en-US Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:13:22 -0700 60 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 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 vileidol 5 to-read 4.17 2019
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127282429 From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world.

Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on “gender” that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed “anti-gender ideology movements” that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization―and even “man” himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.

The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how “gender” has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of “gender” collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of “critical race theory” and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation.

An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless―a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.]]> 320 Judith Butler 0374608229 vileidol 0 to-read 4.02 2024
author: Judith Butler
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/09/08
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]]> 1625 Twelfth Night plays with love and power. The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke (or Count) Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

Onto this scene arrive the twins Viola and Sebastian; caught in a shipwreck, each thinks the other has drowned. Viola disguises herself as a male page and enters Orsino’s service. Orsino sends her as his envoy to Olivia—only to have Olivia fall in love with the messenger. The play complicates, then wonderfully untangles, these relationships.

Background information about Shakespeare, Elizabethan theater, and the text accompany his play about unrequited love and mistaken identity.]]> 222 William Shakespeare 0743482778 vileidol 4 favorites 3.97 1623
author: William Shakespeare
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1623
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/01/22
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some great genders in this thing
]]> 17645 Now that all the others have run out of air, it's my turn to do a little story-making.

In Homer's account in The Odyssey, Penelope—wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy—is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumors, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters, and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and—curiously—twelve of her maids.

In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged maids, asking: "What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?" In Atwood's dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. With wit and verve, drawing on the story-telling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality—and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery.]]> 198 Margaret Atwood 1841957178 vileidol 4
hashtag helen of sparta deserves better!]]> 3.70 2005
author: Margaret Atwood
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
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A stunning retelling of the unspoken within the Odyssey. Atwood employs different conventions and forms masterfully to tell a story that is nuanced and discomforting, much like the Odyssey, in its ambiguity of morality and character.

hashtag helen of sparta deserves better!
]]> 54346418 Suzanne Rivecca vileidol 5 favorites 4.57 2018
author: Suzanne Rivecca
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> 210138061
—silas denver melvin, author of Grit (Sunday Mornings at the River, 2020)]]> 58 Dante Émile 1959118714 vileidol 0 to-read 4.10 2024
author: Dante Émile
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 24800
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.]]> 709 Mark Z. Danielewski vileidol 0 to-read 4.11 2000
author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 216595852
Alexis Hert isn’t a hero, and she certainly isn’t a god. All she’s ever been is a survivor.

But the Fates disagree.

When a blood test leads to her admittance at the Spartan War Academy, she’ll have to do more than merely survive.

Alexis will have to claim her birthright: immortality.

But immortality is a privilege, one earned in the crucible of the academy, where the heroes are villains and classrooms battlegrounds. While gladiators Achilles and Patro, her demanding mentors, hone her into a warrior, Augustus and Kharon, her professors and the brooding heirs to the underworld, haunt her steps and her thoughts.

Because where there are gods, there are bound to be monsters, and there is more than one hunting Alexis…]]> 496 Jasmine Mas vileidol 1 all edge and no substance and kind of culturally insensitive

i didn't want to do this (a lie) but someone had to (nobody had to) be the asshole who gets too passionate about greek mythology (love 2 b insufferable).

greek mythology and history have already been subject to so much appropriation and colonialism (check out the parthenon marbles and other artefacts the british still have (in flagrant defiance of international convention btw), or the fact that they used to argue the greeks weren't related to the ancient greeks because... (wait for it) they weren't aryan). haven't they been through enough already?!

