naomi's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:43:07 -0700 60 naomi's bookshelf: all 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)]]> 42036538
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.]]> 448 Tamsyn Muir 1250313198 naomi 3 4.17 2019 Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: naomi
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2026/09/08
date added: 2026/09/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives]]> 25105
In BRIEF LIVES, Delirium, youngest of the extended family known as The Endless, prevails upon her brother Dream to help find their missing sibling, Destruction. Their subsequent odyssey through the waking world, and their final confrontations with Destruction--as well as the resolution of Dream's painful relationship with his son, Orpheus--will change the Endless forever.

BRIEF LIVES is the seventh volume of eleven in THE SANDMAN LIBRARY. These books can be read in order or as individual volumes.


Description from back cover]]> 256 Neil Gaiman 1563891379 naomi 4 4.54 1993 The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
author: Neil Gaiman
name: naomi
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2026/09/02
date added: 2026/09/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections]]> 25106
The critically acclaimed THE SANDMAN: FABLES AND REFLECTIONS continues the fantastical epic of Morpheus, the King of Dreams, as he observes and interacts with an odd assortment of historical and fictional characters throughout time. Featuring tales of kings, explorers, spies, and werewolves, this book of myth and imagination delves into the dark dreams of Augustus Caesar, Marco Polo, Cain and Abel, Norton I, and Orpheus to illustrate the effects that these subconscious musings have had on the course of history and mankind.

A new edition of this title collecting issues #29-31, 38-40, 50 and SANDMAN SPECIAL #1 with recolored pages.]]> 264 Neil Gaiman 1563891069 naomi 4 4.43 1993 The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections
author: Neil Gaiman
name: naomi
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2026/08/28
date added: 2026/08/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)]]> 18952341 640 Ken Liu 1481424270 naomi 0 to-read 3.77 2015 The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)
author: Ken Liu
name: naomi
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Signal to Noise 166570 80 Neil Gaiman 1878574434 naomi 0 to-read 3.84 1992 Signal to Noise
author: Neil Gaiman
name: naomi
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You]]> 25102 The Doll's House, who here finds herself a princess in a vivid dreamworld. collecting The Sandman #32–37]]> 192 Neil Gaiman 1563890933 naomi 5 4.42 1992 The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You
author: Neil Gaiman
name: naomi
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2026/08/23
date added: 2026/08/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389
In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 198 John Green 0525556575 naomi 0 to-read 4.31 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: naomi
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Handmaid's Tale 34454589 320 Margaret Atwood 1328879941 naomi 4 4.26 1985 The Handmaid's Tale
author: Margaret Atwood
name: naomi
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2026/08/19
date added: 2026/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country]]> 25100 160 Neil Gaiman 156389226X naomi 4 4.25 1990 The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
author: Neil Gaiman
name: naomi
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2026/08/14
date added: 2026/08/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)]]> 43763
Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force --- a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.]]> 346 Anne Rice 0345476875 naomi 0 currently-reading 4.04 1976 Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)
author: Anne Rice
name: naomi
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House]]> 25099 The Doll's House, after a decades-long imprisonment, the Sandman has returned to find that a few dreams and nightmares have escaped to reality. Looking to recapture his lost possessions, Morpheus ventures to the human plane only to learn that a woman named Rose Walker has inadvertently become a dream vortex and threatens to rip apart his world. Now as Morpheus takes on the last escaped nightmare at a serial killers convention, the Lord of Dreams must mercilessly murder Rose or risk the destruction of his entire kingdom.

Collecting issues #9-16, this new edition of The Doll's House features the improved production values and coloring from the Absolute Edition.

]]> 232 Neil Gaiman 1563892251 naomi 4 4.44 1990 The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House
author: Neil Gaiman
name: naomi
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2026/08/11
date added: 2026/08/11
shelves:
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]]> Rebecca 17899948 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.]]> 449 Daphne du Maurier 0316323705 naomi 0 did-not-finish 4.28 1938 Rebecca
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: naomi
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: did-not-finish
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)]]> 19161852
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.]]> 468 N.K. Jemisin naomi 0 to-read 4.27 2015 The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: naomi
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Station Eleven 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 naomi 5 4.05 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: naomi
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2026/08/10
date added: 2026/08/10
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]]> The Catcher in the Rye 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919–2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 naomi 0 to-read 3.81 1951 The Catcher in the Rye
author: J.D. Salinger
name: naomi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)]]> 77566 500 Dan Simmons 0553283685 naomi 0 to-read 4.27 1989 Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)
author: Dan Simmons
name: naomi
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes]]> 23754
In PRELUDES & NOCTURNES, an occultist attempting to capture Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother Dream instead. After his 70 year imprisonment and eventual escape, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power. On his arduous journey, Morpheus encounters Lucifer, John Constantine, and an all-powerful madman.

This book also includes the story "The Sound of Her Wings," which introduces us to the pragmatic and perky goth girl Death.

Includes issues 1-8 of the original series.]]> 240 Neil Gaiman 1563892278 naomi 4 4.25 1988 The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
author: Neil Gaiman
name: naomi
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2026/08/05
date added: 2026/08/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The End Crowns All 175106446
Princess. Priestess. The most beautiful girl in Troy. Cassandra is used to being adored – and when her patron god, Apollo, offers her the power of prophecy, she sees an opportunity to rise even higher. But when she fails to uphold her end of the agreement, she discovers just how very far she has to fall. No one believes her visions. And they all seem to be of one girl – and the war she’s going to bring to Troy’s shores.

Helen fled Sparta in pursuit of love, but it’s soon clear Troy is a court like any other, with all its politics and backstabbing. And one princess seems particularly intent on driving her from the city before disaster can strike...

But when war finally comes, it’s more than the army at their walls they must contend with. Cassandra and Helen might hold the key to reweaving fate itself – especially with the prophetic strands drawing them ever closer together. But how do you change your future when the gods themselves are dictating your demise?]]> 576 Bea Fitzgerald 0241624304 naomi 0 to-read 4.02 2024 The End Crowns All
author: Bea Fitzgerald
name: naomi
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Slaughterhouse-Five 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. Just as Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”

Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing — the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit — that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. naomi 4 4.11 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: naomi
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2026/07/30
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars. listened to the old time radio adaption
]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 naomi 4 4.44 1952 East of Eden
author: John Steinbeck
name: naomi
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2026/07/29
date added: 2026/07/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Starhenge: The Dragon and the Boar #1]]> 61331110 Starhenge: Book One! A future Merlin travels to 5th-century Britain to prevent monstrous time-travelling killer robots from robbing the universe of magic, and Amber Weaver’s lively present-day narrative reveals how she becomes drawn into a war across time!

'The Terminator' meets 'The Green Knight' in 30 enthralling story pages, setting the scene for this original epic inspired by the Arthurian sagas!]]> 33 Liam Sharp naomi 3 3.99 Starhenge: The Dragon and the Boar #1
author: Liam Sharp
name: naomi
average rating: 3.99
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2026/07/26
date added: 2026/07/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Agency and Imagination in the Films of David Lynch: Philosophical Perspectives]]> 51595270 280 James D. Reid 1498555942 naomi 0 to-read 4.33 Agency and Imagination in the Films of David Lynch: Philosophical Perspectives
author: James D. Reid
name: naomi
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/02/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity]]> 58169 Where do ideas come from?

