James's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 04 May 2025 22:28:54 -0700 60 James's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Borrowed Hills 201811980 “Viscerally vivid…half Tarantino, half pitch-black northern realism.” —Guardian, A Best Book of 2024 * “Resonant and powerful...a saga of intergenerational retribution.” —New York Times

A stunning and “spiky debut” (The Times, London) novel set in the rugged, rural landscape of northwest England, where two sheep farmers lose their flocks and decide to reverse their fortunes by stealing sheep from a rich farm in the south—for fans of Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy.

In early 2001, a lethal disease breaks out on the hill farms of northwest England, emptying the valleys of sheep and filling the skies with smoke as they burn the carcasses. Two neighboring shepherds lose everything and set their sights on a wealthy farm in the south with its flock of prizewinning animals. So begins the dark tale of Steve Elliman and William Herne.

As their sheep rustling leads to more and more difficult decisions, the struggles of the land are never far away. Steve’s only distraction is his growing fascination with William’s enigmatic and independent wife, Helen. When their mountain home comes under the sway of a lawless outsider, Colin Tinley, Steve must save himself and Helen in a savage conflict that threatens the ancient ways of the Lakeland fells.

Told in the hardscrabble voice of a forgotten England, Scott Preston creates an uncompromising vision of farmers lost in brutal devotion to their flocks, the aching love affairs that men and women use to sustain themselves, and the painful consequences of a breathtaking heist gone bad. The Borrowed Hills “strides confidently across its pages, like the seasoned work of a veteran” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), a thrilling and gritty adventure that reimagines the American Western for Britain’s moors and mountains where survival is in the blood.]]> 304 Scott Preston 1668050676 James 0 to-read 3.83 2024 The Borrowed Hills
author: Scott Preston
name: James
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Parallel Lines 221133949 The story of a group of wildly different people whose fates are improbably yet inextricably linked, the new novel from the bestselling and prize-winning author.



* A Sunday Times, Guardian and Financial Times ‘Book to Look Out For’ 2025 *




It is summer, and Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him with a fragile hold on reality and a persistent hunger to connect with the mother who abandoned him as a child.

His therapist, Martin, is also facing challenges, including his adopted daughter Olivia’s tenuous relationship with her biological mother – a predicament that makes Sebastian’s struggle feel uncannily close to her own. Olivia is producing a radio series on natural disasters, which itself seems to be running parallel to the events unfolding in her personal life, as her best friend Lucy faces a grave diagnosis and her husband, Francis, pursues his mission of rewilding the world.

Over the course of the next year their fates collide in outrageous and poignant ways, as each of their destinies is revealed in a marvellous new light.

Written with Edward St Aubyn’s trademark wit and inimitable style, Parallel Lines is a novel about connection, love and the cascading consequences of our choices. It is a vibrant, moving celebration of the life of the spirit and the life of the mind from one of our most irresistible storytellers.]]> 352 Edward St. Aubyn 1787335593 James 5 3.72 2025 Parallel Lines
author: Edward St. Aubyn
name: James
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Double Blind 54785539 Double Blind follows three close friends and their circle through a year of extraordinary transformation. Set between London, Cap d'Antibes, Big Sur, and a rewilded corner of Sussex, this thrilling, ambitious novel is about the headlong pursuit of knowledge—for the purposes of pleasure, revelation, money, sanity, or survival—and the consequences of fleeing from what we know about others and ourselves.

When Olivia meets a new lover just as she is welcoming her best friend, Lucy, back from New York, her dedicated academic life expands precipitously. Her connection to Francis, a committed naturalist living off the grid, is immediate and startling. Eager to involve Lucy in her joy, Olivia introduces the two—but Lucy has received shocking news of her own that binds the trio unusually close. Over the months that follow, Lucy’s boss, Hunter, Olivia’s psychoanalyst parents, and a young man named Sebastian are pulled into the friends’ orbit, and not one of them will emerge unchanged.

Expansive, playful, and compassionate, Edward St. Aubyn's Double Blind investigates themes of inheritance, determinism, freedom, consciousness, and the stories we tell about ourselves. St. Aubyn's major new novel is as compelling about ecology, psychoanalysis, genetics, and neuroscience as it is about love, fear, and courage. Most of all, it is a perfect expression of the interconnections it sets out to examine, and a moving evocation of an imagined world that is deeply intelligent, often tender, curious, and very much alive.]]> 256 Edward St. Aubyn 0374282196 James 5 3.20 2021 Double Blind
author: Edward St. Aubyn
name: James
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> The Patrick Melrose Novels 11717571 ձճ

AnAtlantic MagazineBest Book of the Year
Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

For more than twenty years, acclaimed author Edward St. Aubyn has chronicled the life of Patrick Melrose, painting an extraordinary portrait of the beleaguered and self-loathing world of privilege. This single volume collects the first four novels—Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother’s Milk, a Man Booker finalist—to coincide with the publication of At Last, the final installment of this unique novel cycle.

By turns harrowing and hilarious, these beautifully written novels dissect the English upper class as we follow Patrick Melrose’s story from child abuse to heroin addiction and recovery. Never Mind, the first novel, unfolds over a day and an evening at the family’s chateaux in the south of France, where the sadistic and terrifying figure of David Melrose dominates the lives of his five-year-old son, Patrick, and his rich and unhappy American mother, Eleanor. From abuse to addiction, the second novel, Bad News opens as the twenty-two-year-old Patrick sets off to collect his father’s ashes from New York, where he will spend a drug-crazed twenty-four hours. And back in England, the third novel, Some Hope, offers a sober and clean Patrick the possibility of recovery. The fourth novel, the Booker-shortlisted Mother’s Milk, returns to the family chateau, where Patrick, now married and a father himself, struggles with child rearing, adultery, his mother’s desire for assisted suicide, and the loss of the family home to a New Age foundation.

Edward St. Aubyn offers a window into a world of utter decadence, amorality, greed, snobbery, and cruelty—welcome to the declining British aristocracy.]]> 680 Edward St. Aubyn 0312429967 James 5 4.07 2012 The Patrick Melrose Novels
author: Edward St. Aubyn
name: James
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Slow Motion Ghosts 36237291 A viciously occult murder.
A curious clue left on the body.
The soundtrack to the murder still playing...
_____________

It is 1981 and Detective Inspector Henry Hobbes is still reeling in the aftermath of the fire and fury of the Brixton riots. The battle lines of society - and the police force - are being redrawn on a daily basis.

With the certainties of his life already sorely tested, a brutal murder will shake his beliefs to their very core once more. The manner of the death and its staged circumstances pose many questions to which there are no obvious answers.