notes i had to get off my chest at 3am:
- spartans??? like sparta?? like the real place that these people are not from??
- the colosseum? the gladiators?? like in rome?
- hercules is the more popular seo keyword name because of disney. it's heracles for greek myth. although, to be fair, i guess there are gladiators.
- achilles and patroclus's parentages are an absolute slap in the face to the source material
- thetis is an incredibly interesting and nuanced female character. erasing this and making ares (ARES??? REALLY.) achilles's immortal parentage is WILD. as self-proclaimed chairman of the 'thetis and complicated women in greek mythology defence squad' i think i might have to challenge the author to a duel or something.
- the whole point of patroclus's character is his mortality and his empathy. absolute keyword jumble again. let's copy and paste popular names onto completely different character tropes and ideas. girl you are NOT briseis don't even try.
- chthonic doesn't mean edgy bad boy. it's like a deific category type thing. one that makes no sense here. neither aphrodite or ares (or thetis!) are chthonic.
- the rage of achilles is so innately tied to his grief and- ok can't talk abt it rn i'll cry
- not related to lore. is the book making a point to say that they're all billionaires? girl Read the fucking Room it's late stage capitalism o'clock

if there are cool lore justifications for all this that i didn't manage to get to because i couldn't turn off my brain for long enough. i'm willing (nay, asking. nay, begging) to stand corrected.
Please.]]> 3.79 2024
author: Jasmine Mas
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves:
review:
all edge and no substance and kind of culturally insensitive

i didn't want to do this (a lie) but someone had to (nobody had to) be the asshole who gets too passionate about greek mythology (love 2 b insufferable).

greek mythology and history have already been subject to so much appropriation and colonialism (check out the parthenon marbles and other artefacts the british still have (in flagrant defiance of international convention btw), or the fact that they used to argue the greeks weren't related to the ancient greeks because... (wait for it) they weren't aryan). haven't they been through enough already?!

notes i had to get off my chest at 3am:
- spartans??? like sparta?? like the real place that these people are not from??
- the colosseum? the gladiators?? like in rome?
- hercules is the more popular seo keyword name because of disney. it's heracles for greek myth. although, to be fair, i guess there are gladiators.
- achilles and patroclus's parentages are an absolute slap in the face to the source material
- thetis is an incredibly interesting and nuanced female character. erasing this and making ares (ARES??? REALLY.) achilles's immortal parentage is WILD. as self-proclaimed chairman of the 'thetis and complicated women in greek mythology defence squad' i think i might have to challenge the author to a duel or something.
- the whole point of patroclus's character is his mortality and his empathy. absolute keyword jumble again. let's copy and paste popular names onto completely different character tropes and ideas. girl you are NOT briseis don't even try.
- chthonic doesn't mean edgy bad boy. it's like a deific category type thing. one that makes no sense here. neither aphrodite or ares (or thetis!) are chthonic.
- the rage of achilles is so innately tied to his grief and- ok can't talk abt it rn i'll cry
- not related to lore. is the book making a point to say that they're all billionaires? girl Read the fucking Room it's late stage capitalism o'clock

if there are cool lore justifications for all this that i didn't manage to get to because i couldn't turn off my brain for long enough. i'm willing (nay, asking. nay, begging) to stand corrected.
Please.
]]> 61985453
Long ago, humans betrayed dragons, stealing their magic and banishing them to a dying world. Centuries later, their descendants worship dragons as gods. But the gods remember, and they do not forgive.

Thief Arcady scrapes a living on the streets of Vatra. Desperate, Arcady steals a powerful artifact from the bones of the Plaguebringer, the most hated person in Lumet history. Only Arcady knows the artifact's magic holds the key to a new life among the nobles at court and a chance for revenge.

The spell connects to Everen, the last male dragon foretold to save his kind, dragging him through the Veil. Disguised as a human, Everen soon learns that to regain his true power and form and fulfil his destiny, he only needs to convince one little thief to trust him enough to bond completely--body, mind, and soul--and then kill them.