In Catching the Big Fish, internationally acclaimed filmmaker David Lynch provides a rare window into his methods as an artist, his personal working style, and the immense creative benefits he has experienced from the practice of meditation.

Lynch describes the experience of "diving within" and "catching" ideas like fish - and then preparing them for television or movie screens, and other mediums in which he works, such as painting, music, and design. Lynch writes for the first time about his more than three-decade commitment to Transcendental Meditation and the difference it has made in his creative process.

In brief chapters, Lynch explains the development of his ideas - where they came from, how he grasps them, and which ones appeal to him the most. He specifically discusses how he puts his thoughts into action and how he engages with others around him. Finally, he considers the self and the surrounding world - and how the process of "diving within" that has so deeply affected his own work can directly benefit others.

Catching the Big Fish comes as a revelation to the legion of fans who have longed to better understand Lynch's personal vision. And it is equally intriguing to those who wonder how they can nurture their own creativity.]]> 181 David Lynch 1585425400 naomi 0 to-read 3.81 2006 Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
author: David Lynch
name: naomi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Shape of Dreams 232794912 In this second novel by the award-winning novelist, a trio of women in East Harlem come together in friendship and tragedy to organize against the systems that hold them down

We're in East Harlem, in the mid-eighties, and the large and formidable (some say crazy woman) Twin Johnson discovers the body of Anita's boy, Tyrone, on the sidewalk. She does just what her uncle, who runs his basement crack den as a family business, warned her never to she calls the police, setting in motion a cycle of events that expand the consciousness of this struggling community. Anita, a postal worker, army widow, and church lady, is determined to solve her son's murder, but her quest for justice rattles the neighborhood, which itself is like a complex character in this teeming novel, with its Mets fans and gossips, immigrant shop owners and sneaker-obsessed teens on its garbage-piled streets. The local dreamers include a charismatic man of the cloth, a teenage girl with a Whitney Houston voice and no prospects at all, and Anita's opinionated new bestie, Wanda, whose own truant son the police harass and arrest on a regular basis, and who brings both blessings and curses into Anita's exploded world. 

Anita, Wanda, and Twin, the power triad of this vibrant novel, are all drawn into the basement den as the reader sinks into their rich backstories. Will they be able to break its spell? Will the Reverend's pressure on the authorities to find Tyrone's killer yield answers?  In the end, in the NY Mets' banner summer of 1986, this community will come together to mourn, find justice, and shape their dreams as best they can.]]> 304 April Reynolds 059331686X naomi 0 to-read 3.36 The Shape of Dreams
author: April Reynolds
name: naomi
average rating: 3.36
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wuthering Heights 32929156
Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before. What unfolds is the tale of the intense love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrenders to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.

In this edition, a new preface by Lucasta Miller, author of The Brontë Myth, looks at the ways in which the novel has been interpreted, from Charlotte Brontë onwards. This complements Pauline Nestor's introduction, which discusses changing critical receptions of the novel, as well as Emily Brontë's influences and background.]]> 359 Emily Brontë 0141439556 naomi 4
the characters are so narcissistic and selfish which i know was deliberately written to humanise them but most of the time they just come off as cruel and i found it so hard to sympathise with them cause they were annoying af

i loved the story and the concept is very romantic but i think i was too detached from the characters for the story to have any impact

]]> 3.88 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: naomi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1847
rating: 4
read at: 2026/02/11
date added: 2026/02/11
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars

the characters are so narcissistic and selfish which i know was deliberately written to humanise them but most of the time they just come off as cruel and i found it so hard to sympathise with them cause they were annoying af

i loved the story and the concept is very romantic but i think i was too detached from the characters for the story to have any impact


]]> Love in the Big City 57500766 Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores and went into nine printings. Both award-winning for its unique literary voice and perspective, and particularly resonant with young readers, it has been a phenomenon in Korea and is poised to capture a worldwide readership.

Love in the Big City is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life.

A brilliantly written novel filled with powerful sensory descriptions and both humor and emotion, Love in the Big City is an exploration of millennial loneliness as well as the joys of queer life, that should appeal to readers of Sayaka Murata, Han Kang, and Cho Nam-Joo.]]> 240 Sang Young Park 0802158781 naomi 4 i wish you would apologise to me for once in my life. about trampling on my heart that time. about giving birth to me this way, raising me this way, then deciding to push me away into a place i can’t come back from, into a world of ignorance and being ignored, i wish you would apologise for that. i know that what happened to me wasn’t really what you had wanted to happen and i know it’s not anyone’s fault, i know that, but i’ll never understand it.

need more books about having a loving but not close relationship with your parent because of queerness

i started this book thinking it was a light romcom type novel based in a busy city, but i was unexpectedly met with many intertwined stories about love in different aspects of a person’s life. what stuck with me the most was part two of the book, when he navigates how his struggles to love himself and why he is the way he is stemmed from his childhood and relationship with his mother - from her crazy intense homophobia to the irrational phobias still present in his adult life because of her vocal superstitions in his childhood (that she doesn’t even remember when addressed)
at some point he begins to understand her perspective but it’s not written as a sympathetic redemption of her as a mother. he understands but doesn’t forgive and instead accepts that he still has the right to blame her and that sometimes the only way is to let go, no matter who that person is to you at any point in your life

[…]i wondered[…]that the person i thought i knew best just because we had blood ties could actually be the most mysterious and unknown. that there were times in life when you just have to stop holding on.


this book has my favourite theme of all time: generational cycle of trauma and the susceptibility of children as we inherit our beliefs and values from our parents, and how the tiniest of those things take root in daily life]]> 3.68 2019 Love in the Big City
author: Sang Young Park
name: naomi
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2026/02/05
date added: 2026/02/06
shelves:
review:
i wish you would apologise to me for once in my life. about trampling on my heart that time. about giving birth to me this way, raising me this way, then deciding to push me away into a place i can’t come back from, into a world of ignorance and being ignored, i wish you would apologise for that. i know that what happened to me wasn’t really what you had wanted to happen and i know it’s not anyone’s fault, i know that, but i’ll never understand it.


need more books about having a loving but not close relationship with your parent because of queerness

i started this book thinking it was a light romcom type novel based in a busy city, but i was unexpectedly met with many intertwined stories about love in different aspects of a person’s life. what stuck with me the most was part two of the book, when he navigates how his struggles to love himself and why he is the way he is stemmed from his childhood and relationship with his mother - from her crazy intense homophobia to the irrational phobias still present in his adult life because of her vocal superstitions in his childhood (that she doesn’t even remember when addressed)
at some point he begins to understand her perspective but it’s not written as a sympathetic redemption of her as a mother. he understands but doesn’t forgive and instead accepts that he still has the right to blame her and that sometimes the only way is to let go, no matter who that person is to you at any point in your life

[…]i wondered[…]that the person i thought i knew best just because we had blood ties could actually be the most mysterious and unknown. that there were times in life when you just have to stop holding on.


this book has my favourite theme of all time: generational cycle of trauma and the susceptibility of children as we inherit our beliefs and values from our parents, and how the tiniest of those things take root in daily life
]]> <![CDATA[The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3)]]> 140225
The Dawn Treader is the first ship Narnia has seen in centuries. King Caspian has built it for his voyage to find the seven lords, good men whom his evil uncle Miraz banished when he usurped the throne. The journey takes Edmund, Lucy, and their cousin Eustace to the Eastern Islands, beyond the Silver Sea, toward Aslan's country at the End of the World.]]> 248 C.S. Lewis 006112527X naomi 3 4.10 1952 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: naomi
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1952
rating: 3
read at: 2026/01/30
date added: 2026/01/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia, #2)]]> 121749 240 C.S. Lewis 000720230X naomi 3 3.99 1951 Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia, #2)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: naomi
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2026/01/27
date added: 2026/01/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon (Lost Souls, #1)]]> 224003800 A suspenseful magical realism novel about a mysterious teenage “Go-Between” who arranges meetings between the living and the dead, from multimillion copy Japanese bestselling author Mizuki Tsujimura.