To track the murderer, Hobbes must cross boundaries into a subculture hidden beneath the everyday world he thought he knew. His investigation takes him into a twisted reality, which is both seductive and devastating, and asks him the one question he has been dreading: How far will he go in pursuit of the truth?]]> 384 Jeff Noon James 0 to-read 3.77 2019 Slow Motion Ghosts
author: Jeff Noon
name: James
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Overstaying 203166776
“I don’t see my writing as chronological or classically narrative, but as spatial—a kind of architecture. I keep adding rooms, and readers can take different paths through the rooms,” writes Ariane Koch of Overstaying, her anarchically comic debut. Koch’s narrator is an impudent young woman, a contemporary Bartleby living alone in her parents’ old house in the small hometown she hates but can’t bring herself to leave. When a visitor turns up, promisingly new, she takes him in, and instantly her life revolves around him. Yet it is hard to tell what, exactly, this visitor is. A mooch, a lover, an absence, a presence—possibly a pet? Mostly, he is a set of contradictions, an occasion for Koch’s wild imagination to take readers in brilliant and unexpected directions.]]> 176 Ariane Koch 1948980193 James 0 to-read 3.52 2021 Overstaying
author: Ariane Koch
name: James
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness]]> 24618 Epictetus was born into slavery about 55 C.E. in the eastern outreaches of the Roman Empire. Sold as a child and crippled from the beatings of his master, Epictetus was eventually freed, rising from his humble roots to establish an influential school of Stoic philosophy. Stressing that human beings cannot control life, only how they respond to it, Epictetus dedicated his life to outlining the simple way to happiness, fulfillment, and tranquility. By putting into practice the ninety-three witty, wise, and razor-sharp instructions that make up The Art of Living, readers learn to successfully meet the challenges of everyday life and face life's inevitable losses and disappointments with grace.

Epictetus's teachings rank among the greatest wisdom texts of human civilization. Sharon Lebell presents this esteemed philosopher's invaluable insights for the first time in a splendidly down-to-earth rendition. The result is the West's first and best primer for living the best possible life -- as helpful in the twenty-first century as it was in the first.

]]> 128 Epictetus 006251346X James 0 to-read 4.32 125 The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
author: Epictetus
name: James
average rating: 4.32
book published: 125
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Voice and Nothing More (Short Circuits)]]> 1225616 A new, philosophically grounded theory of the voice - the voice as the lever of thought, as one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object.

Plutarch tells the story of a man who plucked a nightingale and finding but little to eat exclaimed: "You are just a voice and nothing more." Plucking the feathers of meaning that cover the voice, dismantling the body from which the voice seems to emanate, resisting the Sirens' song of fascination with the voice, concentrating on "the voice and nothing more": this is the difficult task that philosopher Mladen Dolar relentlessly pursues in this seminal work.

The voice did not figure as a major philosophical topic until the 1960s, when Derrida and Lacan separately proposed it as a central theoretical concern. In A Voice and Nothing More Dolar goes beyond Derrida's idea of "phonocentrism" and revives and develops Lacan's claim that the voice is one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object (objet a). Dolar proposes that, apart from the two commonly understood uses of the voice as a vehicle of meaning and as a source of aesthetic admiration, there is a third level of understanding: the voice as an object that can be seen as the lever of thought. He investigates the object voice on a number of different levels--the linguistics of the voice, the metaphysics of the voice, the ethics of the voice (with the voice of conscience), the paradoxical relation between the voice and the body, the politics of the voice--and he scrutinizes the uses of the voice in Freud and Kafka. With this foundational work, Dolar gives us a philosophically grounded theory of the voice as a Lacanian object-cause.]]> 224 Mladen Dolar 0262541874 James 0 to-read 4.06 2006 A Voice and Nothing More (Short Circuits)
author: Mladen Dolar
name: James
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Reader’s Block 195607 194 David Markson 1564781321 James 0 to-read 4.11 1996 Reader’s Block
author: David Markson
name: James
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought]]> 42118411 An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought.

When we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words.

In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart.

Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how--and where--thinking takes place.]]> 384 Barbara Tversky 046509306X James 0 to-read 3.73 Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought
author: Barbara Tversky
name: James
average rating: 3.73
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking]]> 7711871 Analogy is the core of all thinking.

This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize–winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over thirty years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.

We are constantly faced with a swirling and intermingling multitude of ill-defined situations. Our brain’s job is to try to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of input triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this means the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long-buried memories.

Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, “I undressed the banana!”? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out, “Exactly the same thing happened to me!” when it was a completely different event? How do we recognize an aggressive driver from a split-second glance in our rearview mirror? What in a friend’s remark triggers the offhand reply, “That’s just sour grapes”? What did Albert Einstein see that made him suspect that light consists of particles when a century of research had driven the final nail in the coffin of that long-dead idea?

The answer to all these questions, of course, is analogy-making—the meat and potatoes, the heart and soul, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood and the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights.

Like Gödel, Escher, Bach before it, Surfaces and Essences will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an extraordinary variety of colorful situations involving language, thought, and memory, by revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from view, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core—the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences—this book puts forth a radical and deeply surprising new vision of the act of thinking.
]]> 578 Douglas R. Hofstadter 0465018475 James 0 to-read 3.80 2011 Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
name: James
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity]]> 72011 368 Lawrence Lessig 0143034650 James 0 to-read 4.11 2004 Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
author: Lawrence Lessig
name: James
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman]]> 198483 A satirical tale of magic and sex, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a dazzling quest for truth, love and identity.]]> 221 Angela Carter 0140235191 James 0 to-read 3.78 1972 The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
author: Angela Carter
name: James
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity]]> 11496383
Edgy and darkly humorous but, like all the best literature, it still keeps an undercurrent of seriousness.

About the
Alex Kudera has survived fifteen years of teaching overloads but in some circles is better known for his mysterious injuries. He has bussed dishes and tutored English in two countries, and Fight for Your Long Day, his first novel, was drafted in a walk-in closet during a summer in Seoul, South Korea. A lifelong Philadelphian until fall 2007, Alex currently teaches literature and writing at Clemson University in South Carolina.]]> 34 Alex Kudera James 0 to-read 4.27 2011 The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity
author: Alex Kudera
name: James
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Death of the Author (In Triplicate)]]> 122777312 Where does he get his ideas from, a paradox when set against the unremarkable act of sitting down at a desk, sticking notes up on the wall, crossing them out again and lighting up forbidden cigarettes and hiding the evidence from his wife. In showing his mundane workings, we are asked to trace the leap into a work of creative imagination. Until his literary future too is threatened.]]> 325 Marc Nash James 0 to-read 4.80 Death of the Author (In Triplicate)
author: Marc Nash
name: James
average rating: 4.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stories We Tell Our Children 58504330
Blisteringly bleak yet witty and imbued with kind-hearted curiosity, Stories We Tell Our Children weaves a series of darkly inventive interlinked tales into a complex world where entitlement, estrangement and shirked responsibility leave indelible marks on young lives. Eight-year-old Rishi has no idea who he is or where his parents are. As he searches for clues to his own identity, he entertains himself with dangerous thoughts that undermine his chances of ever living a normal life.

Stories We Tell Our Children explores how children learn to survive through the tales they are told. But can they thrive if they are raised by unreliable narrators using stories as a means of shirking responsibility and papering over the cracks of estrangement?

Blisteringly bleak, witty and wildly erudite, this series of darkly inventive interlinked tales shows how our young are transformed by the words they are fed words that are often insubstantial and misleading, leaving them hungry for truth as they sift through the scraps left by those whose aim should be to nourish them.]]> 272 Marc Nash 1912436949 James 0 currently-reading 3.64 Stories We Tell Our Children
author: Marc Nash
name: James
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Song of Synth 23130259
Synth is a drug able to induce hallucinations indistinguishable from reality. But it’s brand new, highly addictive, and more than likely dangerous. Even the dealers peddling the pills don’t know what long term effects the drug will have on its users. For Markus Olsen, Synth offers an easy escape to his crumbling life. Markus, an ex-hacker, has been caught red-handed, and while his friends were sent to jail for thirty years, Markus decided to cooperate, agreeing to lend his services and particular criminal expertise to Viborg City’s secret service, aiding the oppressive state power he’d been fighting to break in exchange for his relative freedom.

