dr. Robin Berman’s extensive clinical experience has helped parents and children navigate the emotional and psychological minefields of family dynamics. In this essential parenting guide, she strikes the perfect balance of advice, anecdote, and research, explaining why parents need to be in charge and providing the tools they can use to give their children what they really need: limits, time, and more love.

Ten Tips from Permission to Parent

Parenting is not a democracy. Rules make kids feel safe.

Don’t be emotionally bullied by your child. Emotionally wimpy parenting leads to emotionally fragile kids.

A child who has too much power often becomes anxious.
Catering to your child’s every whim can lead to a child who is self-centered and lacks empathy.

Look long-term at a child who hasn’t faced consequences for behavior and, therefore, never learned accountability: Would you want to date this person as an adult?

If you say, “If you do that one more time,� mean it. Consistent follow-through is essential for a child’s emotional safety and your sanity.

Keep your eye on the long-term goal of raising a lovely child. Remember your mantra: Hate me now, thank me later.

Talk less, give fewer choices, keep it simple. Less is clearly more.

No is a complete sentence. No does not begin a negotiation.
Reverse negotiate. The more they argue, the less they get. It works like a charm.]]> 272 Robin Berman 0062277294 Leanne 0 to-read 3.96 2014 Permission to Parent: How to Raise Your Child with Love and Limits
author: Robin Berman
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business]]> 12609433 375 Charles Duhigg 1400069289 Leanne 0 4.13 2012 The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
author: Charles Duhigg
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: non-fiction, health, self-help, z-90-days-to-calm, audio-book, inactive, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Connect (Mindfulness Essentials Book 8)]]> 50997832 The simple, refreshing meditations of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh give us the tools to restore our inherent connection to nature, each other, our ancestors, and ourselves.

The Mindfulness Essentials series is a back-to-basics collection from world-renowned Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh that introduces everyone to the essentials of mindfulness practice. With our world experiencing the deep effects of loneliness, environmental detachment, and digital overload, this eighth pocket-sized How To book reminds us of our crucial need to connect to ourselves, our ancestors, and nature. Written with characteristic simplicity and kindness, these wise meditations teach us how to remember, at any time, our fundamental gift of belonging. All Mindfulness Essentials books are illustrated with playful sumi-ink drawings by California artist Jason DeAntonis.]]> 129 Thich Nhat Hanh 1946764558 Leanne 0 currently-reading 4.30 How to Connect (Mindfulness Essentials Book 8)
author: Thich Nhat Hanh
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life]]> 60665454
'In the oldest known cosmology of my native lands, it wasn't a sky-bound old man with a beard who made and shaped this world. It was an old woman. A giant old woman, who has been with us down all the long ages, since the beginning of time.'

Deftly interweaving myth, psychology and memoir, Sharon Blackie argues that menopause ushers in a rich and vibrant new phase of life, and explores the many different ways in which women can flourish during what is so often portrayed as a time of decline.

Hagitude unearths the stories of the little-known but powerful elder women in European myth and folklore, inspiring readers to imagine that the last decades of our lives might be the most dynamic of all. This moving and uplifting book will inspire a new generation of female women who have reclaimed their Inner Hag, matured into their own unique brand of hagitude and who are ready to pass down their deep feminine wisdom for the benefit of the wider Earth community.]]> 320 Sharon Blackie 1914613090 Leanne 0 to-read 3.72 2022 Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life
author: Sharon Blackie
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety]]> 34210334 This journey is what I do now. I bump along, in fits and starts, on a perpetual path to finding better ways for me and my mate, Anxiety, to get around. It's everything I do.

Sarah Wilson—bestselling author and entrepreneur, intrepid solver of problems and investigator of how to live a better life—has helped over 1.2 million people across the world to quit sugar. She has also been an anxiety sufferer her whole life.

In her new book, she directs her intense focus and fierce investigatory skills onto this lifetime companion of hers, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism her own experiences.

Sarah pulls at the thread of accepted definitions of anxiety, and unravels the notion that it is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission. Ultimately, she re-frames anxiety as a spiritual quest rather than a burdensome affliction, a state of yearning that will lead us closer to what really matters.

Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world's most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition, but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life.]]> 320 Sarah Wilson 1743535864 Leanne 0 to-read 3.75 2017 First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
author: Sarah Wilson
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Love Wins / The Love Wins Companion]]> 20008100 This two-book edition combines Rob Bell’s bestselling Love Wins with the Love Wins Companion, helping you get the most out of this pioneering book.

In Love Wins, Rob Bell presents a richer, truer, and more spiritually satisfying way of understanding heaven, hell and Jesus’s message. The result is the discovery that the â€good newsâ€� is much, much better than we ever imagined.

Alongside Love Wins, this edition offers The Love Wins Companion: a study guide for those who want to go deeper. The extra material includes:

� Insights and commentary by theologians, Bible scholars, scientists, and pastors

� Deep analysis of all relevant Bible passages on heaven, hell, and salvation

� Detailed chapter summaries, discussion questions, and Bible studies for individuals, groups, and classes

� Excerpts from works throughout Christian history illustrating the variety of teachers also debating the issues Bell wrestles with

� New material by Bell on his mission for the book and how people can take the next step

The two-book edition is perfect for readers looking to engage with this provocative, inspiring classic.

]]> 340 Rob Bell 0007514956 Leanne 0 3.87 2011 Love Wins / The Love Wins Companion
author: Rob Bell
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read, non-fiction, self-help, spirituality, z-you-made-it-weird
review:

]]> Gods Behaving Badly 1159679
Even more disturbingly, their powers are waning, and even turning mortals into trees-a favorite pastime of Apollo's-is sapping their vital reserves of strength.