I bring together the living and the departed. I am the Go-Between.

When a young woman from Tokyo contacts the Go-Between to request a meeting with a deceased TV star who once helped her, she doesn’t expect a teenage boy to show up. Dressed in a designer duffel coat and carrying a tattered notebook, Ayumi Shibuya, our mysterious intermediary, offers an extraordinary service: he reunites the living with their dearly departed. Meeting his clients at a luxury hotel, Ayumi lays down the ground rules: each reunion is a one-time arrangement that the dead can refuse; the service is entirely free, and the meeting must take place during a full moon.

As Ayumi arranges these reunions, we encounter a resentful eldest son who wants to ask his mother to unearth the deeds to a plot of land; a teenage girl who blames herself for her best friend’s death; and a weary businessman seeking answers about his fiancée’s disappearance days after he proposed. With each rendezvous, clues begin to surface, leading readers to unravel the mystery of the boy in the duffel coat, whose own story is eventually revealed.

A runaway, multimillion copy bestseller in Japan, Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon is storytelling at its finest, from an international sensation whose work has been hailed as “strange and beautiful” (The Guardian). With an artful balance of heart and mystery, Mizuki Tsujimura creates an unforgettable page-turner in which the living and the dead are given one last chance for closure.]]> 256 Mizuki Tsujimura 1668099837 naomi 0 to-read 3.97 2010 Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon (Lost Souls, #1)
author: Mizuki Tsujimura
name: naomi
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/24
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]]> <![CDATA[When Things Are Alive They Hum]]> 57692199 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9781761150081.

Marlowe and Harper share a bond deeper than most sisters, shaped by the loss of their mother in childhood. For Harper, living with what she calls the Up syndrome and gifted with an endless capacity for wonder, Marlowe and she are connected by an invisible thread, like the hum that connects all things. For Marlowe, they are bound by her fierce determination to keep Harper, born with a congenital heart disorder, alive.

Now 25, Marlowe is finally living her own life abroad, pursuing her studies of a rare species of butterfly secure in the knowledge Harper’s happiness is complete, having found love with boyfriend, Louis. But then she receives the devastating call that Harper’s heart is failing. She needs a heart transplant but is denied one by the medical establishment because she is living with a disability. Marlowe rushes to her childhood home in Hong Kong to be by Harper’s side and soon has to answer the question – what lengths would you go to save your sister?

When Things Are Alive They Hum poses profound questions about the nature of love and existence, the ways grief changes us, and how we confront the hand fate has dealt us. Intensely moving, exquisitely written and literally humming with wonder, it is a novel that celebrates life in all its guises, and what comes after.]]> 384 Hannah Bent naomi 0 to-read 3.95 2021 When Things Are Alive They Hum
author: Hannah Bent
name: naomi
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/24
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]]> When the Moon is Low 23447506 384 Nadia Hashimi 0062369571 naomi 0 to-read 4.09 2015 When the Moon is Low
author: Nadia Hashimi
name: naomi
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/24
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]]> Yerba Buena 57693648 The debut adult novel by the bestselling and award-winning YA author Nina LaCour, following two women on a star-crossed journey toward each other

When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner.

When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts.

At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a love story for our time and a propulsive journey through the lives of two women finding their way in the world.]]> 304 Nina LaCour 1250810469 naomi 0 to-read 3.83 2022 Yerba Buena
author: Nina LaCour
name: naomi
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Her Forgotten Promise 134966702
Claire has always had a special bond with her aunt Margaret, but she’s astonished when Margaret suddenly begins talking about a friend called Agnes, who Margaret met working as a WAAF in World War 2 – a past Claire had no idea about. Margaret and Agnes were best friends until Agnes started acting strangely, becoming secretive and distant. Then one morning, Agnes vanished and never returned home, leaving Margaret distraught.

Claire promises to delve back into the past and help discover what happened to Agnes. But Margaret’s memory is rapidly deteriorating, and apart from an old photograph of the two women, Agnes seems to have disappeared into thin air. Can Claire uncover Agnes’ story before it’s too late?]]> 369 Corin Burnside 0008603359 naomi 0 to-read 4.35 2023 Her Forgotten Promise
author: Corin Burnside
name: naomi
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)]]> 100915
Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor's mysterious old house. At first her brothers and sister don't believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch. When they meet the Lion Aslan, they realize they've been called to a great adventure and bravely join the battle to free Narnia from the Witch's sinister spell.]]> 206 C.S. Lewis naomi 3 4.24 1950 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: naomi
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1950
rating: 3
read at: 2026/01/24
date added: 2026/01/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Murder at World's End (Stockingham & Pike, #1)]]> 231126827 Knives Out meets Downton Abbey! Secrets, murder, and mayhem collide as this unlikely sleuthing duo—an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogenarian—hunt a killer in a manor sealed against the end of the world, in this locked-room mystery by #1 New York Times bestselling author Ross Montgomery.

Cornwall, 1910. On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is absorbed in feverish preparations for the apocalypse that he believes will accompany the passing of Halley's Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom—every window, chimney, and keyhole closed off before night falls. But what the pompous, dishonest Viscount has failed to take into account is the danger that lies within... By morning, he will be dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow.

All eyes turn to Stephen Pike, Tithe Hall's newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn't commit, he is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally? Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp as a tack, eighty-year-old family matriarch. Fearless and unconventional, she relishes chaos and puzzles alike, and a murder is just the thrill she's been waiting for.]]> 336 Ross Montgomery 0063458772 naomi 0 to-read 3.98 2025 The Murder at World's End (Stockingham & Pike, #1)
author: Ross Montgomery
name: naomi
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> The Memory Police 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yōko Ogawa 1101870605 naomi 0 to-read 3.68 1994 The Memory Police
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: naomi
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/22
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]]> We Are Green and Trembling 219299663 We Are Green and Trembling is a reimagining of history and the life of Antonio de Erauso, a Basque nun turned war lieutenant during the Spanish Conquista in 17th-century Argentina - a fascinating, largely forgotten figure from world history and one of South America’s most famous trans men.

Having left the Basque Country behind many years ago, Antonio has travelled across the Americas, reinventing himself every time. Now, Antonio is hiding deep in the jungle with two young Guaraní girls, having escaped imprisonment and a death sentence.