But Markus’ past as an anarchist comes back to haunt him, in the form of a credit card with no account but an seemingly unlimited balance as well as the discovery of a mysterious novel in which he is a main character. How much of his reality is being produced by Synth? How disconnected from real life has Markus become? Forced to face his past and the decisions he’s made, Markus must decide to choose between the artificial comfort of his constructed life and the harsh reality of treason and the struggle for freedom.

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.]]> 272 Seb Doubinsky 1940456258 James 0 3.74 2013 The Song of Synth
author: Seb Doubinsky
name: James
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse]]> 221272002 An incisive, culturally observant analysis of the evolving mores, manners and taboos of social justice (“anti-racist”) orthodoxy, which has profoundly influenced how we think about diversity and freedom of expression, often with complex or paradoxical consequences.

In this provocative book, Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the most revered and reviled social commentators of our time, paints a clear and detailed picture of the ideas and events that have paved the way for the dramatic paradigm shift in social justice that has taken place over the past few years. Taking aim at the ideology of critical race theory, the rise of an oppressive social media, the fall from Obama to Trump, and the twinned crises of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd, Williams documents the extent to which this transition has altered media, artistic creativity, education, employment, policing, and, most profoundly, the ambient language and culture we use to make sense of our lives.

Williams also decries how liberalism—the very foundation of an open and vibrant society—is in existential crisis, under assault from both the right and the left, especially in our predominantly networked, Internet-driven monoculture.

Sure to be highly controversial, Summer of Our Discontent is a compelling look at our place in a radically changing world.]]> Thomas Chatterton Williams 0593534417 James 0 to-read 0.0 Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse
author: Thomas Chatterton Williams
name: James
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Harrow 56376963 In her first novel since The Quick and the Dead (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), the legendary writer takes us into an uncertain landscape after an environmental apocalypse, a world in which only the man-made has value, but some still wish to salvage the authentic.

Khristen is a teenager who, her mother believes, was marked by greatness as a baby when she died for a moment and then came back to life.

After Khristen's failing boarding school for gifted teens closes its doors, and she finds that her mother has disappeared, she ranges across the dead landscape and washes up at a resort on the shores of a mysterious, putrid lake the elderly residents there call Big Girl.

In a rotting honeycomb of rooms, these old ones plot actions to punish corporations and people they consider culpable in the destruction of the final scraps of nature's beauty. What will Khristen and Jeffrey, the precocious ten-year-old boy she meets there, learn from this baggy seditious lot, in the worst of health but with kamikaze hearts, determined to refresh, through crackpot violence, a plundered earth?

Rivetingly strange and beautiful, and delivered with Williams's searing, deadpan wit, Harrow is their intertwined tale of paradise lost and of their reasons—against all reasonableness—to try and recover something of it.]]> 224 Joy Williams 0525657568 James 0 to-read 3.19 2021 Harrow
author: Joy Williams
name: James
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> North American Lake Monsters 16057298
These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.

Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story "The Monsters of Heaven" won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.]]> 205 Nathan Ballingrud 1618730592 James 0 to-read 3.97 2013 North American Lake Monsters
author: Nathan Ballingrud
name: James
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Hate the Internet 27071393
Set in the San Francisco of 2013, I Hate the Internet offers a hilarious and obscene portrayal of life amongst the victims of the digital boom. As billions of tweets fuel the city’s gentrification and the human wreckage piles up, a group of friends suffers the consequences of being useless in a new world that despises the pointless and unprofitable.

In this, his first full-length novel, Jarett Kobek tackles the pressing questions of our moment. Why do we applaud the enrichment of CEOs at the expense of the weak and the powerless? Why are we giving away our intellectual property? Why is activism in the 21st Century nothing more than a series of morality lectures typed into devices built by slaves?

Here, at last, comes an explanation of the Internet in the crudest possible terms.]]> 288 Jarett Kobek 0996421807 James 0 to-read 3.69 2016 I Hate the Internet
author: Jarett Kobek
name: James
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World]]> 6968772
McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent research in neuroscience and psychology to reveal that the difference is profound: the left hemisphere is detail oriented, while the right has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity. McGilchrist then takes the reader on a journey through the history of Western culture, illustrating the tension between these two worlds as revealed in the thought and belief of thinkers and artists from Aeschylus to Magritte.


Emisfero destro ed emisfero sinistro: una delle poche cose che tutti sanno è che il nostro cervello è anatomicamente diviso in due metà. Già gli antichi greci speculavano sulla possibile esistenza di un cervello bipartito, ma oggi siamo ormai al luogo comune, che tutti hanno sentito o letto da qualche parte, secondo il quale l'emisfero destro, quello "femminile", sarebbe adibito alla creatività e alla sensibilità, mentre quello sinistro, più "maschile", sarebbe predisposto alla logica e alla praticità: due modi inconciliabili di vedere il mondo. Ma qual è la vera natura di questa dicotomia? Quanto c'è di scientifico e quanto di impreciso o fuorviante? Lo psichiatra, neuroscienziato e studioso di letteratura Iain McGilchrist ha dedicato una vita di studi a questo problema, ricavandone una tesi tanto affascinante e profonda quanto rigorosa e solida, basata su un approccio interdisciplinare che spazia da Platone a Freud, da Shakespeare a Roger Sperry, neuroscienziato vincitore del Nobel per le sue ricerche sulla specializzazione emisferica. Secondo McGilchrist, ciascun emisfero decifra la medesima realtà in un modo coerente, ma incompatibile con quello dell'altro: l'emisfero destro fa esperienza del mondo nella sua interezza e complessità tralasciando i dettagli, mentre l'emisfero sinistro è analitico ma per forza di cose frammentario. Quale delle due modalità guida il nostro comportamento? In Il padrone e il suo emissario, McGilchrist racconta l'inevitabile lotta per il potere di cui i due emisferi sono protagonisti. I segni di questo confronto sono rintracciabili nella storia della nostra civiltà, e ancora ben visibili nei contrasti che animano la cultura occidentale contemporanea. Oggi, in un mondo sempre più disincarnato e dominato dalle tecnologie digitali, sembrerebbe che l'emisfero sinistro stia prendendo pericolosamente il sopravvento su quello destro, forse cambiando per sempre il nostro modo di pensare e di comprendere la realtà in cui viviamo.]]> 608 Iain McGilchrist 030014878X James 0 to-read 4.34 2009 The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
author: Iain McGilchrist
name: James
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)]]> 210367505 TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance – award winners and international bestsellers all, the first the basis for a now-classic film – Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.

Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future – and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.

Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.

Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team – well trained but eccentric – has been assembled to find Area X’s “off switch” somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.

Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters, and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present, and future in terrifying, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0374616590 James 0 to-read 3.60 2024 Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: James
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Keep 86655
Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe. In an environment of extreme paranoia, cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the signal event of their youth, with even more catastrophic results. And as the full horror of their predicament unfolds, a prisoner, in jail for an unnamed crime, recounts an unforgettable story that seamlessly brings the crimes of the past and present into piercing relation.]]> 240 Jennifer Egan 1400043921 James 0 to-read 3.47 2006 The Keep
author: Jennifer Egan
name: James
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> White Noise 28251250
White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra­modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback

Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition]]> 320 Don DeLillo 0143129554 James 0 to-read 3.88 1985 White Noise
author: Don DeLillo
name: James
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Housekeeping 11741 Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.]]> 219 Marilynne Robinson 0312424094 James 0 to-read 3.82 1980 Housekeeping
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: James
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine]]> 207611500 A revolutionary new offering from Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, renowned psychologist and author of the global bestseller 12 Rules for Life.In We Who Wrestle with God, Dr. Peterson guides us through the ancient, foundational stories of the Western world. In riveting detail, he analyzes the Biblical accounts of rebellion, sacrifice, suffering, and triumph that stabilize, inspire, and unite us culturally and psychologically. Adam and Eve and the eternal fall of mankind; the resentful and ultimately murderous war of Cain and Abel; the cataclysmic flood of Noah; the spectacular collapse of the Tower of Babel; Abraham’s terrible adventure; and the epic of Moses and the Israelites. What could such stories possibly mean? What force wrote and assembled them over the long centuries? How did they bring our spirits and the world together, and point us in the same direction?It is time for us to understand such things, scientifically and spiritually; to become conscious of the structure of our souls and our societies; and to see ourselves and others as if for the first time.Join Elijah as he discovers the Voice of God in the dictates of his own conscience and Jonah confronting hell itself in the belly of the whale because he failed to listen and act. Set yourself straight in intent, aim, and purpose as you begin to more deeply understand the structure of your society and your soul. Journey with Dr. Peterson through the greatest stories ever told.Dare to wrestle with God.]]> 576 Jordan B. Peterson 0593542533 James 0 to-read 3.91 2024 We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
author: Jordan B. Peterson
name: James
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dark Entries 19246479
Dark Entries was first published in 1964 and contains six curious and macabre stories of love, death and the supernatural, including the classic story 'Ringing the Changes'.

Robert Aickman (1914–1981) was the grandson of Richard Marsh, a leading Victorian novelist of the occult. Though his chief occupation in life was first as a conservationist of England's canals he eventually turned his talents to writing what he called 'strange stories.' Dark Entries (1964) was his first full collection, the debut in a body of work that would inspire Peter Straub to hail Aickman as 'this century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories.']]> 238 Robert Aickman 0571311776 James 0 to-read 3.87 1964 Dark Entries
author: Robert Aickman
name: James
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[21 Lessons for the 21st Century]]> 38820046 In Sapiens, he explored our past. In Homo Deus, he looked to our future. Now, one of the most innovative thinkers on the planet turns to the present to make sense of today's most pressing issues.

How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach our children?

Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.

In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari builds on the ideas explored in his previous books, untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? How should we deal with the threat of terrorism? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?

Harari's unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Presenting complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is essential reading.]]> 372 Yuval Noah Harari 0525512179 James 0 to-read 4.15 2018 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: James
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> On Kawara ― Silence 24343408
On Kawara was born in Japan in 1933. During the 1950s he was a prominent member of the postwar Tokyo avant-garde, producing figurative work in a late-Surrealist style. Kawara left Japan in 1959, traveling to Mexico City, Paris and New York, where he settled in 1964. By 1966 he had devoted his work solely to the schematic representation of time and place through calendars, maps, lists, postcards and telegrams. Kawara's primary body of work, which occupied him until his death in 2014, is the Today series, a sequence of paintings produced according to strict protocols of size, color and technique. An incessant traveler, the artist produced Date Paintings in 136 cities and various languages.]]> 264 Daniel Buren 0892075198 James 0 to-read 4.27 2015 On Kawara ― Silence
author: Daniel Buren
name: James
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams]]> 49689713
The book critically examines artworks that use AI, be it in the form of visual style transfer, algorithmic experiment or critical commentary. It also engages with their predecessors, including robotic art and net art. AI Art includes a project from Zylinska’s own art practice titled ‘View from the Window’, which explores human and nonhuman forms of intelligence, perception and action. The book closes with speculation on future art – and on art’s future.]]> 178 Joanna Zylinska 1785420852 James 0 to-read 3.81 2020 AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams
author: Joanna Zylinska
name: James
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society]]> 235141 301 Jürgen Habermas 0262581086 James 0 to-read 3.89 1962 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society
author: Jürgen Habermas
name: James
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing]]> 566744 181 Gerald Graff 0393924092 James 0 to-read 3.73 2006 They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing
author: Gerald Graff
name: James
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Rhetoric of Motives 411012
In A Grammar of Motives (1945) and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), Burke's conception of "symbolic action" comes into its all human activities―linguisitc or extra-linguistic―are modes of symbolizing; man is defined as the symbol-using (and -misusing) animal. The critic's job becomes one of the interpreting human symbolizing wherever he finds it, with the aim of illuminating human motivation. Thus the reach of the literary critic now extends to the social and ethical.

A Grammar of Motives is a "methodical meditation" on such complex linguistic forms as plays, stories, poems, theologies, metaphysical systems, political philosophies, constitutions. A Rhetoric of Motives expands the field to human ways of persuasion and identification. Persuasion, as Burke sees it, "ranges from the bluntest quest of advantage, as in sales promotion or propaganda, through courtship, social etiquette, education, and the sermon, to a 'pure' form that delights in the process of appeal for itself alone, without ulterior purpose. And identification ranges from the politician who, addressing an audience of farmers, says, 'I was a farm boy myself,' through the mysteries of social status, to the mystic's devout identification with the sources of all being."]]> 356 Kenneth Burke 0520015460 James 0 to-read 4.04 1969 A Rhetoric of Motives
author: Kenneth Burke
name: James
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Demian 24861 193 Hermann Hesse James 0 to-read 4.18 1919 Demian
author: Hermann Hesse
name: James
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1919
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Steppenwolf 16631 Steppenwolf is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet his novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, "Of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any of the others".]]> 256 Hermann Hesse 0140282580 James 0 currently-reading 4.15 1927 Steppenwolf
author: Hermann Hesse
name: James
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1927
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Monogamy 763684
Adam Phillips manages to unsettle one of our most dearly held ideals, that of the monogamous couple, by speculating upon the impulses that most threaten it—boredom, desire, and the tempting idea that erotic fulfillment might lie elsewhere. With 121 brilliant aphorisms, the witty, erudite psychoanalyst who gave us On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored distills the urgent questions and knotty paradoxes behind our mating impulse, and reveals the centrality of monogamy to our notions of marriage, family, the self—in fact, to everything that matters.