Soon, what begins as a minor squabble between Aphrodite and Apollo escalates into an epic battle of wills. Two perplexed humans, Alice and Neil, who are caught in the crossfire, must fear not only for their own lives, but for the survival of humankind. Nothing less than a true act of heroism is needed--but can these two decidedly ordinary people replicate the feats of the mythical heroes and save the world?]]> 293 Marie Phillips 0316067628 Leanne 0 to-read 3.39 2007 Gods Behaving Badly
author: Marie Phillips
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding]]> 8037668 In this newly revised edition of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, you will learn:

• How human milk offers lifetime benefits for your baby
• How to prepare for breastfeeding during pregnancy
• How to exercise and lose weight safely while nursing
• How to find time for yourself while meeting baby's needs
• How to increase your milk supply by using herbs and medications
• How to be sure your baby is getting enough to eat

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was the first book of its kind, written for mothers by mothers. Over the years, more than two million mothers have turned to it for information and inspiration.

]]> 576 Diane Wiessinger 0345518446 Leanne 0 non-fiction, parenting 4.29 1958 The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
author: Diane Wiessinger
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: non-fiction, parenting
review:

]]> <![CDATA[No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model]]> 55384168 Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind—and healing the many parts that make you who you are.

Is there just one “you�? We’ve been taught to believe we have a single identity, and to feel fear or shame when we can’t control the inner voices that don’t match the ideal of who we think we should be. Yet Dr. Richard Schwartz’s research now challenges this “mono-mind� theory. “All of us are born with many sub-minds—or parts,� says Dr. Schwartz. “These parts are not imaginary or symbolic. They are individuals who exist as an internal family within us—and the key to health and happiness is to honor, understand, and love every part.�

Dr. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment—and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives. Here you’ll explore:

� The IFS revolution—how honoring and communicating with our parts changes our approach to mental wellness
� Overturning the cultural, scientific, and spiritual assumptions that reinforce an outdated mono-mind model
� The ego, the inner critic, the saboteur—making these often-maligned parts into powerful allies
� Burdens—why our parts become distorted and stuck in childhood traumas and cultural beliefs
� How IFS demonstrates human goodness by revealing that there are no bad parts
� The Self—discover your wise, compassionate essence of goodness that is the source of healing and harmony
� Exercises for mapping your parts, accessing the Self, working with a challenging protector, identifying each part’s triggers, and more

IFS is a paradigm-changing model because it gives us a powerful approach for healing ourselves, our culture, and our planet. As Dr. Schwartz teaches, “Our parts can sometimes be disruptive or harmful, but once they’re unburdened, they return to their essential goodness. When we learn to love all our parts, we can learn to love all people—and that will contribute to healing the world.�

]]> 216 Richard C. Schwartz 1683646681 Leanne 0 4.13 2021 No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
author: Richard C. Schwartz
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: to-read, health, non-fiction, self-help, z-terrible-thanks-for-asking, z-chrissy-muska
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat]]> 61220764 [What 's for dinner?[ seemed like a simple question[until journalist and supermarket detective Michael Pollan delved behind the scenes. From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young readers' adaptation of Pollan's famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices. In a smart, compelling format with updated facts, plenty of photos, graphs, and visuals, as well as a new afterword and backmatter, The Omnivore's Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation that needs it most: It's time to take charge of our national eating habits[and it starts with you.]]> Michael Pollan Leanne 0 4.12 2015 The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat
author: Michael Pollan
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves: to-read, children-s-books, food
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?]]> 18594409 #1 New York Times Bestseller

2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet"—with predictable results—the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed.

While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies—an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.

An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.]]> 228 Roz Chast 1608198065 Leanne 0 to-read 4.15 2014 Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
author: Roz Chast
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism]]> 16113737
Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. Questions such as: “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?� “Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?� “Why don’t you make eye contact when you’re talking?� and “What’s the reason you jump?� (Naoki’s answer: “When I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky.�) With disarming honesty and a generous heart, Naoki shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself. His insights—into the mystery of words, the wonders of laughter, and the elusiveness of memory—are so startling, so strange, and so powerful that you will never look at the world the same way again.]]> 135 Naoki Higashida 0812994868 Leanne 4 3.84 2005 The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
author: Naoki Higashida
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/26
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live]]> 55095 608 Tom Shales 0316781460 Leanne 4 comedy, non-fiction 4.07 2002 Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live
author: Tom Shales
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/07
date added: 2024/03/07
shelves: comedy, non-fiction
review:

]]> The Psychology of Money 41881472 242 Morgan Housel 0857197681 Leanne 0 to-read 4.27 2020 The Psychology of Money
author: Morgan Housel
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too]]> 18918914 287 Adele Faber Leanne 0 to-read 4.34 1972 Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
author: Adele Faber
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction]]> 59627738 "This book is for any parent who has ever struggled under the substantial weight of caregiving--which is to say, all of us. Good Inside is not only a wise and practical guide to raising resilient, emotionally healthy kids, it's also a supportive resource for overwhelmed parents who need more compassion and less stress. Dr. Becky is the smart, thoughtful, in-the-trenches parenting expert we've been waiting for!"--Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space

Dr. Becky Kennedy, wildly popular parenting expert and creator of @drbeckyatgoodinside, shares her groundbreaking approach to raising kids and offers practical strategies for parenting in a way that feels good.

Over the past several years, Dr. Becky Kennedy--known to her followers as "Dr. Becky"--has been sparking a parenting revolution. Millions of parents, tired of following advice that either doesn't work or simply doesn't feel good, have embraced Dr. Becky's empowering and effective approach, a model that prioritizes connecting with our kids over correcting them.

Parents have long been sold a model of childrearing that simply doesn't work. From reward charts to time outs, many popular parenting approaches are based on shaping behavior, not raising humans. These techniques don't build the skills kids need for life, or account for their complex emotional needs. Add to that parents' complicated relationships with their own upbringings, and it's easy to see why so many caretakers feel lost, burned out, and worried they're failing their kids. In Good Inside, Dr. Becky shares her parenting philosophy, complete with actionable strategies, that will help parents move from uncertainty and self-blame to confidence and sturdy leadership.