The novel is a searing criticism of conquest and colonialism, religious tyranny and the treatment of women and indigenous people; a queer reclamation set in the rainforest - itself a magical, surreal space for transformation.]]> 256 Gabriela Cabezón Cámara 081123861X naomi 0 to-read 3.33 2023 We Are Green and Trembling
author: Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
name: naomi
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/22
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]]> <![CDATA[A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding]]> 25194121 In the tradition of Memoirs of a Geisha and The Piano Teacher, a heart-wrenching debut novel of family, forgiveness, and the exquisite pain of love
 
When Amaterasu Takahashi opens the door of her Philadelphia home to a badly scarred man claiming to be her grandson, she doesn’t believe him. Her grandson and her daughter, Yuko, perished nearly forty years ago during the bombing of Nagasaki. But the man carries with him a collection of sealed private letters that open a Pandora’s Box of family secrets Ama had sworn to leave behind when she fled Japan. She is forced to confront her memories of the years before the war: of the daughter she tried too hard to protect and the love affair that would drive them apart, and even further back, to the long, sake-pouring nights at a hostess bar where Ama first learned that a soft heart was a dangerous thing. Will Ama allow herself to believe in a miracle?]]> 292 Jackie Copleton 0143128256 naomi 0 to-read 3.94 2015 A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
author: Jackie Copleton
name: naomi
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Destination Wedding 52914236
But with the entire Das family in attendance, a relaxing vacation is decidedly not in the cards. Her amicably divorced parents are each using the occasion to explore new love interests—for her mother, a white American boyfriend, for her father, an Indian widow arranged by an online matchmaker—and Tina’s squarely in the middle. A former fling is unexpectedly on the guest list, a work opportunity is blurring the lines of propriety on several fronts, and her best friend Marianne’s terrible penchant for international playboys is poised to cause all sorts of chaos back home. The accommodations are swanky, the alcohol is top-shelf, but this family wedding may be more drama than Tina can bear and could finally force her to make the choices she’s spent much of her life avoiding.

Infused with warmth and charm, Destination Wedding grapples with the nuances of family, careers, belonging, and how we find the people who make a place feel like home.]]> 320 Diksha Basu 0525577122 naomi 0 to-read 3.20 2020 Destination Wedding
author: Diksha Basu
name: naomi
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)]]> 5043 Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape.

Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.

The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.

For the TV tie-in edition with the same ISBN go to this Alternate Cover Edition
]]> 976 Ken Follett 045122213X naomi 0 to-read 4.35 1989 The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)
author: Ken Follett
name: naomi
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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]]> You Exist Too Much 41720140
Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East--from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine--Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people.

Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.

Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings: for love, and a place to call home.]]> 263 Zaina Arafat 1948226502 naomi 0 to-read 3.59 2020 You Exist Too Much
author: Zaina Arafat
name: naomi
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Salt Houses 36467210
Although she keeps her predictions to herself that day, they soon come to pass in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967. Caught up in the resistance, Alia’s brother disappears, while Alia and her husband move from Nablus to Kuwait City. Reluctantly they build a life, torn between needing to remember and learning to forget.

When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, Alia and her family yet again lose their home, their land, and their story as they know it. Scattering to Beirut, Paris and Boston, Alia’s children begin families of their own, once more navigating the burdens and blessings of beginning again.]]> 312 Hala Alyan 0099510936 naomi 0 to-read 4.05 2017 Salt Houses
author: Hala Alyan
name: naomi
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> Minor Detail 52974301 Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba—the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people—and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.

Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.]]> 105 Adania Shibli 0811229076 naomi 0 to-read 4.15 2017 Minor Detail
author: Adania Shibli
name: naomi
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)]]> 35068705 An epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic.

When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .

Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.]]> 545 R.F. Kuang 0062662597 naomi 4 4.13 2018 The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)
author: R.F. Kuang
name: naomi
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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date added: 2026/01/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Unbroken (Magic of the Lost, #1)]]> 54467051 9780316542753

Touraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought.

Luca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet's edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne.

Through assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren't for sale.]]> 486 C.L. Clark naomi 0 to-read 3.80 2021 The Unbroken (Magic of the Lost, #1)
author: C.L. Clark
name: naomi
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/12
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]]> Fireheart Tiger 53317495 Award-winning author Aliette de Bodard returns with a powerful romantic fantasy that reads like The Goblin Emperor meets Howl’s Moving Castle in a pre-colonial Vietnamese-esque world.

Fire burns bright and has a long memory….

Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she’s returned to her mother’s imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria’s royal palace.

Thanh’s new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh’s home. Eldris won’t take no for an answer, on either front. But the fire that burned down one palace is tempting Thanh with the possibility of making her own dangerous decisions.

Can Thanh find the freedom to shape her country’s fate—and her own?]]> 103 Aliette de Bodard 1250793262 naomi 0 to-read 3.32 2021 Fireheart Tiger
author: Aliette de Bodard
name: naomi
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Chosen and the Beautiful 54102719 Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society―she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Nghi Vo’s debut novel reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.]]> 272 Nghi Vo naomi 0 to-read 3.67 2021 The Chosen and the Beautiful
author: Nghi Vo
name: naomi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 泾渭情殇 [Jīng Wèi Qíng Shāng] 52510575
One was the Prince of the grass plains who had no worries nor sorrow. One was a lawful Princess who received exclusive favour of the Emperor.

A war turned the Prince of the grass plains into an orphan, she who had laid dormant for ten years had originally planned to become a sycophantic official, to manipulate the enemy kingdom into chaos, but was appointed as Fuma at the Chionglin banquet.

Wait and see, how this debt of grudge from a fallen kingdom and devastated home will be settled.]]> 3909 Qing Jun Mo Xiao naomi 0 to-read 4.59 2018 泾渭情殇 [Jīng Wèi Qíng Shāng]
author: Qing Jun Mo Xiao
name: naomi
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Some by Virtue Fall (The Seven Gods, #1)]]> 59878708 By the King’s Edict, men have been banned from performing on stage. Everyone else is still out for blood.

Sabajan Hollant, director and co-founder of the celebrated Lord Chancellor’s Players, has one resolution: This time they’re going to do it right. If they want to keep their noble patron—hell, if they want to stay in the theater business at all—they’re going to have to keep their hands clean. No accidents, no rising to other troupes’ provocations and taunts, and certainly no more duelling in the streets.

But their arch-rivals have different plans, and soon enough, Saba and her troupe are caught up once again in an escalating drama of revenge, betrayal, and outright sabotage.

The men may have started this war—but Saba and her remaining players are going to end it.]]> 150 Alexandra Rowland naomi 0 to-read 3.88 2022 Some by Virtue Fall (The Seven Gods, #1)
author: Alexandra Rowland
name: naomi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Siren Queen 54102727 "Lyrical, mesmerizing, and otherworldly. . . stunning proof that Nghi Vo is one of the most original writers we have today. A beautiful, brutal, monstrous Hollywood fantasy.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Immortality is just a casting call away.