Yet the closer the two become, the greater the risk both their worlds will shatter.]]> 336 L.R. Lam vileidol 5 currently-reading
maybe it's because I love a good queer dragon romance. or because I don't mind a bit of knotty worldbuilding. it's definitely because of my lasting love affair with second person pov, my fondness for a touch of poetic prose, and how much I adore this book's thematic reflection of contemporary climate anxieties and its exploration of gender roles and gendered expectations. all this to say, I may be casually obsessed with this book.

definitely keeping an eye out for the sequel.]]> 3.33 2023
author: L.R. Lam
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:
I bought this book because I'm a contrary sort of bitch and I didn't agree with some of the criticisms I read from other sources. if I'm being honest, it's a ~4.5 star kind of book to me, but I'm rounding up and balancing the scales (ha! no pun intended!).

maybe it's because I love a good queer dragon romance. or because I don't mind a bit of knotty worldbuilding. it's definitely because of my lasting love affair with second person pov, my fondness for a touch of poetic prose, and how much I adore this book's thematic reflection of contemporary climate anxieties and its exploration of gender roles and gendered expectations. all this to say, I may be casually obsessed with this book.

definitely keeping an eye out for the sequel.
]]> 44094069 Natalie Diaz’s highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award

Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.

Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: “I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope—a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.]]> 107 Natalie Díaz 1644450143 vileidol 0 to-read 4.32 2020
author: Natalie Díaz
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1466
Includes Heracles, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Alcestis.]]> 312 Anne Carson 1590171802 vileidol 0 to-read 4.38 -416
author: Anne Carson
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.38
book published: -416
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 35910593 we say sacrifice / we mean murder / our lips are red for a reason]]> 9 Yves Olade vileidol 0 to-read 4.15 2017
author: Yves Olade
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62877213
In an eternal paradise, the most beautiful angel, Lucifer, struggles with shame, identity, and timidity, with little more than the desire to worship his creator.

It isn't until the strongest angel, Michael, comes into his life that Lucifer learns to love himself. Along the way, their friendship begins to bloom into something else. Maybe the first romance in the history of everything.

But this God is a jealous one, and maybe paradise is not paradise.]]> 398 Rafael Nicolás vileidol 0 to-read 4.08 2022
author: Rafael Nicolás
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18545 126 Tom Stoppard 0802132758 vileidol 5 4.04 1967
author: Tom Stoppard
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1967
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/11/29
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]]> 23566909
Nearly a century later, runaway Joseph Jervis seeks refuge with an uncle in London. Albert Nightingale's strange, beautiful house, with its mysterious portraits and ghostly presences, captivates Joseph and leads him on a search for clues about the house, his family, and the past.]]> 664 Brian Selznick 0545448689 vileidol 5 3.98 2015
author: Brian Selznick
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/11/29
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You either see it or you don't.....
]]> 13747794 The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in audio. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel's first editor, who feared it would be "offensive" to Victorians.]]> 260 Oscar Wilde 0674066316 vileidol 0 to-read 4.30 1890
author: Oscar Wilde
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/29
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]]> 54613751
Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.

As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.

The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.]]> 292 Krystal Sutherland 059311034X vileidol 0 to-read 4.00 2021
author: Krystal Sutherland
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 22892158

Murder Most Queer  works to expose the forces that create the homophobic paradigm that imagines sexual and gender nonconformity as dangerous and destructive and to show how theater artists—and for the most part LGBT theater artists—have rewritten and radically altered the significance of the homicidal homosexual. Jordan Schildcrout argues that these figures, far from being simple reiterations of a homophobic archetype, are complex and challenging characters who enact trenchant fantasies of empowerment, replacing the shame and stigma of the abject with the defiance and freedom of the outlaw, giving voice to rage and resistance.  These bold characters also probe the darker anxieties and fears that can affect queer lives and relationships.  Instead of sentencing them to the prison of negative representations, this book analyzes the meanings in their acts of murder, confronting the real fears and desires condensed in those dramatic acts.]]> 268 Jordan Schildcrout 0472072323 vileidol 5 4.11 2014
author: Jordan Schildcrout
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/09/08
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An insightful look at forms of reclaimation and navigating the space between acceptance and sanitisation using the image of the carnal, the visceral, and the bloodied. Here's to queer monstrosity!
]]> 406235 178 James Baldwin vileidol 5 4.38 1956
author: James Baldwin
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1956
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/09/08
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]]> 23841432 WINNER of the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize

A New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016

"There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Vuong's sincerity and candor, and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Library Journal 2016 Best Books of the Year WINNER, 2016 Whiting Award WINNER, 2017 Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award FINALIST, 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award FINALIST, 2017 Lambda Literary Award FINALIST

In his haunting and fearless debut, Ocean Vuong walks a tightrope of historic and personal violences, creating an interrogation of the American body as a borderless space of both failure and triumph. At once vulnerable and redemptive, dreamlike and visceral, compassionate and unforgiving, these poems seek a myriad existence without forgetting the prerequisite of self-preservation in a world bent on extinguishing its othered voices. Vuong's poems show, through breath, cadence, and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the most necessary of hungers.]]> 89 Ocean Vuong vileidol 5 favorites 4.18 2016
author: Ocean Vuong
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/09/08
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]]> 13623848 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]> 408 Madeline Miller vileidol 5 favorites 4.28 2011
author: Madeline Miller
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
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]]> 96259 Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness” of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”]]> 80 Richard Siken 0300107897 vileidol 5 favorites 4.34 2005
author: Richard Siken
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
shelves: favorites
review:
changed my life and rewired my brain chemistry forever
]]> 34511 496 Terry Pratchett vileidol 5 favorites 4.24 2003
author: Terry Pratchett
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
shelves: favorites
review:
and now im queer! thank you mr pratchett
]]> 1192430 96 Terrence McNally 0802136354 vileidol 5 favorites i wantto eat glass :3 3.85 1999
author: Terrence McNally
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
shelves: favorites
review:
i wantto eat glass :3
]]> 50273238 the sky white with
crows. the sky glorious with bruises.
O, how destruction became a
kind of prayer. how you prayed it
every night.]]> 17 Yves Olade vileidol 0 to-read 4.41 2020
author: Yves Olade
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23250284 46 Sam Sax 0989641546 vileidol 5 3.93 2014
author: Sam Sax
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
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]]> 54017829 The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom takes this #1 New York Times bestselling series to haunting new heights.

A desperate call for help interrupts holiday celebrations at the Bureau of Balance, and sends Taako, Magnus and Merle on a high-stakes mission to find and Reclaim a fourth deadly relic: a powerful transmutation stone, hidden somewhere in the depths of a floating arcane laboratory that’s home to the Doctors Maureen and Lucas Miller. An unknown menace has seized control of the stone, and is using it to transform the lab into a virulent pink crystal that spreads to everything it touches.

It’s only a matter of time before this sparkling disaster crash-lands, but in order to find the stone and save the whole planet from being King Midased, our heroes will have to fight their way through a gauntlet of rowdy robots and crystal golems, decide whether they can trust the evasive Lucas Miller, and solve the mystery of what—or who—has put them all in peril, before there’s no world left to save.]]> 272 Clint McElroy 1250232651 vileidol 5 4.56 2021
author: Clint McElroy
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
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]]> 46223323 New York Times Bestselling books The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins and The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited.

Our boys have gone full-time at the Bureau of Balance, and their next assignment is a real thorny one: apprehending The Raven, a master thief who’s tapped into the power of a Grand Relic to ransack the city of Goldcliff. Local life-saver Lieutenant Hurley pulls them out of the woods, only to throw them headlong into the world of battle wagon racing, Goldcliff’s favorite high-stakes low-legality sport and The Raven’s chosen battlefield. Will the boys and Hurley be able to reclaim the Relic and pull The Raven back from the brink, or will they get lost in the weeds?

