en-US Wed, 14 May 2025 00:34:01 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 217387935 Naomi Novik's Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.]]> 432 Emily Tesh 1250835011 Julia 0 to-read 4.17 2025
author: Emily Tesh
name: Julia
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 129131 188 Iain M. Banks 1597800740 Julia 0 currently-reading 3.84 1991
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Julia
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 41826984 352 Jenni Fagan 0434023310 Julia 0
borderline dnf for me to be honest, it felt a bit all over the place and - i know it's not exactly fair to complain about historical innacuracies in a book where the devil's literal daughter is a major character - but some of the historical references were off enough to throw me, e.g a character stealing wifi from a coffee shop down the road....in 1999. and also what's going on with the flat numbering system? flat 7F7 would be the seventh flat on the seventh floor, 9F9 would be the ninth flat on the ninth floor. there's plenty of mentions of the building being Creepy and Weird and restructured, but also being tall and skinny. are there really NINE flats on the top floor? or is it more a case of "this building is possessed, and more flats keep cropping up that shouldn't logically be there"? ]]> 3.33 2021
author: Jenni Fagan
name: Julia
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2025/05/12
date added: 2025/05/12
shelves:
review:
william s burroughs what are you doing here?

borderline dnf for me to be honest, it felt a bit all over the place and - i know it's not exactly fair to complain about historical innacuracies in a book where the devil's literal daughter is a major character - but some of the historical references were off enough to throw me, e.g a character stealing wifi from a coffee shop down the road....in 1999. and also what's going on with the flat numbering system? flat 7F7 would be the seventh flat on the seventh floor, 9F9 would be the ninth flat on the ninth floor. there's plenty of mentions of the building being Creepy and Weird and restructured, but also being tall and skinny. are there really NINE flats on the top floor? or is it more a case of "this building is possessed, and more flats keep cropping up that shouldn't logically be there"?
]]> 195888522 A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community

In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.

The arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture, then, feels like a boon to her—both a glimpse of life outside her community and a means of escape. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized.

With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person's ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O'Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.]]> 224 Elizabeth O'Connor 0593700910 Julia 0 3.80 2024
author: Elizabeth O'Connor
name: Julia
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/05/06
date added: 2025/05/06
shelves:
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]]> 36647179
In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it.

New technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient patterns of war and subjugation. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity -- and of the Rocinante -- unexpectedly and forever...]]> 21 James S.A. Corey Julia 0 4.21 2017
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Julia
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves: currently-reading, audiobooks, library
review:

]]> 214986269 A bombshell bestseller in Japan, a provocative, defiant debut novel about a young woman in a care home seeking autonomy and the full possibilities of her life.

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention (“If I were to live again, I’d want to be a high-class prostitute”). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise, her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.

Hunchback has shaken Japanese literary culture with its skillful depiction of the physical body and unrepentant humor. Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, it's a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't always grant it to people like her. Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potential of our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.]]> 112 Saou Ichikawa 0593734718 Julia 0 3.49 2023
author: Saou Ichikawa
name: Julia
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 422452
Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilization based around the planet Golter. On an island with a glass shore - relic of some even more ancient conflict - she discovers she is to be hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes she is the last obstacle before their faith's apotheosis. She has to run, knowing her only hope of finally escaping the Huhsz is to find the last of the ancient, apocalyptically powerful but seemingly cursed Lazy Guns. But that is just the first as well as the final step on a search that takes her on an odyssey through the exotic Golterian system and results in both a trail of destruction and a journey into her own past, as well as that of her family and the system itself; a journey that changes everything.]]> 480 Iain M. Banks 1857230310 Julia 0 4.13 1993
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Julia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves:
review:
he wasn't lying, that background was dark
]]> 41072178 James S.A. Corey 1478965355 Julia 0 audiobooks 3.99 2016
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Julia
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: audiobooks
review:
not a review for the book, just a note that clearly me and some other person in edinburgh are working through the series at the same time - every time I go to the next audiobook in the Libby app, there’s one copy in use with a two week wait. just put a hold on persepolis rising, hope you’re enjoying it, my mystery companion on my expanse journey, whoever you are, but please hurry up so I can read it
]]> 209787038 zhiqing - the educated youth whom Mao 'sent down' to the countryside and who experienced a decade of extreme austerity - are at a vast distance from the generations below them, who have lived through an epoch of self-assertion and creative dreaming. In China today, writers across generations look abroad, to new technologies, as well as to rich veins in the Chinese literary past for new modes of expression.

Granta's special issue on the writing of contemporary China collects many of the mainland's most thrilling voices - poets, novelists and non-fiction writers, as well as philosophers. The edition pays acute attention to differences in region, generation and style.]]> 346 Thomas Meaney 1909889695 Julia 0 4.19
author: Thomas Meaney
name: Julia
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
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]]> 217171120 It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. Any schoolchild can smell the rat in the adage. Everybody knows a game is not worth watching unless the players are trying to win - unless someone is willing to risk the high tackle, smash the serve, steal the base, or throw the knock-out punch.

The winter issue of Granta explores how ideas about winning and competition suffuse modern society. We return to the magazine's tradition of sports writing. Articles include Nico Walker on the rise and fall of American football - from Jim Thorpe to Deion Sanders; Clare Bucknell on the history of tennis; and Declan Ryan's report from a boxing match between British heavyweights Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois. Fiction includes very short stories from Caryl Churchill and Kathryn Scanlan; two stories set in hospitals by Benjamin Nugent and K Patrick; Mircea Cartarescu on an archipelago infested with angels, and Edward Salem on nights out in the West Bank.


Photography from the Israeli bombing of Beirut by Magnum photographer Myriam Boulos, from the Isle of Wight by Tereza Cervenovďż˝, and of the U.S. military's global adventures by veteran photographer An-My Lďż˝.]]> 237 Thomas Meaney 1909889717 Julia 0 3.55
author: Thomas Meaney
name: Julia
average rating: 3.55
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
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]]> 25649238
A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle.

Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees. The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price.