Locus Award Finalist
Ignyte Award Finalist
An Amazon Best Book of 2022
One of NPR’s Best Books of 2022
Vulture’s #1 Fantasy Novel of 2022

Best of Year Selections at Apple Books | B&N Booksellers | LibraryReads | TIME Magazine | Oprah Daily | The Philadelphia Inquirer | Publishers Weekly | Buzzfeed | Chicago Review of Books | LitHub | Book Riot | Paste Magazine | Geek Girl Authority | Bookish | The Mary Sue | New York Public Library | Vulture | Locus Recommended Reading List | Kobo | The Quill to Live | L. A. Public Library | Audible | Amazon | NPR

An Indie Next and LibraryReads Pick
A Brooklyn Library Prize Finalist

It was magic. In every world, it was a kind of magic.

“No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.” Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid.

But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes—even if that means becoming the monster herself.

Siren Queen offers up an enthralling exploration of an outsider achieving stardom on her own terms, in a fantastical Hollywood where the monsters are real and the magic of the silver screen illuminates every page.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 281 Nghi Vo 1250788854 naomi 0 to-read 3.67 2022 Siren Queen
author: Nghi Vo
name: naomi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)]]> 40275288
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]> 848 Samantha Shannon 1408883457 naomi 4 ”Let us not think of the future this night. It is not yet dawn. We still have time for airy hopes.”

800 pages of high fantasy yuri and it’s still not enough for me i need more

i loved reading this so much because it reminds me of every fantasy world that ive LOVED - it’s like avatar the last airbender, game of thrones, one piece, six of crows and legend of zelda combined into one, and the relationships and characters are all so beautifully written

Some other quotes that stuck with me:

"We may be small, and we may be young, but we will shake the world for our beliefs."

“Love and fear do strange things to our souls. The dream they bring, those dreams that leave us drenched in salt water and gasping for breath as if we might die - those, we call unquiet dreams.”
]]> 4.16 2019 The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: naomi
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2026/01/12
date added: 2026/01/12
shelves:
review:
”Let us not think of the future this night. It is not yet dawn. We still have time for airy hopes.”


800 pages of high fantasy yuri and it’s still not enough for me i need more

i loved reading this so much because it reminds me of every fantasy world that ive LOVED - it’s like avatar the last airbender, game of thrones, one piece, six of crows and legend of zelda combined into one, and the relationships and characters are all so beautifully written

Some other quotes that stuck with me:

"We may be small, and we may be young, but we will shake the world for our beliefs."

“Love and fear do strange things to our souls. The dream they bring, those dreams that leave us drenched in salt water and gasping for breath as if we might die - those, we call unquiet dreams.”

]]> <![CDATA[Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil]]> 215020997 From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger.

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life—
how it ends, and how it starts. ]]> 535 V.E. Schwab 1035064642 naomi 0 to-read 3.86 2025 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
author: V.E. Schwab
name: naomi
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Figure Drawing: Design and Invention]]> 7157338 240 Michael Hampton 0615272819 naomi 0 to-read 4.36 2009 Figure Drawing: Design and Invention
author: Michael Hampton
name: naomi
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Inferno 306150 288 Dante Alighieri 0451527984 naomi 0 dnf, to-read 3.91 1321 The Inferno
author: Dante Alighieri
name: naomi
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1321
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/01/05
shelves: dnf, to-read
review:

]]> Mayra 220458596 An eerie, hypnotic literary debut about friendship, desire, and memory set against the sultry backdrop of Florida’s swamplands

It's been years since Ingrid has heard from her childhood best friend, Mayra, a fearless rebel who fled their hometown of Hialeah, a Cuban neighborhood just west of Miami, for college in the Northeast. But when Mayra calls out of the blue to invite Ingrid to a weekend getaway at a house in the Everglades, she impulsively accepts.

From the moment Ingrid sets out for the house, danger looms: The directions are difficult, she’s out of reach of cell service, and as she drives deeper into the Everglades, the wet maw of the swamp threatens to swallow her whole. But once Ingrid arrives, Mayra is, in many ways, just as she remembers—with her sharp tongue and effortless, seductive beauty, still thumbing her nose at the world.

Before they can fully settle into the familiar intimacy of each other's company, their reunion is spoiled by the reemergence of past disagreements and the unexpected presence of Mayra's new boyfriend, Benji. The trio spend their hours eating lavish meals and exploring the labyrinthine house, which holds as much mystery and danger as the swamp itself. Indoors and on the grounds, time itself seems to expand, and Ingrid begins to lose a sense of the outside world, and herself.

Against this disquieting setting, where lizards dart in and out of porches and alligators peek up from dark waters, Gonzalez weaves a surreal, unforgettable story about the dizzying power of early friendship and the lengths we'll go to earn love and acceptance—even at the risk of losing ourselves entirely.]]> 240 Nicky Gonzalez 0593731557 naomi 0 to-read 3.12 2025 Mayra
author: Nicky Gonzalez
name: naomi
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Paradise Rot 39216527 A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery

Jo is in a strange new country for university, and having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive. Jo’s sensitivity, and all her senses, become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, and dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.

This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval, presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.]]> 160 Jenny Hval naomi 0 to-read 3.43 2009 Paradise Rot
author: Jenny Hval
name: naomi
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Happy Hour 54173267 With the verve and bite of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and the whip-smart, wisecracking sensibility of a golden-age Hollywood heroine, Marlowe Granados’s stunning début brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City.

Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old, and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. After a sojourn across the pond, she arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them from having a good time.

In her diary, Isa describes a sweltering summer in the glittering city. By day, the girls sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Money runs ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert their social capital into something more lasting than their precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill.

Happy Hour announces a dazzling new talent in Marlowe Granados, whose exquisite wit recalls Anita Loos’s 1925 classic, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, updated to evoke a recent, golden period of hope and transformation—the summer of 2013. A cri de cœur for party girls and anyone who has ever felt entitled to an adventure of their own, Happy Hour is an effervescent tonic for the ails of contemporary life.]]> 280 Marlowe Granados 1989919006 naomi 0 to-read 3.44 2020 Happy Hour
author: Marlowe Granados
name: naomi
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sense of an Ending 10746542 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.

This intense novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about - until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.]]> 150 Julian Barnes 0224094157 naomi 0 to-read 3.74 2011 The Sense of an Ending
author: Julian Barnes
name: naomi
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Healing Isn't Pretty 238529314 Real pain. Real healing. No filters.

No matter where you are in your healing journey, Healing Isn’t Pretty offers a raw, honest, and powerful framework for moving forward — even when everything feels like it’s falling apart.

Mira Hartson doesn’t sugarcoat the process. Through vulnerable storytelling, psychology-backed insights, and hard-won life lessons, she reveals what it really takes to let go of the pain, stop chasing love in the wrong places, and finally come home to yourself.

If you're exhausted from pretending you're okay, this book isn’t just a lifeline — it's a wake-up call.
Healing isn't about perfection. It's about truth. And truth, while messy, is where freedom begins.

Hartson is known for her ability to speak directly to the emotional wounds so many women carry in silence — abandonment, rejection, body shame, emotional neglect, heartbreak. In this book, she weaves together real-life stories, grounded advice, and viral-worthy reflections that have resonated with millions online.