Based on the beloved blockbuster podcast where three brothers and their dad play a tabletop RPG in real time, The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal has it all: blossoming new friendships, pining for outlaw lovers, and a rollicking race you can root for!]]> 272 Clint McElroy 1250232627 vileidol 5 4.58 2020
author: Clint McElroy
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/09/08
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]]> 41812788
You know, the usual things you find on a train.

Hot on the heels of "The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins", the smash hit graphic novel that launched the series, "Murder on the Rockport Limited" picks up the saga where volume 1 left off. Both books are based on "The Adventure Zone," a tabletop RPG comedy podcast with downloads numbering in the tens of millions and an army of passionately devoted fans. With art and co-adaptation from Carey Pietsch, the McElroys are once again turning their raucous freewheeling D&D campaign into some damn fine comics.]]> 219 Clint McElroy 1250153719 vileidol 5 4.59 2019
author: Clint McElroy
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
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]]> 59251219 The fifth installment in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Adventure Zone graphic novel series, a meta-fictional D&D adventure story based on the smash hit podcast.

The Bureau of Balance has located yet another Grand Relic, and this time it's...time? A small mining town called Refuge has been locked away behind an arcane bubble, and somewhere inside it the Temporal Chalice is causing unknown mayhem. Taako, Magnus, and Merle are launched into their investigation, but they've barely had a chance to get their feet under them before the situation literally falls apart. When the town clocktower strikes noon, Refuge and its citizens are destroyed in a sudden chaos of flame and ruin, and our heroes' relic hunting -- along with their lives -- comes to an abrupt end.

But woah, what's this? It's 11AM, they're alive again, and Refuge definitely hasn't just been exploded? Looks like a classic time loop, friends. This town is trapped in its final hour, and so are the three of them. And in order to escape, they'll not only have to solve the mystery of what happened to the Chalice, they'll also also have to resist what it offers: the chance to rewrite the worst days of their own pasts.

Based on the blockbuster podcast where the McElroy brothers and their dad play a tabletop RPG, and illustrated by cartooning powerhouse Carey Pietsch, The Adventure Zone: The Eleventh Hour is a thrilling new chapter in this #1 New York Times Bestselling series.]]> 352 Clint McElroy 1250793785 vileidol 5 4.68 2023
author: Clint McElroy
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.68
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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]]> 35684941
SEE! The illustrated exploits of three lovable dummies set loose in a classic fantasy adventure!

READ! Their journey from small-time bodyguards to world-class artifact hunters!

MARVEL! At the sheer metafictional chutzpah of a graphic novel based on a story created in a podcast where three dudes and their dad play a tabletop role playing game in real time!

Join Taako the elf wizard, Merle the dwarf cleric, and Magnus the human warrior for an adventure they are poorly equipped to handle AT BEST, guided ("guided") by their snarky DM, in a graphic novel that, like the smash-hit podcast it's based on, will tickle your funny bone, tug your heartstrings, and probably pants you if you give it half a chance.

With endearingly off-kilter storytelling from master goofballs Clint McElroy and the McElroy brothers, and vivid, adorable art by Carey Pietsch, The Adventure Zone: Here There be Gerblins is the comics equivalent of role-playing in your friend's basement at 2am, eating Cheetos and laughing your ass off as she rolls critical failure after critical failure.]]> 256 Clint McElroy 1250153700 vileidol 5 4.33 2018
author: Clint McElroy
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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]]> 150255
Originally published in 1989.]]> 189 Anne Carson 1564781887 vileidol 0 to-read 4.47 1986
author: Anne Carson
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> 13538874
Even when collected, Louise Glück’s poetry resists collection. With each successive book her drive to leave behind what came before has grown more fierce, the force of her gaze fixed on what has yet to be imagined. She invented a form to accommodate this need, the book-length sequence of poems, like a landscape seen from above, a novel with lacunae opening onto the unspeakable. The reiterated yet endlessly transfigured elements in this landscape—Persephone, a copper beech, a mother and father and sister, a garden, a husband and son, a horse, a dog, a field on fire, a mountain—persistently emerge and reappear with the dark energy of the inevitable, while at the same time are shot through with the bright aspect of things new-made.    
          From the outset (“Come here / Come here, little one”), Gluck’s voice has addressed us with deceptive simplicity, the poems in lines so clear we “do not see the intervening fathoms.” 