Offering perspective-shifting parenting principles and troubleshooting for specific scenarios--including sibling rivalry, separation anxiety, tantrums, and more--Good Inside is a comprehensive resource for a generation of parents looking for a new way to raise their kids while still setting them up for a lifetime of self-regulation, confidence, and resilience.]]> 336 Becky Kennedy 0063159481 Leanne 0 4.53 2022 Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction
author: Becky Kennedy
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/29
shelves: non-fiction, parenting, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers]]> 15737147 A New York Times bestseller from the author of Hallelujah Anyway, Bird by Bird, and Almost Everything

Author Anne Lamott writes about the three simple prayers essential to coming through tough times, difficult days and the hardships of daily life

Readers of all ages have followed and cherished Anne Lamott’s funny and perceptive writing about her own faith through decades of trial and error. And in her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals.

It is these three prayers � asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us � that can get us through the day and can show us the way forward. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.]]> 102 Anne Lamott Leanne 0 3.98 2012 Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
author: Anne Lamott
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/29
shelves: non-fiction, z-you-made-it-weird, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[You Could Make This Place Beautiful]]> 61273812 You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.]]> 320 Maggie Smith 1982185856 Leanne 5 4.03 2023 You Could Make This Place Beautiful
author: Maggie Smith
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/29
shelves:
review:

]]> White Magic 50704742 Bracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists.

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, “starter witch kits� of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.

In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life�Twin Peaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham—to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule.]]> 432 Elissa Washuta Leanne 0 3.79 2021 White Magic
author: Elissa Washuta
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/25
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Sidewalk Flowers 22750286 Sidewalk Flowers is an ode to the importance of small things, small people, and small gestures.]]> 32 JonArno Lawson 1554984319 Leanne 0 to-read, children-s-books 4.24 2015 Sidewalk Flowers
author: JonArno Lawson
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read, children-s-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Uncle of the Year: And Other Debatable Triumphs]]> 156935196 Candid, hilarious essays from the star of The Book of Mormon, Girls, and Big Mouth on anxiety, ambition, and the uncertain path to adulthood, which ask, how will we know when we get there?

In Uncle of the Year, Andrew Rannells wonders: If he, now in his early forties, has everything he’s supposed to need to be a true adult–a career, property, a well-tailored suit–why does he still feel like an anxious twenty-year-old climbing his way toward security? Is it because he hasn’t won a Tony, or found a husband, or had a child? And what if he doesn’t want those things? (A husband and a child, that is. He wants a Tony.)

In essays drawn from his life and career, Rannells argues that we all pretend we are constantly winning. And with each success, we act like we’ve reached the pinnacle of happiness (for our parents), maturity (for our friends), success (for our bosses), and devotion (for our partners). But if “adulting� is just a pantomime that’s leaving us unmoored, then we need new markers of time, new milestones, new expectations of what adulthood is–and can be.

Along the way, Rannells looks back, reevaluating whether his triumphs were actually failures–and his failures, triumphs–and exploring what it will take to ever, ever feel like he has enough. In essays like “Uncle of the Year,� he explores the role that children play in his life, as a man who never thought having kids was necessary or even possible—until his siblings have kids and he falls in love with a man with two of his own. “It’s an Honor to Be Eligible� reveals the thrills and absurdities of the awards circuit (and the desire to be recognized for your work). And in “Horses, Not Zebras,� he shares the piece of wisdom that helped him finally come to terms with crippling anxiety and perfectionism.

Filled with witty and honest insights and observations, and a sharp sense of humor, Uncle of the Year challenges us to take a long look at who we're pretending to be, who we know we are, and who we want to become.]]> Andrew Rannells Leanne 0 to-read, memoir, non-fiction 4.12 2023 Uncle of the Year: And Other Debatable Triumphs
author: Andrew Rannells
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/31
shelves: to-read, memoir, non-fiction
review:

]]> Too Much Is Not Enough 41556811 From the star of Broadway's The Book of Mormon and HBO's Girls, the heartfelt and hilarious coming-of-age memoir of a Midwestern boy surviving bad auditions, bad relationships, and some really bad highlights as he chases his dreams in New York City

When Andrew Rannells arrived in New York City from Omaha in 1997, he, like many, saw the city as a chance to break free. To start over. To transform the fiercely ambitious but sexually confused teenager he saw in the mirror into the Broadway leading man of his dreams.

In Too Much Is Not Enough, Rannells takes us on the journey of a twentysomething hungry to experience everything: new friends, wild nights, great art, standing ovations. And at the heart of his hunger lies a powerful drive to reconcile the boy he was and the man he might have been with the man he wants to be. As Rannells reveals how he merged these Andrews into the one who made his Broadway debut at 26, he also shares stories from his path to the Great White Way, from horrible auditions and behind-the-curtain romances to the exhilaration of landing his first gig in Hairspray and the heartbreaking death of his father at the height of his ascent. Along the way, Rannells learns that you never really leave your past--or your family--behind; that the most painful, and perversely motivating, jobs are the ones you almost get; and that sometimes the most unforgettable nights are marked not by the hot clubs you danced at, but by the recap over diner food after.

Filled with candor and humor, Too Much Is Not Enough is an entertaining look at love, loss, and the powerful forces that determine who we become.]]> 272 Andrew Rannells 0525574875 Leanne 0 to-read, memoir, non-fiction 4.15 2019 Too Much Is Not Enough
author: Andrew Rannells
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/31
shelves: to-read, memoir, non-fiction
review:

]]> An Abundance of Katherines 49750 Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.

On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun--but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.

Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.]]> 229 John Green 0525476881 Leanne 5 3.54 2006 An Abundance of Katherines
author: John Green
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/10
date added: 2023/07/10
shelves: books-that-are-movies, fiction, ya, z-tiny-or-lending-library
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Leanne 4 fiction, now-what-bookclub 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/16
date added: 2023/06/16
shelves: fiction, now-what-bookclub
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle]]> 42397849
Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body� when every magazine cover has ten diet tips for becoming “your best self�? How do you “lean in� at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?

Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back. In these pages you’ll learn

� what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation
� how to manage the “monitor� in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
� how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
� why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout

With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in these pages—and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all.� Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are—and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach.]]> 277 Emily Nagoski 198481706X Leanne 5 3.92 2019 Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
author: Emily Nagoski
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/16
date added: 2023/06/16
shelves:
review:

]]> PopCo 4285468 450 Scarlett Thomas 184767335X Leanne 0 3.70 2004 PopCo
author: Scarlett Thomas
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/11
shelves: to-read, fiction, mystery, z-the-atlantic
review:

]]> Oreo 1007499 Oreo is an uproariously funny novel about relations between African Americans and Jews. It is as fresh and outrageous today as when it was first published in 1974.

Born of a Jewish father and black mother, Oreo grows up in Philadelphia with her grandparents while her mother tours with a theatrical group. Soon after puberty Oreo heads for New York to search for her father, but in the big city she discovers that there are dozens of Sam Schwartzes. Oreo's mission turns into a wickedly humorous picaresque quest, reminiscent of the ancient Greek myth of Theseus. This is an ambitious and playful narrative that challenges not only the accepted notions of race, ethnicity, and identity, but also those of the novelistic form itself.]]> 212 Fran Ross 1555534643 Leanne 0 3.61 1974 Oreo
author: Fran Ross
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/11
shelves: to-read, fiction, mystery, z-the-atlantic
review:

]]> Ice 636223 158 Anna Kavan 0720612683 Leanne 0 3.70 1967 Ice
author: Anna Kavan
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/11
shelves: to-read, fiction, mystery, z-the-atlantic
review:

]]> Rubik 33846181
Her best friend Jules Valentine meanwhile is unwittingly inveigled into an indie-film turned corporate branding stunt. When Jules leaks information about the true story behind the video � by then an overworked viral meme � wannabe investigative reporter April Kuan is assigned the case. But as April trails Jules all over Perth she too becomes ensnared in the machinations of shady corporate interests as the very laws of physics and time begin to bend.

Rubik is a wide-ranging, brilliantly intertwined novel-in-stories that slips outside the borders of realism. Spotted with disappearances, mysteries and told with a sharp-edged wit and cutting social commentary, it is an original and ingenious reflection of technological anxiety, loneliness and connectivity in the internet age.]]> 336 Elizabeth Tan 1925143473 Leanne 0 3.88 2017 Rubik
author: Elizabeth Tan
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/11
shelves: to-read, fiction, mystery, z-the-atlantic
review:

]]> Invisible Cities 9809 165 Italo Calvino 0156453800 Leanne 0 4.16 1972 Invisible Cities
author: Italo Calvino
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/11
shelves: to-read, fiction, mystery, z-the-atlantic
review:

]]> A Pale View of Hills 28920 Librarian note: This a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780571225378.

In his highly acclaimed debut, A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko - a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy - the memories take on a disturbing cast.]]> 183 Kazuo Ishiguro Leanne 0 3.82 1982 A Pale View of Hills
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/11
shelves: to-read, fiction, mystery, z-the-atlantic
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Griefstrike! the Ultimate Guide to Mourning]]> 60262823 142 Jason Roeder 1952119383 Leanne 0 3.53 Griefstrike! the Ultimate Guide to Mourning
author: Jason Roeder
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: to-read, comedy, loss-grieving, non-fiction, z-terrible-thanks-for-asking
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

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

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Leanne 5 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/10
date added: 2023/05/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World]]> 54776222 The international bestselling novel sold in 21 countries, about grief, mourning, and the joy of survival, inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnected “wind� phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011 tsunami

When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward: Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart, and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain.
Then, one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone booth in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone booth spreads, people travel to it from miles around.
Soon Yui makes her own pilgrimage to the phone booth, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Instead she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of her mother’s death.
Simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World is the signpost pointing to the healing that can come after.

Ěý]]> 416 Laura Imai Messina 1419754300 Leanne 5 3.94 2020 The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World
author: Laura Imai Messina
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/09
date added: 2023/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride]]> 21412202 Storm the castle once more

Standing on the stage for the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Princess Bride, I felt an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude and nostalgia. It was a remarkable night and it brought back vivid memories of being part of what appears to have become a cult classic film about pirates and princesses, giants and jesters, cliffs of insanity, and of course rodents of unusual size.

It truly was as fun to make the movie as it is to watch it, from getting to work on William Goldman's brilliant screenplay to being directed by the inimitable Rob Reiner. It is not an exaggeration to say that most days on set were exhilarating, from wrestling André the Giant, to the impossibility of playing mostly dead with Billy Crystal cracking jokes above me, to choreographing the Greatest Sword Fight in Modern Times with Mandy Patinkin, to being part of the Kiss That Left All the Others Behind with Robin Wright.

In this book I've gathered many more behind-the-scenes stories and hopefully answers to many of the questions we've all received over the years from fans. Additionally, Robin, Billy, Rob, and Mandy, as well as Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Fred Savage, Chris Sarandon, Carol Kane, Norman Lear, and William Goldman graciously share their own memories and stories from making this treasured film.

If you'd like to know a little more about the making of The Princess Bride as seen through the eyes of a young actor who got much more than he bargained for, along with the rest of this brilliant cast, then all I can say is...as you wish.]]> 259 Cary Elwes 1476764026 Leanne 5 4.16 2014 As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride
author: Cary Elwes
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/06
date added: 2023/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.]]> 33381433 We Are Never Meeting in Real Life., "bitches gotta eat" blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making "adult" budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette--she's "35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something"--detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms--hang in there for the Costco loot--she's as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.