You'll learn how

Stop begging for the love that should be freely given

Let go of the one you thought was "the one"

Heal from being "too much" or "not enough"

Rebuild self-trust after betrayal and trauma

Set boundaries that protect your peace

And finally feel safe — in your own body, mind, and heart


Whether you're recovering from a breakup, childhood trauma, toxic friendships, or a lifetime of self-abandonment, Healing Isn’t Pretty gives you the words, courage, and tools to walk yourself through the fire — and come out the other side whole.

This book will not fix you — because you're not broken.
But it will remind you of everything you were forced to forget.

👉 For bonus content and more books, visit healingisntpretty.com ]]> 399 Mira Hartson naomi 0 to-read 4.43 Healing Isn't Pretty
author: Mira Hartson
name: naomi
average rating: 4.43
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Shadow of What Was Lost (The Licanius Trilogy, #1)]]> 22878967 It has been twenty years since the end of the war. The dictatorial Augurs—once thought of almost as gods—were overthrown and wiped out during the conflict, their much-feared powers mysteriously failing them. Those who had ruled under them, men and women with a lesser ability known as the Gift, avoided the Augurs' fate only by submitting themselves to the rebellion's Four Tenets. A representation of these laws is now written into the flesh of any who use the Gift, forcing those so marked into absolute obedience.

As a student of the Gifted, Davian suffers the consequences of a war fought—and lost—before he was born. Despised by most beyond the school walls, he and those around him are all but prisoners as they attempt to learn control of the Gift. Worse, as Davian struggles with his lessons, he knows that there is further to fall if he cannot pass his final tests.

But when Davian discovers he has the ability to wield the forbidden power of the Augurs, he sets into motion a chain of events that will change everything. To the north, an ancient enemy long thought defeated begins to stir. And to the west, a young man whose fate is intertwined with Davian’s wakes up in the forest, covered in blood and with no memory of who he is…]]> 595 James Islington 099258020X naomi 0 to-read 4.12 2014 The Shadow of What Was Lost (The Licanius Trilogy, #1)
author: James Islington
name: naomi
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Earthsea Trilogy (Earthsea Cycle, #1-3)]]> 1170158 Lookfar, turned his back on land, and without wind or sail or oar moved westward over the sea and out of sight.

Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore - Ursula Le Guin's brilliant and magical trilogy.

Cover Illustration: Jonathan Field]]> 478 Ursula K. Le Guin 0140050930 naomi 0 to-read 4.29 1968 The Earthsea Trilogy (Earthsea Cycle, #1-3)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: naomi
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)]]> 43587154 JADE CITY is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu.

The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.

The Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion--but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection.

When the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself.]]> 540 Fonda Lee 0316440884 naomi 0 to-read 4.03 2017 Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)
author: Fonda Lee
name: naomi
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)]]> 68428 What if the whole world were a dead, blasted wasteland?

Mistborn
For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier "snapped" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Then Kelsier reveals his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets. She will have to learn trust if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

Brandon Sanderson, fantasy's newest master tale-spinner and author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple question: What if the prophesied hero failed to defeat the Dark Lord? The answer will be found in the Mistborn Trilogy, a saga of surprises that begins with the book in your hands. Fantasy will never be the same again.]]> 541 Brandon Sanderson naomi 0 to-read 4.47 2006 Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: naomi
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> For One More Day 10929
Mitch Albom mesmerized readers around the world with his number one New York Times bestsellers, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Now he returns with a beautiful, haunting novel about the family we love and the chances we miss.

For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?

As a child, Charley "Chick" Benetto was told by his father, "You can be a mama's boy or a daddy's boy, but you can't be both." So he chooses his father, only to see the man disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence.
Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding. And he decides to take his own life.
He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother, who died eight years earlier, is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing ever happened..

What follows is the one "ordinary" day so many of us yearn for, a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain the family secrets, and to seek forgiveness. Somewhere between this life and the next, Charley learns the astonishing things he never knew about his mother and her sacrifices. And he tries, with her tender guidance, to put the crumbled pieces of his life back together.

Through Albom's inspiring characters and masterful storytelling, readers will newly appreciate those whom they love and may have thought they'd lost in their own lives. For One More Day is a book for anyone in a family, and will be cherished by Albom's millions of fans worldwide.]]> 208 Mitch Albom 1401303277 naomi 0 to-read 4.13 2006 For One More Day
author: Mitch Albom
name: naomi
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games)]]> 214331246
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 naomi 5 4.49 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: naomi
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/10
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]]> The Grace Year 43263520
In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.]]> 416 Kim Liggett 1250145449 naomi 0 to-read 4.08 2019 The Grace Year
author: Kim Liggett
name: naomi
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> Talking at Night 62583508
They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story.

Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.

But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.

What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can’t let go?]]> 400 Claire Daverley 0593653483 naomi 0 to-read 3.86 2023 Talking at Night
author: Claire Daverley
name: naomi
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Raw Shark Texts 144800 427 Steven Hall 1841959111 naomi 0 to-read 3.83 2007 The Raw Shark Texts
author: Steven Hall
name: naomi
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> White Oleander 32234 White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes--each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned--becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.]]> 446 Janet Fitch 0316182540 naomi 0 to-read 4.00 1999 White Oleander
author: Janet Fitch
name: naomi
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Her Name in the Sky 20886492
The last thing she wants is to fall in love with a girl--especially when that girl is her best friend, Baker.

Hannah knows she should like Wally, the kind, earnest boy who asks her to prom. She should cheer on her friend Clay when he asks Baker to be his girlfriend. She should follow the rules of her conservative Louisiana community--the rules that have been ingrained in her since she was a child.

But Hannah longs to be with Baker, who cooks macaroni and cheese with Hannah late at night, who believes in the magic of books as much as Hannah does, and who challenges Hannah to be the best version of herself.

And Baker might want to be with Hannah, too--if both girls can embrace that world-shaking, yet wondrous, possibility.]]> 402 Kelly Quindlen 1495335291 naomi 3 4.25 2014 Her Name in the Sky
author: Kelly Quindlen
name: naomi
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Spindrift (Seal Cove, #1) 48902000 Morgan Donovan had everything she ever wanted: a dream job as a large animal veterinarian, awesome friends, and a loving and supportive fiancée. But it all comes crashing down when her fiancée dumps her after realizing that Morgan’s job will always come first. And, while Morgan still has the job and friends, her heart is broken into a million tiny pieces.
Emilia Russo is a burned-out shelter vet. When the unexpected death of her father triggers a mental breakdown that hastens the end of her relationship, she retreats to his house in Seal Cove, Maine. She plans on spending the summer renovating it while she figures out how to pull the pieces of her life back together. But when she runs into Morgan at the dock where her father’s sailboat is moored, her plans for a quiet summer of healing and reflection sink like a stone—the attraction is immediate and obvious, and Emilia finds herself slipping seamlessly into Morgan’s world.
Each woman knows this fling will end when Emilia returns to Boston at the end of the summer, but they’re unprepared for the intensity and depth of their attraction. And, as the gales of fall begin to drive leaves like spindrift upon Seal Cove, Morgan and Emilia must each come to terms with how much they’re willing to give up to stay together.]]> 296 Anna Burke 161294177X naomi 0 to-read 4.24 2020 Spindrift (Seal Cove, #1)
author: Anna Burke
name: naomi
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In the Dream House 43317482 251 Carmen Maria Machado 1644450038 naomi 4 4.38 2019 In the Dream House
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: naomi
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/11
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review:

]]> We Could Be Rats 214152402 A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.]]> 256 Emily R. Austin 1668058146 naomi 0 to-read 3.94 2025 We Could Be Rats
author: Emily R. Austin
name: naomi
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> Stay True 59900070 New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken--with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity--is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends--his memories--Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.]]> 208 Hua Hsu 0385547773 naomi 0 to-read 3.97 2022 Stay True
author: Hua Hsu
name: naomi
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
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]]> Negative Space 150778873 176 Gillian Linden 1324065540 naomi 0 to-read 3.21 2024 Negative Space
author: Gillian Linden
name: naomi
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> But the Girl 180917996 270 Jessica Zhan Mei Yu 195121398X naomi 0 to-read 3.67 2024 But the Girl
author: Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
name: naomi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Devourer 196408002
But her plans are thwarted. A sudden surplus of magic in the world is causing ancient sea monsters to awaken. Worse yet, Adra discovers that the ship she's been chasing for almost a year now is captained by a girl who’s been impersonating Cameron, while Cameron himself is missing.

The two pirate captains will have to work together if they are to find Cameron, but before they can do so, they must vanquish the beast―known as The Devourer―that is sinking ships and causing so much fear. Adra will have to descend leagues beneath the sea to the creature’s lair to strike a deal with her, but she’ll discover she isn’t the only one looking for her brother―and what he stole.]]> 400 Alison Ames naomi 0 to-read 3.40 2025 The Devourer
author: Alison Ames
name: naomi
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
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]]> Cold Enough for Snow 58730649 Cold Enough for Snow questions whether any of us speak a common language, which dimensions can contain love, and what claim we have to truly know another's inner world.

Selected from more than 1,500 entries, Cold Enough for Snow won the Novel Prize, a new, biennial award offered by Fitzcarraldo Editions, New Directions (US) and Giramondo (Australia), for any novel written in English that explores and expands the possibilities of the form.]]> 96 Jessica Au 1913097765 naomi 0 to-read 3.74 2022 Cold Enough for Snow
author: Jessica Au
name: naomi
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sister Snake 199531653 A glittering, bold, darkly funny novel about two sisters—one in New York, one in Singapore—who are bound by an ancient secret.

Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim as she freely uses her beauty and charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret; once they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang Dynasty China.

A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades. Su convinces Emerald to move to Singapore so she can keep an eye on her—but she soon begins to worry that Emerald’s irrepressible behavior will out them both, in a sparkling, affluent city where everything runs like clockwork and any deviation from the norm is automatically suspect.

Razor-sharp, hilarious, and raw in emotion, Sister Snake explores chosen family, queerness, passing, and the struggle against conformity. Reimagining the Chinese folktale “The Legend of the White Snake,” this is a novel about being seen for who you are—and, ultimately, how to live free. ]]> 261 Amanda Lee Koe 006335506X naomi 0 to-read 3.75 2024 Sister Snake
author: Amanda Lee Koe
name: naomi
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
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]]> <![CDATA[My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)]]> 35036409

Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between two women.]]> 331 Elena Ferrante naomi 0 to-read 4.08 2011 My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels, #1)
author: Elena Ferrante
name: naomi
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)]]> 6148028 Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol—a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn.]]> 391 Suzanne Collins 0439023491 naomi 5 all-time-favourites 4.36 2009 Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: naomi
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: all-time-favourites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)]]> 2767052
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]> 374 Suzanne Collins 0439023483 naomi 5 all-time-favourites 4.35 2008 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: naomi
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: all-time-favourites
review:

]]> These Letters End in Tears 185767239 Set in a country where being gay is punishable by law, These Letters End in Tears is the heart-wrenching forbidden love story of a Christian girl with a deviant heart and a Muslim girl leading a double life

Bessem notices Fatima for the first time on the soccer field—muscular and focused, she’s the only woman playing and seems completely at ease. When Fatima chases a rogue ball in her direction, Bessem freezes, mesmerized by the athlete’s charm and beauty. One playful wink from Fatima, and Bessem knows her life will never be the same.

In Cameroon, a country where same-sex relationships are punishable by law, the odds are stacked against Bessem and Fatima from the start. And when Fatima’s older brother, a staunch Muslim, finds out about their affair, he intervenes by physically assaulting them, an incident that precedes a police raid at the only gay bar in town. After spending days in jail, Fatima goes missing without a trace, and Bessem is left with only rumors of her whereabouts. Has Fatima been sentenced to an unknown prison? Has she been banished from her community, or married off, as some have suggested? Or something even more sinister?

Thirteen years later, Bessem is now a university professor leading a relatively quiet life, occasionally and secretly dating other women. However, she has never forgotten Fatima. After spotting a mutual friend for the first time in years—the last person who may have seen Fatima—Bessem embarks on a winding search for her lost love.]]> 240 Musih Tedji Xaviere 1646221869 naomi 0 to-read 3.91 2024 These Letters End in Tears
author: Musih Tedji Xaviere
name: naomi
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/09
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]]> Swift River 199798557 A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK | A Most Anticipated Book from Today, Real Simple, Time, Los Angeles Times, and BookPage

“The book we all need to revive our souls” (Nicole Dennis-Benn): A sweeping family saga about the complicated bond between mothers and daughters, the disappearance of a father, and the long-hidden history of a declining New England mill town.

“A powerful novel about how our family history shapes us, Swift River broke my heart, and then offered me hope.” —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: She’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and the fact that since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.

But when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she’s never met, key elements of Pop’s life are uncovered. She is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, spanning the 20th century and revealing a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion. As pieces of their shared past become clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her family. But how will what she’s learned of the past change her future?]]> 304 Essie J. Chambers 1668027917 naomi 0 to-read 3.43 2024 Swift River
author: Essie J. Chambers
name: naomi
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> What You Leave Behind 199119061
Deena Wood’s life has fallen apart in the aftermath of losing her beloved mother, her marriage, and her prestigious job at an Atlanta law firm. She needs what the Geechee people of coastal Georgia call a “dayclean,” a fresh start.

She returns to her childhood home in Brunswick, Georgia, to heal. But her return is anything but the respite she thought it might be. To make peace with all her loss, she often drives through the city. One day, she unwittingly finds herself on the oceanfront property of a loner widower who is fighting to keep land that has been in his family since the end of the Civil War. He threatens her and warns her to never return. But shortly after, he disappears, and his very expensive property is quickly put up for sale. Curious about what has happened to the man, Deena digs into his disappearance and finds a family legacy at risk. What starts out as a bit of curious snooping, turns into a deadly game of illegal land grabs and property redevelopment in poor and rural communities with dark and powerful forces at work.