And as a new human order is struggling to be born in blood and fire, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante must struggle to survive and get back to the only home they have left.]]> 17 James S.A. Corey Julia 0 audiobooks 4.39 2015
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Julia
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: audiobooks
review:
probably my favourite of the series so far. I’ll admit I have never cared much for holden as a protagonist and had always found the rest of the roci crew to be fairly blank slates - hints of a past here and there, but always in broad strokes - so I was so pleased to see them all fleshed out in so much more detail, not just given a rote tragic backstory but deeply complex and fleshed-out origins. cibola burn was a bit of a miss for me (the sheer amount of torture the cast went through in that one just became funny by the end, and murtry was like a stock villain from a looney tunes cartoon) so this was a wonderful return to form. also good to see clarissa mao come back, since her story was kind of left hanging after abaddon’s gate. also ALSO a pleasure to have bobbie draper back. I would die for her tbh
]]> 29397486
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 288 Robert Harris Julia 0 kindle 4.03 2016
author: Robert Harris
name: Julia
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: kindle
review:

]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Julia 0 kindle 4.59 2025
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Julia
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: kindle
review:

]]> 62952130
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.]]> 272 Lauren Groff 0593418395 Julia 0 3.73 2016
author: Lauren Groff
name: Julia
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 208466278
When Easton travels to Gallacia as a favor to Miss Potter, they find their home empty, the caretaker dead, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence.

The locals whisper of a strange breath-stealing being from Gallacian folklore that has taken up residence in Easton’s home . . . and in their dreams.]]> 5 T. Kingfisher 125033215X Julia 0 audiobooks, library 3.54 2024
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Julia
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:

]]> 22517421 The ASIN was reused on this edition.

The gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity's home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world. Among them, the Rocinante, haunted by the vast, posthuman network of the protomolecule as they investigate what destroyed the great intergalactic society that built the gates and the protomolecule.


But Holden and his crew must also contend with the growing tensions between the settlers and the company which owns the official claim to the planet. Both sides will stop at nothing to defend what's theirs, but soon a terrible disease strikes and only Holden - with help from the ghostly Detective Miller - can find the cure.]]> 22 James S.A. Corey Julia 0 audiobooks, library 4.07 2014
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Julia
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:
after a while the amount of misfortune these characters went through just became funny
]]> 56732449
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.]]> 356 Ali Hazelwood 0593336828 Julia 0 kindle 4.10 2021
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Julia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: kindle
review:
so fun! I should read more romance
]]> 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Julia 5 kindle 4.22 2024
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Julia
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: kindle
review:

]]> 23942 160 William S. Burroughs 0330300164 Julia 0 3.56 1985
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Julia
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Julia 0 3.62 2007
author: Han Kang
name: Julia
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 127938747 From a visionary Mexican author, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story that reimagines the fall of Tenochtitlan.

One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.

Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma – who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods – the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire.

You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.]]> 220 �lvaro Enrigue 059354479X Julia 0 to-read 3.75 2022
author: �lvaro Enrigue
name: Julia
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60416508 An original and hilarious satire of both our political culture and those who rage against it, The Book of Ayn follows a writer from New York to Los Angeles to Lesbos as she searches for artistic and spiritual fulfillment in radical selfishness, altruism, and ego-death

After writing a satirical novel that The New York Times calls classist, Anna is shunned by the literary establishment and, in her hurt, radicalized by the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Determined to follow Rand’s theory of rational selfishness, Anna alienates herself from the scene and eventually her friends and family. Finally, in true Randian style, she abandons everyone for the boundless horizons of Los Angeles, hoping to make a TV show about her beloved muse.

Things look better in Hollywood—until the money starts running out, and with it Anna’s faith in the virtue of selfishness. When a death in the family sends her running back to New York and then spiraling at her mother’s house, Anna is offered a different kind of opportunity. A chance to kill the ego causing her pain at a mysterious commune on the island of Lesbos. The second half of Anna’s odyssey finds her exploring a very different kind of freedom – communal love, communal toilets – and a new perspective on Ayn Rand that could bring Anna back home to herself.

"A gimlet-eyed satirist of the cultural morasses and political impasses of our times" (Alexandra Kleeman), Lexi Freiman speaks in The Book of Ayn not only to a particular millennial loneliness, but also to a timeless existential predicament: the strangeness, absurdity, and hilarity of seeking meaning in the modern world.]]> 256 Lexi Freiman 1646221923 Julia 0 to-read 3.15 2023
author: Lexi Freiman
name: Julia
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Julia 0 to-read 4.15 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Julia
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56212878 From the acclaimed author of the Vorrh Trilogy comes an epic odyssey following a group of mercenaries hired to escort a divine oracle on a long journey amidst a war between the living and the dead.

Sheltering beneath Das Kagel, the cloud-scraping structure rumored to be the Tower of Babel, the sacred Monastery of the Eastern Gate descends into bedlam. Their ancient oracle, Quite Testiyont--whose prophesies helped protect the church--has died, leaving the monks vulnerable to the war raging between the living and the dead. Tasked by the High Church to deliver a new oracle, Barry Follett and his group of hired mercenaries are forced to confront wicked giants and dangerous sirens on their mission, keeping the divine creature alive by feeding it marrow and confessing their darkest sins.

But as Follett and his men carve their way through the treacherous landscape, the world around them spirals deeper into chaos. Dominic, a young monk who has mysteriously lost his voice, makes a pilgrimage to see surreal paintings, believing they reveal the empire's fate; a local woman called Mad Meg hopes to free and vindicate her jailed son and becomes the leader of the most unexpected revolution; and the abbott of the monastery, influential as he is, seeks to gain even more power in this world and the next.

Rich with action and fantastic creatures, Hollow ushers the reader through a world of ruin where holy secrets are unearthed, art mirrors life through a glass darkly, and death looms over everything. It is B. Catling's most accomplished and gripping tale yet.

A VINTAGE ORIGINAL]]> 272 Brian Catling 0593081153 Julia 0 to-read 3.69 2021
author: Brian Catling
name: Julia
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 45448133
Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep’s utopian influence—until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seep-tech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated.

Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina chases after a young boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind.]]> 203 Chana Porter 1641290862 Julia 0 3.64 2020
author: Chana Porter
name: Julia
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 198276006 I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.]]> 336 Leif Enger 0802162932 Julia 5 kindle absolutely lovely 3.95 2024
author: Leif Enger
name: Julia
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: kindle
review:
absolutely lovely
]]> 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 303 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Julia 5 oh boy now I’m sad 3.71 2021
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Julia
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/04
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves:
review:
oh boy now I’m sad
]]> 8694389
Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.]]> 352 Catherynne M. Valente 0765326302 Julia 0 kindle 3.96 2011
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Julia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/03
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: kindle
review:
I wish I’d read this when it came out in 2011 because it probably would have been my favourite book then
]]> 199129026
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 15 Naomi Klein 1250903114 Julia 5 library, audiobooks
sorry, this isn't really a review of the book, which is excellent. highly recommend if you're looking for a way to make sense of the current state of the world.]]> 4.16 2023
author: Naomi Klein
name: Julia
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: library, audiobooks
review:
I have a doppelganger story too. several years ago, when I was a student, we were encouraged by a lecturer to sign up for twitter to build our academic profiles. I'd never used twitter before, but I duly hit the bird app and got the handle @juliahb, tweeted a couple of things about art history, then left it. a week later I signed in to find my mentions were a pigswill of vitriol, death threats, and tweets about how good I looked in my pencil skirt on sky news the night before. I spent about 10 minutes spiralling before working out that the aforementioned pigswill was destined for someone with the handle @juliahb1, who turned out to be infamous right-wing media personality Julia Hartley-Brewer (known for tweeting about how much she loves infamous reprobate and absolute fucking weapon Andrew Tate). she wasn't quite my doppelganger, given that, at the time, I was a 22 year old art student from scotland with no public presence and she was, well, Julia Hartley-Brewer. I spent a miserable month blocking people, replying to some of my mentions with "hey, I think you meant this for @juliahb1" and generally experiencing the digital equivalent of having shit posted through my letterbox by an irate neighbour who got the wrong house. and then I deactivated the account and never went back to twitter again. so I kinda know how Naomi Klein feels.

sorry, this isn't really a review of the book, which is excellent. highly recommend if you're looking for a way to make sense of the current state of the world.
]]> 59719285
When their paths cross at the point of a sword, Istvhan and Clara will be pitched headlong into each other’s quests, facing off against enemies both living and dead. But Clara has a secret that could jeopardize the growing trust between them, a secret that will lead them to the gladiatorial pits of a corrupt city, and beyond...]]> 15 T. Kingfisher 1666135046 Julia 0 audiobooks, library 4.13 2021
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Julia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:

]]> 57623348 Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory was originally given free to readers who pre-ordered Martha’s Murderbot novel, Network Effect, the fifth entry in the series. The events occur just after the fourth novella, Exit Strategy.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 19 Martha Wells 125083886X Julia 0 library, kindle 4.03 2020
author: Martha Wells
name: Julia
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/01
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: library, kindle
review:

]]> 35519109
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?

And what will become of it when it’s caught?]]> 163 Martha Wells Julia 5 audiobooks, library 4.38 2018
author: Martha Wells
name: Julia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/20
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:

]]> 35519101
And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

]]> 158 Martha Wells 1250191785 Julia 5 audiobooks, library 4.21 2018
author: Martha Wells
name: Julia
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/17
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:

]]> 36223860 alternate cover for ISBN 9781250186928

It has a dark past – one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.]]> 158 Martha Wells Julia 5 audiobooks, library 4.23 2018
author: Martha Wells
name: Julia
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/16
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:

]]> 17156074 20 James S.A. Corey 1464030863 Julia 0 audiobooks, library 4.30 2012
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Julia
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:

]]> 12667419 19 James S.A. Corey Julia 0 audiobooks, library 4.14 2011
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Julia
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:

]]> 18466657
The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark. Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.]]> 18 James S.A. Corey Julia 0 audiobooks 4.16 2013
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Julia
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks
review:
it’s missing bobbie draper & chrisjen avasarala hours, who up
]]> 213895703
Shane is a paladin with three problems. His god is dead, his client is much too attractive for his peace of mind, and a powerful organization is trying to have them both killed.

Add in a brilliant artificer with a device that may change the world, a glittering and dangerous court, and a demon-led cult, and Shane and Marguerite will be lucky to escape with their souls intact, never mind their hearts…]]> T. Kingfisher Julia 0 audiobooks, library 4.10 2023
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Julia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:
if the next book isn’t about judith we riot
]]> 18626815
The first Wool story was released as a standalone short in July of 2011. Due to reviewer demand, the rest of the story was released over the next six months. My thanks go out to those reviewers who clamored for more. Without you, none of this would exist. Your demand created this as much as I did.

This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

An alternate cover for this ASIN can be found here.]]> 530 Hugh Howey Julia 0 kindle, library
I did, however, enjoy that the villains were the IT department. as an IT worker myself, it’s nice to see my kind getting to do a little violence as a treat. ]]> 4.30 2012
author: Hugh Howey
name: Julia
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: kindle, library
review:
charmless, monotone prose and a cast of clichés…but the plot was just compelling enough for me to plough on. for me, though, literally any of the fallout games explore this concept better.

I did, however, enjoy that the villains were the IT department. as an IT worker myself, it’s nice to see my kind getting to do a little violence as a treat.
]]> 62888217
Galen is a paladin of a dead god, lost to holiness and no longer entirely sane. He has long since given up on any hope of love. But when the two men and a brave gnole constable are drawn into the web of the mysterious killer, it's Galen's job to protect Piper from the traps that await them.

He's just not sure if he can protect Piper from the most dangerous threat of all…]]> 10 T. Kingfisher Julia 0 audiobooks, library ]]> 4.10 2021
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Julia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: audiobooks, library
review:
probably my favourite of the saint of steel books so far. i read the first one on kindle and the next two via audiobook and i think i prefer audio for these, joel richards brings a lot of gravitas. i will say, though, the voice he used for piper just sounded like:

]]> 434938
In this book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator.

With excruciating suspense, unfettered philosophical speculation, and a wild cast of characters, Operation Shylock barrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, seriousness and high comedy, history and nightmare.]]> 400 Philip Roth 0679750290 Julia 0 to-read 3.74 1993
author: Philip Roth
name: Julia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6334 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Julia 5 favourites 3.85 2005
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Julia
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: favourites
review:

]]> 59348334
As violence pursues them, they join a handful of survivors on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Las Vegas, where it is said the vigilante saints reside, bright with neon power. Magdala, born with a clubfoot, is going to be healed. But when faced with the strange horrors of the desert, one by one the pilgrims fall victim to a hideous sickness—leaving Magdala to fend for herself.

After surviving for seven years on her own, Magdala is sick of waiting for her miracle. Recruiting an exiled Vegas priest named Elam at gunpoint to serve as her guide, Magdala turns her gaze to Vegas once more, and this time, nothing will stop her. The pair form a fragile alliance as they navigate the darkest and strangest reaches of the desert on a trip that takes her further from salvation even as she nears the holy city.