Chapter titles:

My Bachelorette application --
A blues for Fred --
The miracle porker --
Do you guys pay your fucking bills or what? --
You don't have to be grateful for sex --
A Christmas carol --
Happy birthday --
A case for remaining indoors --
A total attack of the heart --
A civil union --
Mavis --
Fuck it, bitch. Stay fat --
Nashville hot chicken --
I'm in love and it's boring --
A bomb, probably --
The real housewife of Kalamazoo --
Thirteen questions to ask before getting married --
Yo, I need a job --
Feelings are a mistake --
We are never meeting in real life]]> 275 Samantha Irby 1101912197 Leanne 4 z-neville-williams 3.90 2017 We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.
author: Samantha Irby
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/05
date added: 2023/04/05
shelves: z-neville-williams
review:

]]> Broken Horses 54895726 The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter, producer, and six-time Grammy winner opens up about a life shaped by music in this candid, heartfelt, and intimate story.

Brandi Carlile was born into a musically gifted, impoverished family on the outskirts of Seattle and grew up in a constant state of change, moving from house to house, trailer to trailer, 14 times in as many years. Though imperfect in every way, her dysfunctional childhood was as beautiful as it was strange, and as nurturing as it was difficult. At the age of five, Brandi contracted bacterial meningitis, which almost took her life, leaving an indelible mark on her formative years and altering her journey into young adulthood.

As an openly gay teenager, Brandi grappled with the tension between her sexuality and her faith when her pastor publicly refused to baptize her on the day of the ceremony. Shockingly, her small town rallied around Brandi in support and set her on a path to salvation where the rest of the misfits and rejects find it: through twisted, joyful, weird, and wonderful music.

In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile takes listeners through the events of her life that shaped her very raw art - from her start at a local singing competition where she performed Elton John’s “Honky Cat� in a bedazzled white polyester suit, to her first break opening for Dave Matthews Band, to many sleepless tours over 15 years and six studio albums, all while raising two children with her wife, Catherine Shepherd. This hard-won success led her to collaborations with personal heroes like Elton John, Dolly Parton, Mavis Staples, Pearl Jam, Tanya Tucker, and Joni Mitchell, as well as her peers in the supergroup The Highwomen, and ultimately to the Grammy stage, where she converted millions of viewers into instant fans.

Evocative and piercingly honest, Broken Horses is at once an examination of faith through the eyes of a person rejected by the church’s basic tenets and a meditation on the moments and lyrics that have shaped the life of a creative mind, a brilliant artist, and a genuine empath on a mission to give back.]]> 336 Brandi Carlile 0593237242 Leanne 5 memoir, non-fiction 4.40 2021 Broken Horses
author: Brandi Carlile
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/11
date added: 2023/03/11
shelves: memoir, non-fiction
review:

]]> The Lost Apothecary 53288434 A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them - setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.

Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.

One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose - selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.

In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders� that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate - and not everyone will survive.]]> 301 Sarah Penner 0778311015 Leanne 0 fiction, now-what-bookclub 3.72 2021 The Lost Apothecary
author: Sarah Penner
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2023/03/10
date added: 2023/03/10
shelves: fiction, now-what-bookclub
review:

]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Leanne 4 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/13
date added: 2023/02/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time]]> 58284123
We think we know how to walk. After all, walking is one of the very first skills we learn. But many of us are stuck in our walking routines, forever walking in the same place, in the same way, for the same time, with the same people. With its thought-provoking and evidence-backed weekly walk routine, 52 Ways to Walk will encourage everyone to improve how they walk, while also encouraging them to seek out new locations (many on their own doorsteps), new walking companions (our brains age better when we mix up our fellow walkers), new times of the day and night, and new skills to acquire while walking.

Inspirational, backed by science, illuminated with human anecdote, and bolstered with how-to tips, 52 Ways to Walk will inspire, challenge, support, and encourage everyone to become more ambitious with their walking practice, revealing how walking may be the best-kept secret of the supremely healthy and happy, the creative and well-slept--those with the best posture and sharpest memories. Just about everything, it appears, can be improved and enhanced by clever and judicious walking. It turns out you actually can get more from life, one step at a time.]]> 288 Annabel Streets 0593419952 Leanne 0 to-read 3.95 2022 52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time
author: Annabel Streets
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Little Bee 6948436
Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it so we will just say this:

This is the story of two women.

Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice.

Two years later, they meet again - the story starts there...

Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.]]> 271 Chris Cleave 1416589643 Leanne 0 fiction 3.75 2008 Little Bee
author: Chris Cleave
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2023/02/10
date added: 2023/02/10
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Anxious People 53799686
Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.

First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else until tragedy changed her life. Now, she’s obsessed with visiting open houses to see how ordinary people live—and, perhaps, to set an old wrong to right. Then there’s Roger and Anna-Lena, an Ikea-addicted retired couple who are on a never-ending hunt for fixer-uppers to hide the fact that they don’t know how to fix their own failing marriage. Julia and Ro are a young lesbian couple and soon-to-be parents who are nervous about their chances for a successful life together since they can’t agree on anything. And there’s Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by a masked bank robber waving a gun in her face. And despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car.

As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.

Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature� (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People’s whimsical plot serves up unforgettable insights into the human condition and a gentle reminder to be compassionate to all the anxious people we encounter every day.]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 1982121602 Leanne 4 4.12 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/01
date added: 2023/02/10
shelves: fiction, mystery, z-tiny-or-lending-library
review:

]]> The Other Black Girl 55711688 Get Out meets The Stepford Wives in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.

Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.

It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.