The only truly monogamous relationship is the one we have with ourselves.
Every marriage is a blind date that makes you wonder what the alternatives are to a blind date.
There's nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage.]]> 144 Adam Phillips 0679776176 James 0 currently-reading 3.58 1996 Monogamy
author: Adam Phillips
name: James
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals]]> 54785515 The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless battle against distraction; we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.]]> 271 Oliver Burkeman 0374159122 James 0 currently-reading 4.20 2021 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: James
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Civilisation and its Discontents]]> 7925239 144 Sigmund Freud 1578988594 James 0 currently-reading 3.66 1930 Civilisation and its Discontents
author: Sigmund Freud
name: James
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1930
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sublime Object of Ideology]]> 18912
Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political significance of these fantasies of control.]]> 256 Slavoj Žižek 0860919714 James 0 currently-reading 4.07 1989 The Sublime Object of Ideology
author: Slavoj Žižek
name: James
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer]]> 214971755

Inside, you will learn how to:


Effortlessly capture ideas before they slip away
Save the most relevant insights from what you read
Connect information in profound and unexpected ways
Transform individual notes into articles, blog posts, and books
Start every writing session with words already on the page
Develop a system for writing that not only supports your creativity, but inspires it


If you're done with writer's block, information overload, forgetting ideas, and waiting around for inspiration to strike, then read this book. It was written for you. ]]> 206 Bob Doto James 0 currently-reading 4.22 A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer
author: Bob Doto
name: James
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Obscure Invitations: The Persistence of the Author in Twentieth-Century American Literature]]> 12584770 220 Benjamin Widiss 0804773238 James 0 currently-reading 3.67 2011 Obscure Invitations: The Persistence of the Author in Twentieth-Century American Literature
author: Benjamin Widiss
name: James
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society]]> 349650 260 Herbert Marcuse 0807014176 James 0 currently-reading 3.99 1964 One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
author: Herbert Marcuse
name: James
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Choke 29059 Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times.

Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him.

When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park.

His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, renowned author of classics like Fight Club, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.]]> 293 Chuck Palahniuk 0385720920 James 0 to-read 3.71 2001 Choke
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: James
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Angelic Darkness 1400830 247 Richard Zimler 1900850303 James 0 to-read 3.52 1998 The Angelic Darkness
author: Richard Zimler
name: James
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Demonologist 15717850
An ancient evil.

A father’s descent.

And the literary masterpiece that holds the key to his daughter’s salvation.

Professor David Ullman is among the world’s leading authorities on demonic literature, with special expertise in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Not that David is a believer—he sees what he teaches as a branch of the imagination and nothing more. So when the mysterious Thin Woman arrives at his office and invites him to travel to Venice and witness a “phenomenon,” he turns her down. She leaves plane tickets and an address on his desk, advising David that her employer is not often disappointed.

That evening, David’s wife announces she is leaving him. With his life suddenly in shambles, he impulsively whisks his beloved twelve-year-old daughter, Tess, off to Venice after all. The girl has recently been stricken by the same melancholy moods David knows so well, and he hopes to cheer her up and distract them both from the troubles at home.

But what happens in Venice will change everything.

First, in a tiny attic room at the address provided by the Thin Woman, David sees a man restrained in a chair, muttering, clearly insane . . . but could he truly be possessed? Then the man speaks clearly, in the voice of David’s dead father, repeating the last words he ever spoke to his son. Words that have left scars—and a mystery—behind.

When David rushes back to the hotel, he discovers Tess perched on the roof’s edge, high above the waters of the Grand Canal. Before she falls, she manages to utter a final plea: Find me.

What follows is an unimaginable journey for David Ullman from skeptic to true believer. In a terrifying quest guided by symbols and riddles from the pages of Paradise Lost, David must track the demon that has captured his daughter and discover its name. If he fails, he will lose Tess forever.]]> 285 Andrew Pyper 1451697414 James 0 to-read 3.31 2013 The Demonologist
author: Andrew Pyper
name: James
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bite 21159462 323 Nick Louth James 0 to-read 3.53 2007 Bite
author: Nick Louth
name: James
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Calculated Life 18318669
Hyper-intelligent Jayna is a star performer at top predictive agency Mayhew McCline, where she forecasts economic and social trends. A brilliant mathematical modeler, she far outshines her co-workers, often correcting their work on the quiet. Her latest coup: finding a link between northeasterly winds and violent crime.

When a string of events contradicts her forecasts, Jayna suspects she needs more data and better intuition. She needs direct interactions with the rest of society. Bravely—and naively—she sets out to disrupt her strict routine and stumbles unwittingly into a world where her IQ is increasingly irrelevant…a place where human relationships and the complexity of life are difficult for her to decode. And as she experiments with taking risks, she crosses the line into corporate intrigue and disloyalty.

Can Jayna confront the question of what it means to live a “normal” life? Or has the possibility of a “normal” life already been eclipsed for everyone?]]> 208 Anne Charnock 1477849513 James 0 to-read 3.52 2013 A Calculated Life
author: Anne Charnock
name: James
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Containment (Children of Occam #1)]]> 8065404
Arik Ockley is part of the first generation to be born and raised off-Earth. After a puzzling accident, Arik wakes up to find that his wife is almost three months pregnant. Since the colony’s environmental systems cannot safely support any increases in population, Arik immediately resumes his work on AP, or artificial photosynthesis, in order to save the life of his unborn child. Arik’s new and frantic research uncovers startling truths about the planet, and about the distorted reality the founders of the colony have constructed for Arik’s entire generation. Everything Arik has ever known is called into question, and he must figure out the right path for himself, his wife, and his unborn daughter.]]> 251 Christian Cantrell 098455050X James 0 to-read 3.72 2010 Containment (Children of Occam #1)
author: Christian Cantrell
name: James
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Am Pilgrim 18144124 Pilgrim.']]> 612 Terry Hayes 1439177724 James 0 to-read 4.25 2013 I Am Pilgrim
author: Terry Hayes
name: James
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Heart So White 529075 here.

Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy—its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility—hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into the shadows and on to the costs of ambivalence. ("My hands are of your colour; but I shame/To wear a heart so white"—Shakespeare's Macbeth.)]]> 280 Javier Marías 0811215059 James 0 to-read 4.13 1992 A Heart So White
author: Javier Marías
name: James
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Exes 31213485
A former movie star impersonates himself; an ex-con looks after a summer home perched atop a rock in the bay; a broken-hearted Salutatorian airs thirteen years’ worth of dirty laundry at his school’s commencement; an adjunct struggles to make room for her homeless and self-absorbed mother while revisiting a salacious high school love affair; a recent widower, with the help of a clever teen, schemes to rid his condo’s pond of Canada geese.

Clay compiles their stories, invasively providing context in the form of footnotes that lead always, somehow, back to Eli. Behind Clay’s task — which seems insane, definitely doomed, and, as the pages turn, increasingly suspect — burns his desire to understand his brother‘s death and the city that has defined and ruined them both.

Full of brainy detours and irreverent asides, Exes is a powerful investigation of grief, love, and our deeply held yet ever-changing notions of home.]]> 224 Max Winter 1936787407 James 0 to-read 3.09 2017 Exes
author: Max Winter
name: James
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Ebony Tower 56030 An extraordinary work of fiction, from one of the world's most exceptional writers.

A journalist visits an elderly painter and becomes intrigued by his young female companions. Four years' worth of book research is set on fire in front of a writer. A successful MP disappears without a trace.