Without realizing it, Deena finds herself caught up in a nightmarish scheme that threatens her community and her family. She’ll need help and finds it in a close but unlikely source because she knows she must do whatever it takes to stop the sinister forces at play before she becomes their next target.]]> 384 Wanda M. Morris naomi 0 to-read 3.96 2024 What You Leave Behind
author: Wanda M. Morris
name: naomi
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Death of the Author 214329001 The future of storytelling is here.

Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.

In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.

What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.]]> 448 Nnedi Okorafor 0063391155 naomi 0 to-read 3.92 2025 Death of the Author
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: naomi
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)]]> 51901147 Ambition will fuel him.

Competition will drive him.

But power has its price.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined -- every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.]]> 541 Suzanne Collins naomi 4 Goodbye Lucy Gray, we hardly knew you. ]]> 4.00 2020 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: naomi
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/09
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Goodbye Lucy Gray, we hardly knew you.

]]> The Drunkard 53281616 The Drunkard is one of the first full-length stream-of-consciousness novels written in Chinese. It has been called the Hong Kong Novel, and was first published in 1962 as a serial in a Hong Kong evening paper. As the unnamed Narrator, a writer at odds with a philistine world, sinks to his drunken nadir, his plight can be seen to represent that of a whole intelligentsia, a whole culture, degraded by the brutal forces of history: the Second Sino-Japanese War and the rampant capitalism of post-war Hong Kong.

The often surrealistic description of the Narrator's inexorable descent through the seedy bars and night-clubs of Hong Kong, of his numerous encounters with dance-girls and his ever more desperate bouts of drinking, is counterpointed by a series of wide-ranging literary essays, analysing the Chinese classical tradition, the popular culture of China and the West, and the modernist movement in Western and Chinese literature.

The ambiance of Hong Kong in the early 1960s is graphically evoked in this powerful and poignant novel, which takes the reader to the very heart of Hong Kong. Hong Kong director Freddie Wong made a fine film version of the novel in 2004.]]> 351 Yichang Liu 9882371868 naomi 0 to-read 4.34 1962 The Drunkard
author: Yichang Liu
name: naomi
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> Natural Beauty 61420120 Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.

Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.

Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.

A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.]]> 272 Ling Ling Huang 0593472926 naomi 0 to-read 3.77 2023 Natural Beauty
author: Ling Ling Huang
name: naomi
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 naomi 0 to-read 4.11 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
name: naomi
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories]]> 23281612
Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 162 Angela Carter 0143107615 naomi 0 to-read 3.88 1979 The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
author: Angela Carter
name: naomi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)]]> 7260188 My name is Katniss Everdeen.
Why am I not dead?
I should be dead.

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans—except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay—no matter what the personal cost.]]> 390 Suzanne Collins 0439023513 naomi 4 4.12 2010 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: naomi
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> The Inseparables 60123266
The girls become close. They talk for hours about equality, justice, war and religion; they lose respect for their teachers; they build a world of their own. But they can't stay like this forever.

Written in 1954, five years after The Second Sex, the novel was never published in Simone de Beauvoir's lifetime. This first English edition includes an afterword by her adopted daughter, who discovered the manuscript hidden in a drawer, and photographs of the real-life friendship which inspired and tormented the author.]]> 148 Simone de Beauvoir naomi 0 to-read 4.12 2020 The Inseparables
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: naomi
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/26
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]]> <![CDATA[It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over]]> 177148776 Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it ― how much of what we love can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens?

CO-WINNER OF THE NOVEL PRIZE
WINNER OF THE URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE
WINNER OF THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD
WINNER OF A PACIFIC NORTHWEST BOOK AWARD

This third perspective on myself is disconcerting.

The heroine of the spare and haunting It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known―where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.

A bracing writer of great nerve and verve, Anne de Marcken bends reality (and the reader’s mind) with throwaway assurance. It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love. Delivering a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader’s imagination, this is one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, a tale for our dispossessed times.]]> 128 Anne de Marcken 0811237850 naomi 0 to-read 3.62 2024 It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
author: Anne de Marcken
name: naomi
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/26
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]]> Women 200307455
Sometimes I wonder what it is I could tell you about her for my job here to be done. I am looking for a short­cut. . . .But that would be asking too much from you. It wasn’t you who loved her.

A young writer moves from the country to the city and falls in love with another woman for the very first time. From the start, the relationship is doomed; Finn is nineteen years older, wears men’s clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile . . . and a long-term girlfriend.

With startling clarity and breathtaking tenderness, Chloe Caldwell writes the story of a love in of nights spent drunkenly hurling a phone against a brick wall; of early mornings hungover in bed, curled up together; of emails and poems exchanged at breakneck speed. In Women, Caldwell lays bare the feverish obsession of addictive love, and asks the what, if anything, can who we love teach us about who we are?

In this beautiful, transcendent, bracingly sexy novella, Caldwell tells a lust-love story that will bring you to your knees. Capturing the feverish heartbreak of Sapphic romance, painting a stark picture of an identity in crisis, and illuminating the exploratory possibilities of queer life, Women is an incandescent novella that brands the heart and sears the soul.]]> 160 Chloé Caldwell 0063387077 naomi 0 to-read 3.86 2014 Women
author: Chloé Caldwell
name: naomi
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit]]> 15055
At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.


Alternate cover edition for 9780802135162]]> 176 Jeanette Winterson naomi 0 to-read 3.76 1985 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: naomi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/26
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]]> Written on the Body 15054 The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman.

“At once a love story and a philosophical meditation.” — New York Times Book Review]]> 190 Jeanette Winterson 0679744479 naomi 0 to-read 4.12 1992 Written on the Body
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: naomi
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/26
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]]> The Haunting of Hill House 89717 “Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within. . . .”

Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past. As they begin to cope with chilling, even horrifying occurrences beyond their control or understanding, they cannot possibly know what lies ahead. For Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.]]> 182 Shirley Jackson 0143039989 naomi 3 nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them; each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question - as “Do you love me?” - could never be answered or forgotten.

i couldn’t tell whether theodora and nell were in love or hated each other]]> 3.84 1959 The Haunting of Hill House
author: Shirley Jackson
name: naomi
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1959
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
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nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them; each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question - as “Do you love me?” - could never be answered or forgotten.


i couldn’t tell whether theodora and nell were in love or hated each other
]]> The Telltale Heart 38584270 25 Edgar Allan Poe naomi 0 4.21 1843 The Telltale Heart
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: naomi
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1843
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/23
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]]> Olivia 679464
“Although not strictly autobiographical, Olivia draws on the author’s experiences at finishing schools run by the charismatic Mlle. Marie Souvestre, whose influence lived on through former students like Natalie Barney and Eleanor Roosevelt. Olivia was dedicated to the memory of Strachey’s friend Virginia Woolf and published to acclaim in 1949. Colette wrote the screenplay for the 1951 film adaptation of the novel. In 1999, Olivia was included on the Publishing Triangle’s widely publicized list of the 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels of the 20th Century.

“Dorothy Strachey (1865-1960) was the sister of the novelist Lytton Strachey and a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group…….Olivia, originally published under a pseudonym, is her only novel.” -- Amazon.com]]> 135 Dorothy Strachey 1573442429 naomi 0 to-read 3.81 1949 Olivia
author: Dorothy Strachey
name: naomi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
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]]>