A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.]]> 357 Zakiya Dalila Harris 1982160136 Leanne 4 3.34 2021 The Other Black Girl
author: Zakiya Dalila Harris
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/15
date added: 2023/01/15
shelves: audio-book, fiction, now-what-bookclub
review:

]]> Drama 13436373
Callie loves theater. And while she would totally try out for her middle school's production of Moon Over Mississippi, she can't really sing. Instead she's the set designer for the drama department stage crew, and this year she's determined to create a set worthy of Broadway on a middle-school budget. But how can she, when she doesn't know much about carpentry, ticket sales are down, and the crew members are having trouble working together? Not to mention the onstage AND offstage drama that occurs once the actors are chosen. And when two cute brothers enter the picture, things get even crazier!]]> 238 Raina Telgemeier 0545326990 Leanne 4 4.18 2012 Drama
author: Raina Telgemeier
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/09
date added: 2023/01/09
shelves:
review:

]]> According to Yes 25242169 352 Dawn French 0718159179 Leanne 3 3.10 2015 According to Yes
author: Dawn French
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/07
date added: 2023/01/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Our Missing Hearts 60149573 A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture� in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.]]> 335 Celeste Ng 0593492544 Leanne 5 3.74 2022 Our Missing Hearts
author: Celeste Ng
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/04
date added: 2023/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience]]> 58330567 Atlas of the Heart, Brown takes us on a journey through eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary skills and an actionable framework for meaningful connection, she gives us the language and tools to access a universe of new choices and second chances—a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heartbreaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection.

Over the past two decades, Brown's extensive research into the experiences that make us who we are has shaped the cultural conversation and helped define what it means to be courageous with our lives. Atlas of the Heart draws on this research, as well as on Brown's singular skills as a storyteller, to show us how accurately naming an experience doesn't give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding, meaning, and choice.

Brown shares, "I want this book to be an atlas for all of us, because I believe that, with an adventurous heart and the right maps, we can travel anywhere and never fear losing ourselves."]]> 301 Brené Brown 0399592555 Leanne 0 to-read 4.33 2021 Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
author: Brené Brown
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This Time Tomorrow 59089704 What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?]]> 310 Emma Straub 052553900X Leanne 0 to-read 3.78 2022 This Time Tomorrow
author: Emma Straub
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection]]> 54614554
Fortunately, listening can be improved--and Ximena Vengoechea can show you how. In Listen Like You Mean It, she offers a listening guide with tried-and-true strategies honed in her own research sessions and drawn from interviews with marriage counselors, podcast hosts, life coaches, journalists, filmmakers, and other listening experts. Through Vengoechea's set of scripts, key questions, exercises, and illustrations, you'll learn to:

Quickly build rapport with strangers
Ask the right questions to deepen a conversation
Pause at the right time to encourage vulnerability
Navigate a conversation that's gone off the rails.]]> 336 Ximena Vengoechea 0593087054 Leanne 0 to-read 3.80 Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection
author: Ximena Vengoechea
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk]]> 769016 Recently revised and updated with fresh insights and suggestions, How to Talk so Kids Will Listen & Listen so Kids Will Talk is full of practical, innovative ways to solve common problems and build foundations for lasting relationships.]]> 286 Adele Faber 0380811960 Leanne 0 4.26 1980 How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk
author: Adele Faber
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: non-fiction, parenting, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert]]> 849380 271 John M. Gottman 0609805797 Leanne 0 4.23 1999 The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert
author: John M. Gottman
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: non-fiction, relationships, self-help, z-90-days-to-calm, 2021-reading-list, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Riley Reynolds Crushes Costume Day]]> 60403195
Jay Albee is the joint pen name for a LGBTQ+ couple named Jen Breach and J. Anthony. Between them they’ve done lots of jobs: archaeologist, illustrator, ticket taker, and bagel baker, but now they write and draw all day long in their rowhouse home in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.]]> 64 Jay Albee 1666344044 Leanne 0 4.11 Riley Reynolds Crushes Costume Day
author: Jay Albee
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: children-s-books, now-what-bookclub, nonbinary, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People]]> 31868165
As a human behavior hacker, Vanessa Van Edwards created a research lab to study the hidden forces that drive us. And she’s cracked the code. In Captivate, she shares shortcuts, systems, and secrets for taking charge of your interactions at work, at home, and in any social situation. These aren’t the people skills you learned in school. This is the first comprehensive, science backed, real life manual on how to captivate anyone—and a completely new approach to building connections.

Just like knowing the formulas to use in a chemistry lab, or the right programming language to build an app, Captivate provides simple ways to solve people problems. You’ll learn, for example�

· How to work a room: Every party, networking event, and social situation has a predictable map. Discover the sweet spot for making the most connections.
· How to read faces: It’s easier than you think to speed-read facial expressions and use them to predict people’s emotions.
· How to talk to anyone: Every conversation can be memorable—once you learn how certain words generate the pleasure hormone dopamine in listeners.

When you understand the laws of human behavior, your influence, impact, and income will increase significantly. What’s more, you will improve your interpersonal intelligence, make a killer first impression, and build rapport quickly and authentically in any situation—negotiations, interviews, parties, and pitches. You’ll never interact the same way again.]]> 320 Vanessa Van Edwards 0399564489 Leanne 0 to-read 4.10 2017 Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People
author: Vanessa Van Edwards
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years (The ParentData Series)]]> 55997402
“Emily Oster dives into the data on parenting issues, cuts through the clutter, and gives families the bottom line to help them make better decisions.� –Good Morning America

“A targeted mini-MBA program designed to help moms and dads establish best practices for day-to-day operations." - The Washington Post

From the bestselling author of Expecting Better and Cribsheet , the next step in data driven parenting from economist Emily Oster.

In The Family Firm , Brown professor of economics and mom of two Emily Oster offers a classic business school framework for data-driven parents to think more deliberately about the key issues of the elementary school, health, extracurricular activities, and more.

Unlike the hourly challenges of infant parenting, the big questions in this age come up less frequently. But we live with the consequences of our decisions for much longer. What's the right kind of school and at what age should a particular kid start? How do you encourage a healthy diet? Should kids play a sport and how seriously? How do you think smartly about encouraging children's independence? Along with these bigger questions, Oster investigates how to navigate the complexity of day-to-day family logistics.

Making these decisions is less about finding the specific answer and more about taking the right approach. Parents of this age are often still working in baby mode, which is to say, under stress and on the fly. That is a classic management problem, and Oster takes a page from her time as a business school professor at the University of Chicago to show us that thoughtful business process can help smooth out tough family decisions.

The Family Firm is a smart and winning guide to how to think clearly--and with less ambient stress--about the key decisions of the elementary school years.