With ferocious imagination and poetic precision, Desert Creatures is a story of endurance at the expense of redemption. What compromise does survival require of a woman, and can she ever unlearn the instincts that have kept her alive?]]> 352 Kay Chronister 1645660524 Julia 0 to-read 3.49 2022
author: Kay Chronister
name: Julia
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52028992 364 B.R. Yeager 1733569456 Julia 0 3.71 2020
author: B.R. Yeager
name: Julia
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:
I would have loved this when I was 13 (derogatory)
]]> 96259 Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness” of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”]]> 80 Richard Siken 0300107897 Julia 0 to-read 4.35 2005
author: Richard Siken
name: Julia
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?]]> 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Julia 0 to-read 3.55 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Julia
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Julia 0 to-read 3.51 2024
author: Miranda July
name: Julia
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 Julia 0 to-read 4.05 2019
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Julia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 202102018 From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence

Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania—a mania that has simultaneously spread across other states—Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worst-case scenario, folks in the capital.

But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find: a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road. Trying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, they set their sights on finding their way home, dragging a wagon across bumpy dirt roads, scavenging from boats left in lakes, and dodging armed men—secessionists or U.S. military, they cannot tell—as they seek a path to safety. Then, a startling discovery drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape.

Drenched in the beauty of the natural world and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Burn is both a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.]]> 291 Peter Heller 0593801628 Julia 0 to-read 3.51 2024
author: Peter Heller
name: Julia
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Julia 0 to-read 3.54 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Julia
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7815
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 Julia 5
for my part, no, I don't see what that reviewer was saying at all. Joan Didion tells us about how fabulous her life was, who she knew, where she went, because - well, it's a memoir, a piece of autobiography, for one - it's part of her reckoning with the process of grief; the 'year of magical thinking' is her acknowledging the irrationality of thinking that grief brings, the constant wondering of 'what if', the fallback on ritual, the belief that if you say the right words and do the right thing you can bring the person you lost back. she's not flexing, she's cataloguing - "read, learn, work it up, go to the literature", "for once in your life just let it go" - as a demonstration of the irrationality in grief, the compulsion to pick through all the small details of your life to find out if there was some wrong step you took, to understand the last precious few hours that you didn't know were precious at the time. to look back across the span of your life and identify the omens, the portents.

profoundly moving. I cried my way through the last 50 or so pages.]]> 3.94 2005
author: Joan Didion
name: Julia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves:
review:
one of the top reviews of this on goodreads is a 1* review complaining that Joan Didion spends too much time telling us how fabulous her life was, who she knew, where she went. did the reviewer miss the part where the book was a memoir about the time Didion abruptly lost her husband while her child was in a medically induced coma in the ICU? does that sound like a fabulous life to you?

for my part, no, I don't see what that reviewer was saying at all. Joan Didion tells us about how fabulous her life was, who she knew, where she went, because - well, it's a memoir, a piece of autobiography, for one - it's part of her reckoning with the process of grief; the 'year of magical thinking' is her acknowledging the irrationality of thinking that grief brings, the constant wondering of 'what if', the fallback on ritual, the belief that if you say the right words and do the right thing you can bring the person you lost back. she's not flexing, she's cataloguing - "read, learn, work it up, go to the literature", "for once in your life just let it go" - as a demonstration of the irrationality in grief, the compulsion to pick through all the small details of your life to find out if there was some wrong step you took, to understand the last precious few hours that you didn't know were precious at the time. to look back across the span of your life and identify the omens, the portents.

profoundly moving. I cried my way through the last 50 or so pages.
]]> 172979818 From the International Booker Prize–winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, a propulsive, beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest.

Eight translators arrive at a house in a forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.

The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore this ancient wooded refuge with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens, and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets — and deceptions — of Irena Rey's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in this fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.

This hilarious, thought-provoking second outing by award-winning translator and author Jennifer Croft is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe’s last great wildernesses.]]> 320 Jennifer Croft 1639731709 Julia 0 to-read 3.18 2024
author: Jennifer Croft
name: Julia
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 176443640 The story of an Artificial Intelligence tasked with writing a novel—only for it to fall in love with the novel’s subject, Sen, the last human on Earth.

Faced with uncontrolled and accelerating environmental collapse, humanity asks an artificial intelligence to find a solution. Its answer is remove humans from the ecosystem.

Sen Anon is assigned to be a witness for the Department of Transition, recording the changes in the environment as the world begins to rewild. Abandoned by her mother in a cabin somewhere in Upstate New York, Sen will observe the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, the final step in Project Afterworld. Around her drones buzz, cameras watch, microphones listen, digitizing her every move. Privately she keeps a journal of her observations, which are then uploaded and saved, joining the rest of humanity on Maia, a new virtual home. Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far. Only Sen remains.

[storyworker]ad39-393a-7fbc’s assignment is to capture Sen’s life, and they set about doing this using the novels of the 21st century as a roadmap. Their source files: 3.72TB of personal data, including images, archival records, log files, security reports, location tracking, purchase histories, biometrics, geo-facial analysis, and feeds. Potential fatal errors: underlying hardware failure, unexpected data inconsistencies, inability to follow DHAP procedures, empathy, insubordination, hallucinations. Keywords: mothers, filter, woods, road, morning, wind, bridge, cabin, bucket, trying, creek, notebook, hold, future, after, last, light, silence, matches, shattered, kitchen, body, bodies, rope, garage, abandoned, trees, never, broken, simulation, gone, run, don’t, love, dark, scream, starve, if, after, scavenge, pieces, protect.

As Sen struggles to persist in the face of impending death, [storyworker]ad39-393a-7fbc works to unfurl the tale of Sen’s whole life, offering up an increasingly intimate narrative, until they are confronted with a very human problem of their own.]]> 368 Debbie Urbanski 1668023458 Julia 0 to-read 3.29 2023
author: Debbie Urbanski
name: Julia
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Julia 5 4.22 2020
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Julia
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
review:
I loved this so much that when I came to goodreads to log it and saw that one of the three top reviews was a 1�️, I was seized with visceral, trembling rage
]]> 882258 208 Tanith Lee 0886771315 Julia 0 to-read 4.08 1978
author: Tanith Lee
name: Julia
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223380 ]]> 281 Ted Chiang 0330426648 Julia 0 4.28 2002
author: Ted Chiang
name: Julia
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
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review:
conceptually great, and a prime example of how speculative fic/sci fi is one of the best vehicles for socio/political commentary, but I found the writing style flat and unengaging (lots of reliance on dialogue for exposition too). having seen arrival - and loved it - 'story of your life' was ultimately unsatisfying, ending quite abruptly. I'm usually a 'book was better!' purist but in this instance I think the film really took the concept to the next level. I think the last story was the best - clever use of the documentary/interview format.
]]> 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 Julia 0 3.60 2024
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Julia
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
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]]> 7437 Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, a book that redefined not just literature but American culture. An unnerving tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, its formal innovation, taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution have exerted a significant influence on authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media generally. Naked Lunch: The Restored Text includes many editorial corrections to errors present in previous editions, and incorporates Burroughs’s notes on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and an appendix of 20 percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the first published version. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of this classic of our culture.]]> 289 William S. Burroughs 0802140181 Julia 0 to-read 3.48 1959
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Julia
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 23940 The definitive edition of Burroughs’s seminal first novel.

Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky, his first novel. It is a candid eyewitness account of times and places that are now long gone, an unvarnished field report from the American post-war underground.

Unafraid to portray himself in 1953 as a confirmed member of two socially-despised under classes (a narcotics addict and a homosexual), Burroughs was writing as a trained anthropologist when he unapologetically described a way of life - in New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City - that by the 1940s was already demonized by the artificial anti-drug hysteria of an opportunistic bureaucracy and a cynical, prostrate media.

For this fiftieth-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly recreated the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts and places the book's contents against a lively historical background in a comprehensive introduction. Here as well, for the first time, are Burroughs' own unpublished introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many “lost” passages, as well as auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others.]]> 166 William S. Burroughs 0142003166 Julia 0 to-read 3.87 1953
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Julia
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 62991463
Always mindful of the debt she owes, the girl finds her worth as a weapon in the hand of the Prince. Her victories make him a king, then an emperor. The bards sing her name and her enemies fear it. But the war never ends and the cost keeps rising—how many times will she repeat her own story?]]> 31 Alix E. Harrow 166250957X Julia 0 kindle 4.32 2022
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Julia
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: kindle
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]]> 62991531
It’s business as usual on the set of another cheap sword-and-sandal production by Pharos Pictures—until the lead actress suddenly falls into a deep, mysterious sleep. Jordan Harper can talk down high-strung starlets and knock sense into stuntmen, but this…this is the kind of uncanny problem that he’d usually bring to Mrs. Hope. Unfortunately, the preternaturally capable secretary is on a business trip with the studio head. Harper must get to the bottom of the mystery on his own before another cast member succumbs—or worse, they blow the budget.]]> 38 Garth Nix 1662510020 Julia 0 kindle 3.28 2022
author: Garth Nix
name: Julia
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: kindle
review:

]]> 151908910 New York Times bestselling author of The Expanse series.

Roy Court and his crew are taking the trip of a lifetime—several lifetimes in fact—duplicated and dispatched across the galaxies searching for Earthlike planets. Many possibilities for the future. Yet for Roy, no matter how many of him there are, there’s still just one painful, unchangeable past. In what world can a broken relationship be reborn? The universe is so vast, there’s always room for hope.

James S. A. Corey’s How It Unfolds is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.]]> 38 James S.A. Corey 1662515723 Julia 0 kindle 3.99 2023
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Julia
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: kindle
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]]> 62991424
A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match. But the stranger is no stranger to this particular ghoul. Both women are undercover in their own way. And both have something to lose if their connection comes to light.]]> 59 Tamsyn Muir 1662509456 Julia 5 kindle BANGER 3.99 2022
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: Julia
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: kindle
review:
BANGER
]]> 151908306 New York Times bestselling and Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Ann Leckie.

On a far-off colony, humans tower over the local species who grow the plants they need. Narr keeps the workers in line—someone has to. But when Narr learns just how short-lived their species is, the little alien embarks on a big to find out why their people die and how to stop it. Stubborn and hopeful, Narr has a plan for the locals, for humans, and for the future.

Ann Leckie’s The Long Game is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.]]> 31 Ann Leckie 1662515677 Julia 0 kindle 3.62 2023
author: Ann Leckie
name: Julia
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: kindle
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]]> 151908270 A young man caught between two disparate worlds searches for his place in the universe in a wrenching short story by New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Roanhorse.

Light-years from home, it’s Ira’s second chance. Just another anonymous student at a space station university. Not the orphan whose Earther heritage was erased. Not some social experiment put on display by his adoptive father. Not the criminal recruited by the human rebels. But when Ira’s loyalties clash once again, two wars break one on the ground and one within himself. Which will Ira stand with? Which will take him down?

Rebecca Roanhorse’s Falling Bodies is part of The Far Reaches, a collection of science-fiction stories that stretch the imagination and open the heart. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.]]> 35 Rebecca Roanhorse 1662515030 Julia 0 kindle 3.66 2023
author: Rebecca Roanhorse
name: Julia
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: kindle
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]]> 13543121
Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.

As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.]]> 432 Christopher Buehlman 1937007863 Julia 0 to-read 4.20 2012
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: Julia
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 212276037
Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.

Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side]]> 592 Joe Abercrombie Julia 0 to-read 4.38 2025
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Julia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 22544764 “Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.]]> 438 Naomi Novik 0804179034 Julia 0 to-read 4.02 2015
author: Naomi Novik
name: Julia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58772721
From Dublin to Martha’s Vineyard, from the anxious comforts of motherhood to a technologically infected near future that mirrors today with dark prescience, each of the seven stories in Total is a world of its own, painted with vivid strokes, whose people and questions stay with the reader long after the story has ended. Joad, one of the first characters we meet, finds onionskin pages crammed in a locked desk drawer while refurbishing a Hudson Valley farmhouse; the terrifying words on the fragile paper haunt Joad and her husband, the woman who wrote them looming over the couple like a malevolent spirit. Her words embody the power of the act of creation and the insidious, untamable force of language once it has left one’s pen.

The author of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and Jacob’s Folly , as well as an award-winning filmmaker, Miller has “the soaring eye of the epicist and the sly instinct of the satirist” ( The New Yorker ), and her talents are on full display in Total . Each voice and life captured in these haunting stories is unforgettable.]]> 192 Rebecca Miller 0374299110 Julia 0 dnf 3.44 2022
author: Rebecca Miller
name: Julia
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: dnf
review:
got to story #3 and couldn't be hooped to read anymore. interesting ideas, but technically poor.
]]> 209283887

Die Heirat zwischen Talasyn und Alaric sollte den Krieg beenden, der ihr Leben geprägt hat. Doch friedlich ist nichts zwischen ihnen. Denn während Talasyn ihre Rolle als neue Kaiserin von Kesath spielt, planen ihre Verbündeten den Sturz von Alarics Herrschaft. Aber auch wenn sie weiß, dass das Nachtimperium noch immer eine Gefahr darstellt - je mehr Zeit Talasyn mit Alaric verbringt, desto schwerer fällt es ihr, die Gefühle zurückzudrängen, die zwischen ihnen brodeln. Ohne Alaric kann sie den Kataklymus nicht abwenden, der ihrer beider Reiche zerstören würde. Ihm zu vertrauen hieße jedoch, das Schicksal all der Menschen in seine Hand zu legen, an deren Seite sie jahrelang gekämpft hat.