Written with stylistic innovation, this sequence of novellas exploring the nature of art echoes the themes and preoccupations of Fowles' earlier work and cements his position as a master storyteller.]]> 304 John Fowles 0099480514 James 0 3.72 1974 The Ebony Tower
author: John Fowles
name: James
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix (Cambridge Studies in French, Series Number 5)]]> 1695794 252 Norman Bryson 0521335620 James 0 to-read 4.08 1984 Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix (Cambridge Studies in French, Series Number 5)
author: Norman Bryson
name: James
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography]]> 214502 243 Wendy McElroy 0312152450 James 0 to-read 3.74 1995 XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography
author: Wendy McElroy
name: James
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Well 22609511 The Well; the farm of one seemingly ordinary family whose mysterious good fortune leads to suspicion, chaos, and ultimately a shocking act of violence.

Ruth Ardingly has just been released from prison to serve out a sentence of house arrest for arson and suspected murder at her farm, The Well. Beyond its borders, some people whisper she is a witch; others a messiah. For as soon as Ruth returns to The Well, rain begins to fall on the farm. And it has not rained anywhere else in the country in over three years.

Ruth and her husband Mark had moved years before from London to this ancient idyll in the hopes of starting their lives over. But then the drought began, and as the surrounding land dried up and died, and The Well grew lush and full of life, they came to see their fortune would come at a price. From the envy of their neighbors to the mandates of the government, from the fanaticism of a religious order called the Sisters of the Rose to the everyday difficulties of staying close as husband and wife, mother and child; all these forces led to a horrifying crime: the death of their seven-year-old grandson, drowned with cruel irony in one of the few ponds left in the countryside.

Now back at The Well, Ruth must piece together the tragedy that shattered her marriage, her family, and her dream. For she believes her grandson's death was no accident, and that the murderer is among the people she trusted most. Alone except for her guards on a tiny green jewel in a world rapidly turning to dust, Ruth begins to confront her worst fears and learns what really happened in the dark heart of The Well.

A tour de force about ordinary people caught in the tide of an extraordinary situation, Catherine Chanter's The Well is a haunting, beautifully written, and utterly believable novel that probes the fragility of our personal relationships and the mystical connection between people and the places they call home.]]> 400 Catherine Chanter 1476772762 James 0 to-read 3.08 2015 The Well
author: Catherine Chanter
name: James
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Nix 28251002
To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.]]> 625 Nathan Hill 110194661X James 0 to-read 4.08 2016 The Nix
author: Nathan Hill
name: James
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The English Understand Wool 59468833 Maman was exigeante—there is no English word–and I had the benefit of her training. Others may not be so fortunate. If some other young girl, with two million dollars at stake, finds this of use I shall count myself justified.

Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and English father, a 17-year-old girl has learned above all to avoid mauvais ton ("bad taste" loses something in the translation). One should not ask servants to wait on one during Ramadan: they must have paid leave while one spends the holy month abroad. One must play the piano; if staying at Claridge’s, one must regrettably install a Clavinova in the suite, so that the necessary hours of practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris (whose genius has been supported by purchase of suitable premises). All this and much more she has learned, governed by a parent of ferociously lofty standards. But at 17, during the annual Ramadan travels, she finds all assumptions overturned. Will she be able to fend for herself? Will the dictates of good taste suffice when she must deal, singlehanded, with the sharks of New York?]]> 69 Helen DeWitt 0811230074 James 0 to-read 4.06 2022 The English Understand Wool
author: Helen DeWitt
name: James
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Engineer of Human Souls 15709470 The Engineer of Human Souls is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As the novel begins, he is a professor of American literature at a college in Toronto. Out of touch with his young students, and hounded by the Czech secret police, Danny is let loose to roam between past and present, adopting whatever identity that he chooses or has been imposed upon him by History.

As adventuresome, episodic, bawdy, comic, and literary as any novel written in the past twenty-five years, The Engineer of Human Souls is worthy of the subtitle Skvorecky gave it: "An Entertainment on the Old Themes of Life, Women, Fate, Dreams, The Working Class, Secret Agents,
Love and Death."]]> 571 Josef Škvorecký 0330291521 James 0 to-read 4.17 1977 The Engineer of Human Souls
author: Josef Škvorecký
name: James
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Airside 85053859 During a time of personal crisis, she declares she is going to take a vacation in England, to explore the possibilities of working in London, before returning to the USA.

She never returned to the USA. She never even left the airport. At least – no-one saw her leave.

Years later, a young film student finds himself digging deeper into her disappearance. Where did she go? Was she really dead? Who was the mysterious man who sat beside her on the flight across from New York?]]> 297 Christopher Priest 1399608835 James 0 to-read 3.09 2023 Airside
author: Christopher Priest
name: James
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Expect Me Tomorrow 60382966
In 1852, Adler and Adolf Beck's father died on an expedition to a glacier, and their lives separated. One became a respected climate scientist, one a successful opera singer touring the world. Or so he claimed. But both remained in touch, if only to share the mysterious voices only they could hear.

Charles Ramsey also has a twin. It is 2050, and Greg is a journalist reporting on the climate-change inspired conflicts around the world. When Charles is made redundant from his job as a profiler for the police and sent home with a new experimental chip in his head, he is urged by his brother to explore a little-known aspect of their family history.

​All of these people are connected. All of their lives will intersect. And the climate of their world will keep on changing.]]> 324 Christopher Priest 1473235138 James 0 to-read 3.51 2022 Expect Me Tomorrow
author: Christopher Priest
name: James
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fugue for a Darkening Island 648060
Forced by violence to leave their home in London, Alan and Isobel Whitman attempt to drive to Bristol with their daughter, Sally, to seek shelter with relatives. But the car breaks down and the Whitmans find themselves at the mercy of roving bands from the various factions. Separated from and reunited with his family, forced to suffer from indignities and dangers, torn by loyalties and sympathies, Alan is unable to give his allegiance to any of the three warring groups until a final brutal decision is made for him.]]> 125 Christopher Priest 0330255444 James 0 to-read 3.23 1972 Fugue for a Darkening Island
author: Christopher Priest
name: James
average rating: 3.23
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Adjacent 17256056 419 Christopher Priest 0575105364 James 0 to-read 3.46 2013 The Adjacent
author: Christopher Priest
name: James
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Islanders 10235919 Reality is illusory and magical in the stunning new literary SF novel from the multiple award-winning author of The Prestige—for fans of Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell

A tale of murder, artistic rivalry, and literary trickery; a Chinese puzzle of a novel where nothing is quite what it seems; a narrator whose agenda is artful and subtle; a narrative that pulls you in and plays an elegant game with you. The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands. The names of the islands are different depending on who you talk to, their very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into vast musical instruments, others are home to lethal creatures, others the playground for high society. Hot winds blow across the archipelago and a war fought between two distant continents is played out across its waters. The Islanders serves both as an untrustworthy but enticing guide to the islands; an intriguing, multi-layered tale of a murder; and the suspect legacy of its appealing but definitely untrustworthy narrator. It shows Christopher Priest at the height of his powers and illustrates his undiminished power to dazzle.]]> 342 Christopher Priest 0575070048 James 0 to-read 3.69 2011 The Islanders
author: Christopher Priest
name: James
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Affirmation 106925 213 Christopher Priest 0684816148 James 0 to-read 3.94 1981 The Affirmation
author: Christopher Priest
name: James
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Inverted World 142181 239 Christopher Priest 0060134216 James 0 to-read 3.94 1974 The Inverted World
author: Christopher Priest
name: James
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Prestige 239239
Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command--the highest misdirection and the darkest science.

Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.]]> 404 Christopher Priest 0312858868 James 0 to-read 3.92 1995 The Prestige
author: Christopher Priest
name: James
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hum 195791689 From the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Need comes an extraordinary novel about a wife and mother who—after losing her job to AI—undergoes a procedure that renders her undetectable to surveillance…but at what cost?

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”]]> 262 Helen Phillips 1668008831 James 0 to-read 3.49 2024 Hum
author: Helen Phillips
name: James
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wittgenstein’s Mistress 51506 279 David Markson 1564782115 James 0 to-read 3.94 1988 Wittgenstein’s Mistress
author: David Markson
name: James
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Immobility 12139894 256 Brian Evenson 0765330962 James 0 to-read 3.75 2012 Immobility
author: Brian Evenson
name: James
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell]]> 55405181
A sentient, murderous prosthetic leg; shadowy creatures lurking behind a shimmering wall; brutal barrow of all the terrors that populate The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, perhaps the most alarming are the beings who decimated the habitable humans. In this new short story collection, Brian Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration. Combining psychological and ecological horror, each tale thrums with Evenson’s award-winning literary craftsmanship, dark humor, and thrilling suspense.]]> 254 Brian Evenson 1566896150 James 0 to-read 4.07 2021 The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
author: Brian Evenson
name: James
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Open Curtain 146770


When Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school project, he runs across a series of articles from the 1902 New York Times chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young. Delving deeply into the Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice used in the murders, Rudd, along with his newly discovered half-brother, Lael, becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic effects of this violent, antique ritual.


As the past and the present become an increasingly tangled knot, Rudd is found at the scene of a multiple murder at a remote campsite with minor injuries and few memories. Lyndi, the daughter of the victims, tries to help Rudd recover his memory and, together, they find a strength unique to survivors of terrible tragedies. But Rudd, desperate to protect Lyndi and unable to let the past be still, tries to manipulate their Mormon wedding ceremony to trick the priests (and God) by giving himself and Lyndi new secret names—names that match the killer and the victim in the one hundred-year-old murder. The nightmare has just begun . . .

]]> 223 Brian Evenson 1566891884 James 0 to-read 3.89 2006 The Open Curtain
author: Brian Evenson
name: James
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Warren 30199444
He’s also not as human as he believes himself to be.

But when he discovers the existence of another—above ground, outside the protection of the Warren—X must learn what it means to be human, or face the destruction of their two species.]]> 95 Brian Evenson 0765393158 James 0 to-read 3.74 2016 The Warren
author: Brian Evenson
name: James
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fugue State 6005193 208 Brian Evenson 1566892252 James 0 to-read 3.95 2009 Fugue State
author: Brian Evenson
name: James
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up]]> 198332459 350 Abigail Shrier James 0 to-read 3.98 2024 Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up
author: Abigail Shrier
name: James
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Experience of Emptiness 3665348 276 Clive Hazell 1410797694 James 0 to-read 3.71 2003 The Experience of Emptiness
author: Clive Hazell
name: James
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In the Bedroom: Seven Stories 33888
A father in mourning contemplates the unthinkable as the only way to allay his grief. A boy must learn to care for his younger brother when their mother leaves the family. A young woman who has never lacked lovers despairs of ever finding love itself, and then makes an accidental discovery that brings her real joy. Culled from Dubus’s treasured collections Selected Stories and Dancing After Hours, these beautiful stories of people at pivotal moments in their lives are some of the most bewitching and profound in American fiction.]]> 148 Andre Dubus 1400030773 James 0 to-read 4.19 1983 In the Bedroom: Seven Stories
author: Andre Dubus
name: James
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Self and Others 305380 184 R.D. Laing 0415198194 James 0 4.03 1959 Self and Others
author: R.D. Laing
name: James
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves:
review:

]]> The Water Cure 39335566 The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men.

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has laid the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.

But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?

A haunting, riveting debut about the capacity for violence and the potency of female desire, The Water Cure both devastates and astonishes as it reflects our own world back at us.]]> 288 Sophie Mackintosh 0385543875 James 0 to-read 3.21 2018 The Water Cure
author: Sophie Mackintosh
name: James
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cursed Bread 59823055
Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population.
In that town lived a woman named Elodie. She was the baker’s wife: a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, the forceful ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet, Elodie was quickly drawn into their orbit. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse – but who was the predator and on whom did they prey?
Audacious and mesmerising, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory’s hall of mirrors, and an erotic fable of transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.]]> 184 Sophie Mackintosh 0385548311 James 0 to-read 3.27 2023 Cursed Bread
author: Sophie Mackintosh
name: James
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fever Dream 30763882
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.

Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.]]> 183 Samanta Schweblin 0399184597 James 0 to-read 3.62 2014 Fever Dream
author: Samanta Schweblin
name: James
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Library at Mount Char 26892110
After all, she was a normal American herself, once.

That was a long time ago, of course—before the time she calls “adoption day,” when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.

Father could do strange things. He could call light from darkness. Sometimes he raised the dead. And when he was disobeyed, the consequences were terrible.

In the years since Father took her in, Carolyn hasn't gotten out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father's ancient Pelapi customs. They've studied the books in his library and learned some of the secrets behind his equally ancient power.

Sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God.

Now, Father is missing. And if God truly is dead, the only thing that matters is who will inherit his library—and with it, power over all of creation.

As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her.

But Carolyn can win. She's sure of it. What she doesn't realize is that her victory may come at an unacceptable price—because in becoming a God, she's forgotten a great deal about being human.]]> 390 Scott Hawkins 0553418629 James 0 to-read 4.06 2015 The Library at Mount Char
author: Scott Hawkins
name: James
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I'm Thinking of Ending Things 40605223 Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.]]> 241 Iain Reid James 0 to-read 3.53 2016 I'm Thinking of Ending Things
author: Iain Reid
name: James
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Foe 37510662
We don’t get visitors. Not out here. We never have.

In Iain Reid’s second haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel, set in the near-future, Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable, solitary life on their farm, far from the city lights, but in close quarters with each other. One day, a stranger from the city arrives with alarming Junior has been randomly selected to travel far away from the farm...very far away. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Henrietta won't have a chance to miss him, because she won't be left alone—not even for a moment. Henrietta will have company. Familiar company.

Told in Reid’s sharp and evocative style, Foe examines the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be (or not to be) a person. An eerily entrancing page-turner, it churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale.]]> 261 Iain Reid 150112742X James 0 to-read 3.70 2018 Foe
author: Iain Reid
name: James
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Cipher 341930
It began with Nakota and her crooked grin. She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse...

Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession - through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror...]]> 356 Kathe Koja 0440207827 James 0 to-read 3.54 1991 The Cipher
author: Kathe Koja
name: James
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Only Good Indians 52180399 The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.]]> 305 Stephen Graham Jones 1982136456 James 0 to-read 3.68 2020 The Only Good Indians
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: James
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Complete Poems 47730 Live or Die, as well as seven poems from her last years.]]> 622 Anne Sexton 0395957761 James 0 to-read 4.29 1981 The Complete Poems
author: Anne Sexton
name: James
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mrs. Bridge (Mrs and Mr Bridge, #1)]]> 129972 Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0865470561 / 9780865470569 can be found here

The wife of a successful lawyer in 1930s Kansas City, India Bridge, tries to cope with her dissatisfaction with an easy, though empty, life.