Parenting is a full-time job. It's time we start treating it like one.]]> 320 Emily Oster 1984881752 Leanne 0 to-read 3.71 2021 The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years (The ParentData Series)
author: Emily Oster
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Delights: Essays 38746152 The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays—some as short as a paragraph; some as long as five pages—that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives. His is a meditation on delight that takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities, even the terrors, in his life, including living in America as a black man; the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture; the loss of those he loves. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: the way Botan Rice Candy wrappers melt in your mouth, the volunteer crossing guard with a pronounced tremor whom he imagines as a kind of boat-woman escorting pedestrians across the River Styx, a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, pickup basketball games, the silent nod of acknowledgment between black people. And more than any other subject, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world—his garden, the flowers in the sidewalk, the birds, the bees, the mushrooms, the trees.

This is not a book of how-to or inspiration, though it could be read that way. Fans of Roxane Gay, Maggie Nelson, and Kiese Laymon will revel in Gay’s voice, and his insights. The Book of Delights is about our connection to the world, to each other, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. Gay’s pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.Ěý

Preface
1. My Birthday, Kinda
2. Inefficiency
3. Flower in the Curb
4. Blowing It Off
5. Hole in the Head
6. Remission Still
7. Praying Mantis
8. The Negreeting
9. The High-Five from Strangers, Etc
10. Writing by Hand
11. Transplanting
12. Nicknames
13. But, Maybe ..
14. "Joy Is Such a Human Madness
15. House Party
16. Hummingbird
17. Just a Dream
18. "That's Some Bambi Shit" ..
19. The Irrepressible: The Gratitudes
20. Tap Tap
21. Coffee without the Saucer
22. Lily on the Pants
23. Sharing a Bag 24. Umbrella in the Café
25. Beast Mode
26. Airplane Rituals
27. Weirdly Untitled
28. Pecans
29. The Do-Over
30. Infinity
31. Ghost
32. Nota Bene
33. "Love Me in a Special Way"
34. "Stay," by Lisa Loeb
35. Stacking Delights
36. Donny Hathaway on Pandora
37. "To Spread the Sweetness of Love"
38. Baby, Baby, Baby
39. "REPENT OR BURN"
40. Giving My Body to the Cause
41. Among the Rewards of My Sloth . .
42. Not Grumpy Cat
43. Some Stupid Shit
44. Not Only . .
45. Microgentrification: WE BUY GOLD
46. Reading Palms
47. The Sanctity of Trains
48. Bird Feeding
49. Kombucha in a Mid-century Glass
50. Hickories
51. Annoyed No More
52. Toto
53. Church Poets
54. Public Lying Down
55. Babies. Seriously
56. "My Life, My Life, My Life, My Life in the Sunshine
57. Incorporation
58. Botan Rice Candy
59. Understory
60. "Joy Is Such a Human Madness": The Duff Between Us
61. "It's Just the Day I'm Having" ..
62. The Purple Cornets of Spring
63. The Volunteer
64. Fishing an Eyelash: Two or Three Cents on the Virtues of the Poetry Reading
65. Found Things
66. Found Things (2)
67. Cuplicking
68. Bobblehead
69. The Jenky 70. The Crow's Ablutions
71. Flowers in the Hands of Statues
72. An Abundance of Public Toilets
73. The Wave of Unfamiliars
74. Not for Nothing
75. Bindweed ... Delight?
76. Dickhead
77. Ambiguous Signage Sometimes
78. Heart to Heart
79. Caution: Bees on Bridge
80. Tomato on Board
81. Purple-Handed
82. Name: Kayte Young; Phone Number: 555-867-5309
83. Still Processing
84. Fireflies
85. My Scythe Jack
86. Pawpaw Grove
87. Loitering
88. Touched
89. Scat
90. Get Thee to the Nutrient Cycle!
91. Pulling Carrots
92. Filling the Frame
93. Reckless Air Quotes 94. Judith Irene Gay, Aged Seventy-six Today!
95. Rothko Backboard
96. The Marfa Lights
97. The Carport
98. My Garden (Book):
99. Black Bumblebees!
100. Grown
101. Coco-baby
102. My Birthday]]> 274 Ross Gay 1616207922 Leanne 4 z-neville-williams 4.15 2019 The Book of Delights: Essays
author: Ross Gay
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/31
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: z-neville-williams
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bad Vibes Only (and Other Things I Bring to the Table)]]> 59366247
In essays that revisit her cringey past and anticipate her rapidly approaching, early middle-aged future, McInerny lays bare her own chaos, inviting us to drop the façade of perfection and embrace the that we are all—at best—slightly unhinged. Socrates claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. Bad Vibes Only is for people who have taken that dictum a bit too far—the overthinkers, the analyzers, the recovering Girl Bosses, and the burned-out personal brand—reminding us that a life worth living is about more than just “good vibes.”]]> 224 Nora McInerny 1982186712 Leanne 5 3.82 2022 Bad Vibes Only (and Other Things I Bring to the Table)
author: Nora McInerny
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/31
date added: 2022/12/31
shelves: loss-grieving, memoir, non-fiction, z-terrible-thanks-for-asking
review:

]]> The Book of Boundaries 60706850
Do your relationships often feel one-sided or unbalanced? Are you always giving in just so things will go smoothly? Do you wish you could learn to say no—but, like, nicely? Are you depleted, overwhelmed, and tired of putting everyone else’s needs ahead of your own? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to establish some boundaries.

Since launching the mega-bestselling wellness program the Whole30, Melissa Urban has taught millions of people how to establish healthy habits and successfully navigate pushback and peer pressure. She knows firsthand that boundaries—clear limits you establish to protect your energy, time, and health—are all that stand between you and feelings of security, confidence, and freedom.

Now, in The Book of Boundaries, she shows you how boundaries are the key to better mental health, increased energy, improved productivity, and more fulfilling relationships.