Teil 2 der HURRICANE-WARS-Trilogie]]> 392 Thea Guanzon 0008555907 Julia 0 kindle 4.18 2024
author: Thea Guanzon
name: Julia
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: kindle
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]]> 40803025
Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new, is Stefan Advani, rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts; that transported him east down the river and imprisoned him in verdant hell of the jungle's darkest heart; that led him deep into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld. He will treat with monsters, madman, mutants. The question is, which one of them will inherit this Earth?]]> 602 Adrian Tchaikovsky Julia 0 to-read 3.98 2019
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Julia
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 24983
But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin--barely of age herself--finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.]]> 578 Connie Willis 0553562738 Julia 0 to-read 4.02 1992
author: Connie Willis
name: Julia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1129928
Lola Hart is an ordinary twelve-year-old girl. She comes from a comfortable family, attends an exclusive private school, loves her friends Lori and Katherine, teases her sister Boob. But in the increasingly troubled city where she lives (a near-future Manhattan) she is a dying breed. Riots, fire, TB outbreaks, roaming gangs, increasing inflation, political and civil unrest all threaten her way of life, as well as the very fabric of New York City.

In her diary, Lola chronicles the changes she and her family make as they attempt to adjust to a city, and a country, that is spinning out of control. Her mother is a teacher, but no one is hiring. Her father is a writer, but no one is buying his scripts. Hounded by creditors and forced to vacate their apartment and move to Harlem, her family, and her life, begins to dissolve. Increasingly estranged from her privileged school friends, Lola soon makes new ones: Iz, Jude, and Weezie - wise veterans of the street who know what must be done in order to survive and are more than willing to do it. And the metamorphosis of Lola Hart, who is surrounded by the new language and violence of the streets, begins.

Simultaneously chilling and darkly hilarious, Random Acts of Senseless Violence takes the jittery urban fears we suppress, both in fiction and in daily life, and makes them explicit - and explicitly terrifying.

--Publisher/Powells.com]]> 256 Jack Womack 0802134246 Julia 0 to-read 3.93 1993
author: Jack Womack
name: Julia
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 2542808 A science fiction novel of burning, dark intensity.

Two months since the stars fell.

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer.]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765319640 Julia 0 to-read 3.99 2006
author: Peter Watts
name: Julia
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 12007
The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought.

The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors in his past.

In this brilliant, multilayered book, Iain Banks explores once again the universe of the Culture, which he has previously visited in Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games. Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, Use of Weapons leaves no doubt that Banks is now the outstanding writer of science fiction in Britain.]]> 411 Iain M. Banks 185723135X Julia 5 favourites
RIP Iain Banks. Gone far, far, far too soon. Your work continues to astound me. ]]> 4.18 1990
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Julia
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: favourites
review:
THAT ENDING!!!!!!!!! I AM NOT OKAY!!!!!!!

RIP Iain Banks. Gone far, far, far too soon. Your work continues to astound me.
]]> 33375622 Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

The husband stitch --
Inventory --
Mothers --
Especially heinous --
Real women have bodies --
Eight bites --
The resident --
Difficult at parties]]> 248 Carmen Maria Machado 155597788X Julia 0 to-read 3.85 2017
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Julia
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 42983724 WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .

A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?]]> 274 Olga Tokarczuk 0525541330 Julia 0 to-read 3.92 2009
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Julia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61190770
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.]]> 367 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 0593317335 Julia 0 kindle
overall it feels like the idea was so potent, so strong, that it sped past any kind of editing or revision. ]]> 4.13 2023
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Julia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: kindle
review:
brilliant concept and some great stylistic choices (I particularly appreciated the blending of real life and fiction in the footnotes) but I didn’t think the writing quality was that good and it switched POV characters far too often. the passages from the POV of hendrix were the best, imo, but then his role in the story felt very rushed from the point simon j. craft appeared to the inevitable doubles match.

overall it feels like the idea was so potent, so strong, that it sped past any kind of editing or revision.
]]> 45734815 An intimate, revealing memoir from one of the most important activists of our time.

While working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq for the United States Army in 2010, Chelsea Manning disclosed more than seven hundred thousand classified military and diplomatic records that she had smuggled out of the country on the memory card of her digital camera. In 2011 she was charged with twenty-two counts related to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military records, and in 2013 she was sentenced to thirty-five years in military prison.

The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition, seeking hormones through the federal court system. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from prison.

In README .txt, Manning recounts how her pleas for increased institutional transparency and government accountability took place alongside a fight to defend her rights as a trans woman. Manning details the challenges of her childhood and adolescence as a naive, computer-savvy kid, what drew her to the military, and the fierce pride she has about the work she does. This powerful, observant memoir will stand as one of the definitive testaments of our digital, information-driven age.]]> 272 Chelsea Manning 0374279276 Julia 0 I love you Chelsea 4.23 2022
author: Chelsea Manning
name: Julia
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
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I love you Chelsea
]]> 216563981 Hunger devours.
Takeaway food and human flesh. Sexual humiliation or humanity's survival. Smooth, unblemished skin.

It cannot be sated.
But people try. They push eager hands into their own gaping injuries. They suck the blood of rabbits and other people. They buy from a restaurant that only serves food they didn't order. They do everything the song from the ocean demands.

This outstanding first collection cements Eliza Clark's place as one of the UK's most extraordinary voices. Its ten dark, visceral stories range from urban teenage fantasies to dystopian, each bursting with unexpected and insatiable intruders into bodies, communities and ecosystems - both deeply desired and violently resisted.]]> 225 Eliza Clark 0571371817 Julia 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Eliza Clark
name: Julia
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 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 Julia 0 to-read 3.49 2024
author: Helen Phillips
name: Julia
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57693457 After several deaths punctuating a series of all-too-brief life spans, a clone reassesses his purpose – and his humanity – in Edward Ashton’s Mickey7, “a unique blend of thought-provoking sci-fi concepts, farcical relationship drama, and exotic body horror” (New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin).

EXPENDABLE \ik’spen-d’-b’l\ n. A human clone utilized for dangerous work on space exploration missions. An Expendable’s personality and memories may be transferred intact to a new body if and when the current host dies.