Before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique there was Mrs. Bridge, an inspired novel set in the years around World War II that testified to the sapping ennui of an unexamined suburban life. India Bridge, the title character, has three children and a meticulous workaholic husband. She defends her dainty, untouched guest towels from son Douglas, who has the gall to dry his hands on one, and earnestly attempts to control her daughters with pronouncements such as "Now see here, young lady ... in the morning one doesn't wear earrings that dangle." Though her life is increasingly filled with leisure and plenty, she can't shuffle off vague feelings of dissatisfaction, confusion, and futility. Evan S. Connell, who also wrote the twinned novel Mr. Bridge, builds a world with tiny brushstrokes and short, telling vignettes.]]> 246 Evan S. Connell 0865470561 James 0 to-read 4.05 1959 Mrs. Bridge (Mrs and Mr Bridge, #1)
author: Evan S. Connell
name: James
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Train Dreams 12991188 116 Denis Johnson 1250007658 James 0 to-read 3.91 2002 Train Dreams
author: Denis Johnson
name: James
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Love 11326
“A marvelous work, which enlarges our conception not only of love but of racial politics.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching.]]> 224 Toni Morrison 1400078474 James 0 to-read 3.82 2003 Love
author: Toni Morrison
name: James
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All the Birds, Singing 18142324 Granta's Best Young British Novelists, a stunningly insightful, emotionally powerful new novel about an outsider haunted by an inescapable past: a story of loneliness and survival, guilt and loss, and the power of forgiveness.

Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wanted it to be. But every few nights something—or someone—picks off one of the sheep and sets off a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumors of an obscure, formidable beast. But there is also Jake's past—hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, held in the silences about her family and the scars that stripe her back—a past that threatens to break into the present.

With exceptional artistry and empathy, All the Birds, Singing reveals an isolated life in all its struggles and stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption.]]> 240 Evie Wyld 0307907767 James 0 to-read 3.64 2013 All the Birds, Singing
author: Evie Wyld
name: James
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Driver's Seat 668282 Alternative cover edition of ISBN 0141188340

Lise is thin, neither good-looking nor bad-looking. One day she walks out of her office, acquires a gaudy new outfit, adopts a girlier tone of voice, and heads to the airport to fly south. On the plane she takes a seat between two men. One is delighted with her company, the other is deeply perturbed. So begins an unnerving journey into the darker recesses of human nature.]]> 103 Muriel Spark James 0 to-read 3.62 1970 The Driver's Seat
author: Muriel Spark
name: James
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Heavens 41182168
London, 1593. Kate wakes as Emilia - the mistress of a nobleman - and finds the plague at her door. Afflicted by premonitions of a burnt and lifeless city, she sets out to save the world. Each decision she makes will change her life with Ben for ever.

A story of love and alternate universes, madness and time travel, The Heavens is a dream bound up in a strange awakening; it is a novel of what we have lost, and what we might yet be able to save.]]> 272 Sandra Newman 1783784849 James 0 to-read 3.22 2019 The Heavens
author: Sandra Newman
name: James
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All That Man Is 26046318 All That Man Is aggregate into a picture of a single shared existence, a picture that interrogates the state of modern manhood while bringing to life, unforgettably, the physical and emotional terrain of an increasingly globalized Europe. And so these nine lives form an ingenious and new kind of novel, in which David Szalay expertly plots a dark predicament for the twenty-first-century man.

Dark and disturbing, but also often wickedly and uproariously comic, All That Man Is is notable for the acute psychological penetration Szalay brings to bear on his characters, from the working-class ex-grunt to the pompous college student, the middle-aged loser to the Russian oligarch. Steadily and mercilessly, as this brilliantly conceived book progresses, the protagonist at the center of each chapter is older than the last one, it gets colder out, and All That Man Is gathers exquisite power. Szalay is a writer of supreme gifts -- a master of a new kind of realism that vibrates with detail, intelligence, relevance, and devastating pathos.]]> 448 David Szalay 0224099779 James 0 to-read 3.63 2016 All That Man Is
author: David Szalay
name: James
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Flights 36885304 Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer.

Here I am --
World in your head --
Your head in the world --
Syndrome --
Cabinet of curiosities --
Seeing is knowing --
Seven years of trips --
Guidance from Cioran --
Kunicki: water (I) --
Benedictus, quivenit]]> 416 Olga Tokarczuk 0525534199 James 0 to-read 3.73 2007 Flights
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: James
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Light Perpetual 55711743 From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.

Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.

Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption.

Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.]]> 336 Francis Spufford 1982174145 James 0 to-read 3.59 2021 Light Perpetual
author: Francis Spufford
name: James
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Hunger 61353532 From the prizewinning author of God's Own Country and A Natural comes a moving and intimate exploration of marriage, devotion and sacrifice, and a woman's enduring search for freedom.

A Hunger is the story of Anita, a talented sous-chef at a high-end London restaurant. At home, however, her husband Patrick is suffering from dementia and declining rapidly. As she is thrown between two conflicting worlds – the exciting bustle of her kitchen and her exhausting new role as a carer – Anita must make a decision about her husband's future, as well as her own. Should she free them both by acting on his last plea for mercy, or should she remain faithful to the person Patrick once used to be? A decision complicated by ambition and the guilt of her own past – and by her intensifying friendship with another man, Peter, and the temptation of a new life.

A Hunger is a novel about love and sacrifice, and how illness and duty affect ordinary lives. With tenderness and precision, Ross Raisin explores what it means to look after somebody at the end of a life – what we owe to our loved ones, and to ourselves.]]> 459 Ross Raisin James 0 to-read 4.02 A Hunger
author: Ross Raisin
name: James
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hinton 49085905
In a bravura and startling meeting of real and philosophical elements, Mark Blacklock has created a ravishing period piece of late-Victorian social, scientific and domestic life. Hinton is about extraordinary discoveries, and terrible choices. It is about people who discover and map other realms, and what the implications might be for those of us left behind.]]> 272 Mark Blacklock 1783785209 James 0 to-read 3.23 2020 Hinton
author: Mark Blacklock
name: James
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Solid Geometry 49208295 'First Love, Last Rites' is about a man who learns some topology from his grandfather's journals...but not your average topology. He learns how to fold surfaces (like pieces of paper) until they disappear...and that's just the beginning!]]> Ian McEwan James 0 to-read 3.38 Solid Geometry
author: Ian McEwan
name: James
average rating: 3.38
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[."The Fourth Dimension Is A Many Splattered Thing!"]]> 60753323
And, you will see a few ideas Kirby revisited decades later in his original stories. Behold the walking dogs and rats of “The Last Enemy” who resemble the animalistic characters of Kamandi, and a flying chair that would get an upgrade to seat Metron of the New Gods. Enjoy!

Collector’s Guide: From Alarming Tales #1-4; Harvey, 1957-1958. Issues #1-3 are now collected in a Kindle version!]]> Jack Kirby James 0 to-read 0.0 ."The Fourth Dimension Is A Many Splattered Thing!"
author: Jack Kirby
name: James
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>