In her famously direct and compassionate style, Urban offers:

� 130+ scripts with language you can use to instantly establish boundaries with bosses and co-workers, romantic partners, parents and in-laws, co-parents, friends, family, neighbors, strangers—and yourself
� actionable advice to help you communicate your needs with clarity and compassion
� tips for successfully navigating boundary guilt, pushback, pressure, and oversteps
� techniques to create healthy habits around food, drink, technology, and more

User-friendly and approachable, The Book of Boundaries will give you the tools you need to stop justifying, minimizing, and apologizing, leading you to more rewarding relationships and a life that feels bigger, healthier, and freer]]> 368 Melissa Urban 0593448707 Leanne 0 4.14 2022 The Book of Boundaries
author: Melissa Urban
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/27
shelves: to-read, z-terrible-thanks-for-asking
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives]]> 58438569 From the bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink comes a poignant and powerful memoir that tackles the big questions of life, death, and existential fear with humor and hope.

As a daughter, mother, and friend, Mary Laura Philpott considered herself an “anxious optimist”—a natural worrier with a stubborn sense of good cheer. And while she didn’t really think she had any sort of magical protective powers, she believed in her heart that as long as she loved her people enough, she could keep them safe. Then, in the early hours of one dark morning at home, her belief was upended. In the months that followed, she turned to poignant memories, priceless stories, and a medley of coping mechanisms (with comically mixed success) to regain her equilibrium and find meaning in everyday wonders.

Hailed by The Washington Post as “Nora Ephron, Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr, and Laurie Colwin all rolled into one,� Philpott tackles the big questions of life, death, and existential fear—not to mention the lessons of an inscrutable backyard turtle—with hope, humor, and joy.]]> 288 Mary Laura Philpott 1982160780 Leanne 0 3.97 2022 Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives
author: Mary Laura Philpott
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/21
shelves: to-read, memoir, non-fiction, z-terrible-thanks-for-asking
review:

]]> <![CDATA[That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour]]> 40713195
Interweaving evocative stories of Puri's family and the patients she cares for, That Good Night is a stunning meditation on impermanence and the role of medicine in helping us to live and die well, arming readers with information that will transform how we communicate with our doctors about what matters most to us.]]> 320 Sunita Puri 0735223319 Leanne 0 4.46 2019 That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour
author: Sunita Puri
name: Leanne
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/18
shelves: to-read, loss-grieving, non-fiction, z-terrible-thanks-for-asking
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Project 333: The Minimalist Fashion Challenge That Proves Less Really Is So Much More]]> 52957819 Wear just 33 items for 3 months and get back all the JOY you were missing while you were worrying what to wear.

In Project 333, minimalist expert and author of Soulful Simplicity Courtney Carver takes a new approach to living simply--starting with your wardrobe. Project 333 promises that not only can you survive with just 33 items in your closet for 3 months, but you'll thrive just like the thousands of woman who have taken on the challenge and never looked back. Let the de-cluttering begin!

Ever ask yourself how many of the items in your closet you actually wear? In search of a way to pare down on her expensive shopping habit, consistent lack of satisfaction with her purchases, and ever-growing closet, Carver created Project 333. In this book, she guides readers through their closets item-by-item, sifting through all the emotional baggage associated with those oh-so strappy high-heel sandals that cost a fortune but destroy your feet every time you walk more than a few steps to that extensive collection of never-worn little black dresses, to locate the items that actually look and feel like you.

As Carver reveals in this book, once we finally release ourselves from the cyclical nature of consumerism and focus less on our shoes and more on our self-care, we not only look great we feel great-- and we can see a clear path to make other important changes in our lives that reach far beyond our closets. With tips, solutions, and a closet-full of inspiration, this life-changing minimalist manual shows readers that we are so much more than what we wear, and that who we are and what we have is so much more than enough.]]> 224 Courtney Carver 0525541454 Leanne 0 3.65 2020 Project 333: The Minimalist Fashion Challenge That Proves Less Really Is So Much More
author: Courtney Carver
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/12/15
date added: 2022/12/17
shelves: health, non-fiction, self-help
review:

]]> The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1) 55196813
Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life's complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly's orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what's happening, Molly's unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it's too late?

A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.]]> 304 Nita Prose 0593356152 Leanne 4 3.71 2022 The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1)
author: Nita Prose
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/17
date added: 2022/12/17
shelves: audio-book, fiction, mystery, now-what-bookclub
review:

]]> Now Is Not the Time to Panic 60415700
Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge—aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner—is determined to make it through yet another sad summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist who has just moved into his grandmother’s unhappy house and who is as lonely and awkward as Frankie is. Romantic and creative sparks begin to fly, and when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it. The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.

The posters begin appearing everywhere, and people wonder who is behind them. Satanists, kidnappers—the rumors won’t stop, and soon the mystery has dangerous repercussions that spread far beyond the town. The art that brought Frankie and Zeke together now threatens to tear them apart.

Twenty years later, Frances Eleanor Budge—famous author, mom to a wonderful daughter, wife to a loving husband—gets a call that threatens to upend everything: a journalist named Mazzy Brower is writing a story about the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Might Frances know something about that? And will what she knows destroy the life she’s so carefully built?

A bold coming-of-age story, written with Kevin Wilson’s trademark wit and blazing prose, Now Is Not The Time to Panic is a nuanced exploration of young love, identity, and the power of art. It’s also about the secrets that haunt us—and, ultimately, what the truth will set free.]]> 246 Kevin Wilson 0062913506 Leanne 0 3.68 2022 Now Is Not the Time to Panic
author: Kevin Wilson
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/17
shelves: to-read, fiction, z-terrible-thanks-for-asking
review:

]]> Just Grace (Just Grace, #1) 878243 138 Charise Mericle Harper 0618646426 Leanne 3 children-s-books 3.74 2007 Just Grace (Just Grace, #1)
author: Charise Mericle Harper
name: Leanne
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/28
date added: 2022/11/28
shelves: children-s-books
review:

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