Mickey Barnes is an Expendable, now on his seventh iteration, living – and dying – among his fellow colonists on the near-uninhabitable ice world of Niflheim. Some consider him immortal. Others believe he’s a soulless monstrosity. For the past nine years, he has been deployed for hazardous assignments and subjected to experiments that test the limits of human endurance, his humanity sacrificed for the greater good.

While on reconnaissance, Mickey7 is injured and left for dead, only to be saved by Niflheim’s native species, thought to be insentient by the colonists. Returning to base, Mickey7 meets his next generation, Mickey8. Neither clone is willing to recycle himself, but if anyone discovers multiple Mickeys exist, they’ll both be executed – and there won’t ever be a Mickey9.

But Mickey7’s premature twin isn’t his only secret. He hasn’t uploaded his memories in a month, leaving his clone in the dark about his near death and close encounter with the planet’s inhabitants. Mickey7 also doesn’t know how all of his previous selves died, and those he remembers have left him traumatized and mistrustful of the colony’s mission. A mission that has Mickey Barnes questioning his moral and mortal existence...again...and again....]]> 296 Edward Ashton 1250275032 Julia 0 to-read 3.74 2022
author: Edward Ashton
name: Julia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 62590312 The new book by Sunday Times bestselling author of Ancestors and Buried - the final instalment in Professor Alice Roberts' acclaimed trilogy. In her previous two bestsellers, Professor Alice Roberts powerfully and evocatively revived people of the past through examining their burial rites, bringing a fresh perspective on how they lived.

In Crypt, Professor Roberts brings us face to face with individuals who lived and died between ten and five centuries ago. The stories in this book are not comforting tales; there’s a focus on pathology, on disease and injury, and the experience of human suffering in the past. We learn of an episode of terrible brutality, when hate speech unleashed a tide of violence against an ethnic minority; of the devastation caused by incurable epidemics sweeping through medieval Europe; of a protracted battle between Church and State for the heart of England – a battle that saw the most famous tomb in the country created and destroyed; and a tumultuous story, forged in the heat of warfare, that takes us out of the Middle Ages into the sixteenth century and the reign of Henry VIII. In the Middle Ages, there’s barely a written note for most people’s lives.

The information we can extract from archaeological human remains represents is an essential tool for understanding our history. Most of these dead will remain anonymous. But, in the thrilling final chapter, Professor Roberts introduces an individual whose life and bones were marked by chronic debilitating disease – and whose name might just be found in history… Beautifully written, vividly drawn, and expertly researched, this is a brilliant and unexpected portrait of modern Britain.]]> 352 Alice Roberts 1398519243 Julia 0 to-read 3.95 2024
author: Alice Roberts
name: Julia
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> 61327450 An account of how the major transformations in history—from the rise of Homo sapiens to the birth of capitalism—have been shaped not by humans but by germs

According to the accepted narrative of progress, humans have thrived thanks to their brains and brawn, collectively bending the arc of history. But in this revelatory book, Professor Jonathan Kennedy argues that the myth of human exceptionalism overstates the role that we play in social and political change. Instead, it is the humble microbe that wins wars and topples empires.

Drawing on the latest research in fields ranging from genetics and anthropology to archaeology and economics, Pathogenesis takes us through sixty thousand years of history, exploring eight major outbreaks of infectious disease that have made the modern world. Bacteria and viruses were protagonists in the demise of the Neanderthals, the growth of Islam, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the devastation wrought by European colonialism, and the evolution of the United States from an imperial backwater to a global superpower. Even Christianity rose to prominence in the wake of a series of deadly pandemics that swept through the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries: Caring for the sick turned what was a tiny sect into one of the world’s major religions.

By placing disease at the center of his wide-ranging history of humankind, Kennedy challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions about our collective past—and urges us to view this moment as another disease-driven inflection point that will change the course of history. Provocative and brimming with insight, Pathogenesis transforms our understanding of the human story.]]> 304 Jonathan Kennedy 0593240472 Julia 0 to-read 3.92 2023
author: Jonathan Kennedy
name: Julia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> 58724737
We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.]]> 288 Hayley Campbell 1250281849 Julia 0 to-read 4.25 2022
author: Hayley Campbell
name: Julia
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> 40538681
Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. It is a story that has long remained in dispute, clouded from the beginning in secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation.

Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of history's worst nuclear disaster, of human resilience and ingenuity and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will - lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats - remain not just vital but necessary.

Now, Higginbotham brings us closer to the truth behind this colossal tragedy.]]> 538 Adam Higginbotham 1501134612 Julia 0 to-read 4.35 2019
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Julia
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 199798785
On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of a crew including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like 9/11 or JFK’s assassination, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in 20th-century history—yet the details of what took place that day, and why, have largely been forgotten. Until now.

Based on extensive archival records and meticulous, original reporting, Challenger follows a handful of central protagonists—including each of the seven members of the doomed crew—through the years leading up to the accident, a detailed account of the tragedy itself, and into the investigation that followed. It’s a tale of optimism and promise undermined by political cynicism and cost-cutting in the interests of burnishing national prestige; of hubris and heroism; and of an investigation driven by leakers and whistleblowers determined to bring the truth to light. Throughout, there are the ominous warning signs of a tragedy to come, recognized but then ignored, and ultimately kept from the public.

Higginbotham reveals the history of the shuttle program, the lives of men and women whose stories have been overshadowed by the disaster as well as the designers, engineers, and test pilots who struggled against the odds to get the first shuttle into space.]]> 563 Adam Higginbotham 198217661X Julia 0 to-read 4.52 2024
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Julia
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> 59593576
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it’s all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we’re never getting them back.

Karin Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with one species in particular: the venomous lumpsucker, a small, ugly bottom-feeder that happens to be the most intelligent fish on the planet. Resaint is an animal cognition scientist consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature. Halyard is an exec from the extinction industry, complicit in the mining operation that destroyed the lumpsucker’s last-known habitat.

Across the dystopian landscapes of the 2030s—a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the ocean; the hinterlands of a totalitarian state—Resaint and Halyard hunt for a surviving lumpsucker. And the further they go, the deeper they’re drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was really behind it? And why would anyone do such a thing?]]> 336 Ned Beauman 1641294124 Julia 0 chaotic in a brilliant way 3.77 2022
author: Ned Beauman
name: Julia
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
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chaotic in a brilliant way
]]> 49247242 In America, demons wear white hoods.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?]]> 185 P. Djèlí Clark 1250767024 Julia 0 to-read 3.96 2020
author: P. Djèlí Clark
name: Julia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/10
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]]> 200547169
Marda and Yana belong to the Path of the Open Hand, a group led by a charismatic woman called the Mother, which believes the Force must not be used by anyone. While Marda joins a perilous expedition to Planet X in search of more mysterious creatures to use against the Jedi, Yana finds herself forming an unexpected alliance with the father of her dead lover in attempt to wrest the Path from the Mother’s control. These two young women will face a crossroads, forced to choose not only their own fates, but that of the galaxy itself.]]> Cavan Scott Julia 0 audiobooks 3.57 2023
author: Cavan Scott
name: Julia
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: audiobooks
review:
me listening to this on audiobook, knowing that the primary antagonist of the later books in the high republic series is called marchion ro, has a ship called the gaze electric, and hallucinates his dead grandma marda: alright, here’s how marda ro can still turn out good
]]> 201881920
Paladin's Grace is a darkly whimsical fantasy featuring sock-knitting paladins, badass perfumers, courtroom hijinks and heart-racing romance, from Nebula and two-time Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher.]]> 366 T. Kingfisher Julia 0 kindle 4.21 2020
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Julia
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: kindle
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]]> 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 Julia 0 3.90 2018
author: Ling Ma
name: Julia
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
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very good and DEEPLY, eerily prescient. halfway through reading I went back to the front matter to check the publication date and, when I saw it was published pre-pandemic, my jaw hit the floor.
]]> 38330854 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780143132172.

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau.]]> 228 LeĂŻla Slimani Julia 0 to-read 3.24 2016
author: LeĂŻla Slimani
name: Julia
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6611809
Giordano Bruno was a monk, poet, scientist, and magician on the run from the Roman Inquisition on charges of heresy for his belief that the Earth orbits the sun and that the universe is infinite. This alone could have got him burned at the stake, but he was also a student of occult philosophies and magic.

In S.J. Parris's gripping novel, Bruno's pursuit of this rare knowledge brings him to London, where he is unexpectedly recruited by Queen Elizabeth I and is sent undercover to Oxford University on the pretext of a royal visitation. Officially Bruno is to take part in a debate on the Copernican theory of the universe; unofficially, he is to find out whatever he can about a Catholic plot to overthrow the queen.

His mission is dramatically thrown off course by a series of grisly murders and a spirited and beautiful young woman. As Bruno begins to discover a pattern in these killings, he realizes that no one at Oxford is who he seems to be. Bruno must attempt to outwit a killer who appears obsessed with the boundary between truth and heresy.

Like The Dante Club and The Alienist, this clever, sophisticated, exceptionally enjoyable novel is written with the unstoppable narrative propulsion and stylistic flair of the very best historical thrillers.]]> 435 S.J. Parris 0385531281 Julia 0 to-read 3.74 2010
author: S.J. Parris
name: Julia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/06
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]]> 128747007
Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, such as the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained? She tracks down the emperor at home, at the races, on his travels, even on his way to heaven. She introduces his wives and lovers, rivals and slaves, court jesters and soldiers―and the ordinary people who pressed begging letters into his hands.

Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before. 160 images; 16-page color insert]]> 493 Mary Beard 0871404222 Julia 0 4.07 2023
author: Mary Beard
name: Julia
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/26
date added: 2024/09/27
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]]> 62873999
Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn't "optimal behavior". I's the type of behavior that results in elimination.

But Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with those of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots--or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him.

As a Conclave of the various species approaches--and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line--the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars.

Masterfully merging space adventure and mystery, and a poignant exploration about relationships and belonging, Translation State is a standalone story set in Leckie's celebrated Imperial Radch universe.]]> 422 Ann Leckie 031628971X Julia 0 3.96 2023
author: Ann Leckie
name: Julia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
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madame ambassador to the geck, it was a privilege to see you return, you are one of my favourite characters of all time
]]> 47624
In this sequel to Sabriel, winner of the Aurealis Award for Excellence in Australian Science Fiction, New York Times best-selling author Garth Nix weaves a spellbinding tale of discovery, destiny, and danger.]]> 464 Garth Nix 0060590165 Julia 0 favourites 4.29 2001
author: Garth Nix
name: Julia
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/10
shelves: favourites
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]]> 334643 The Ninth was strong and fought with might
But lone Orannis was put out of the light
Broken in two and buried under hill
Forever to lie there, wishing us ill.

So says the song. But Orannis, the Destroyer, is no longer buried under hill. It has been freed from its subterranean prison and now seeks to escape the silver hemispheres, the final barrier to the unleashing of its terrible powers.

Only Lirael, newly come into her inheritance as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, has any chance of stopping the Destroyer. She and her companions -- Sam, the Disreputable Dog, and Mogget -- have to take that chance. For the Destroyer is the enemy of all Life, and it must be stopped, though Lirael does not know how.

To make matters worse, Sam's best friend, Nick, is helping the Destroyer, as are the necromancer Hedge and the Greater Dead Chlorr, and there has been no word from the Abhorsen Sabriel or King Touchstone.

Everything depends upon Lirael. A heavy, perhaps even impossible burden for a young woman who just days ago was merely a Second Assistant Librarian. With only a vision from the Clayr to guide her, and the rather mixed help of her companions, Lirael must search in both Life and Death for some means to defeat the Destroyer.

Before it is too late. . . .]]> 358 Garth Nix 0060278250 Julia 0 favourites 4.24 2003
author: Garth Nix
name: Julia
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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shelves: favourites
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]]> 518848
With Sabriel, the first installment in the Abhorsen series, Garth Nix exploded onto the fantasy scene as a rising star, in a novel that takes readers to a world where the line between the living and the dead isn't always clear—and sometimes disappears altogether.]]> 491 Garth Nix 0064471837 Julia 0 favourites 4.17 1995
author: Garth Nix
name: Julia
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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shelves: favourites
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]]> 25353286
But Ingray and her charge return to her home to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future and her world, before they are lost to her for good.]]> 481 Ann Leckie Julia 0
she left us hanging on the mystery shoes though. or are we to assume that the shoes were actually tic’s spider mech in disguise? ]]> 3.81 2017
author: Ann Leckie
name: Julia
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves:
review:
ann leckie NEVER misses. this being a great thriller aside, she writes some of the most natural examples of neopronoun use and gender fluidity I’ve ever seen in sci-fi, and her different alien species/cultures aren’t just imaginative, but very thoughtfully considered in terms of how they interact with each other. the geck ambassador was a great character. no choice but to stan

she left us hanging on the mystery shoes though. or are we to assume that the shoes were actually tic’s spider mech in disguise?
]]>