From within the earth’s
bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness

my friend the moon rises:
she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?

To read these books together is to understand the governing paradox of a life lived in the body and of the work wrested from it, the one fated to die and the other to endure.]]> 656 Louise Glück 0374126089 vileidol 4 4.45 2012
author: Louise Glück
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> 53133676 All the Gay Saints, is a collection of trans joy and resilience. Focused on love, partnership, and cultivating the landscape of one’s own body, All the Gay Saints seeks happiness in a world saturated with transphobia and marred by climate change. Though this world is finite, these poems want you to live forever. They will unbarb your body if you let them.]]> 100 Kayleb Rae Candrilli 1947817124 vileidol 5 4.30 2020
author: Kayleb Rae Candrilli
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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]]> 55882028
Grit is a transgender coming of age story. There are no beautiful rainbows here, no whispers, but raw cries from somewhere primal.

"Silas' words dart in and out like a scalpel revealing layers of flesh that have been given-or-taken-by lovers, parents, cruelty, and fate." - Sean Felix]]> 61 silas denver melvin vileidol 5 4.46 2020
author: silas denver melvin
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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]]> 150253 If Not, Winter, Carson presents all the extant fragments of Sappho's verse, employing brackets and white space to denote missing text—allowing the reader to imagine the poems as they were written. Carson says of her method of translation: "I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through". Her translation illuminates Sappho's reflections on love and desire, her companions and rivals, the goddess Aphrodite and her own daughter, Kleis. The book brings us an ancient poet brought to life by an empathetic contemporary poet, and is complete with an introduction and notes.]]> 397 Sappho 1844080811 vileidol 5 4.42 -550
author: Sappho
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.42
book published: -550
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]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 vileidol 5 4.02 2019
author: Ocean Vuong
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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]]> 759844 From one of our most admired playwrights, "an ambitious, complicated and often laugh-out-loud religious debate" (Toby Zinman, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Set in a time-bending, seriocomically imagined world between Heaven and Hell, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a philosophical meditation on the conflict between divine mercy and human free will that takes a close look at the eternal damnation of the Bible's most notorious sinner. This latest work from the author of Our Lady of 121st Street "shares many of the traits that have made Mr. Guirgis a playwright to reckon with in recent years: a fierce and questing mind that refuses to settle for glib answers, a gift for identifying with life's losers and an unforced eloquence that finds the poetry in lowdown street talk. [Guirgis brings to the play] a stirring sense of Christian existential pain, which wonders at the paradoxes of faith" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).]]> 128 Stephen Adly Guirgis 0571211011 vileidol 4 4.21 2005
author: Stephen Adly Guirgis
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> 19351043
Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from N.D. Stevenson. Featuring an exclusive epilogue not seen in the web comic, along with bonus conceptual sketches and revised pages throughout, this gorgeous full-color graphic novel is perfect for the legions of fans of the web comic and is sure to win Noelle many new ones.

Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are.

But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.]]> 272 N.D. Stevenson vileidol 5 4.16 2015
author: N.D. Stevenson
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> 3103
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).

Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.]]> 256 E.M. Forster 0393310329 vileidol 5 4.08 1971
author: E.M. Forster
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1971
rating: 5
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]]> 12067
People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it’s only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day. This time though, the armies of Good and Evil really do appear to be massing. The four Bikers of the Apocalypse are hitting the road. But both the angels and demons – well, one fast-living demon and a somewhat fussy angel – would quite like the Rapture not to happen.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist…]]> 491 Terry Pratchett vileidol 5 4.26 1990
author: Terry Pratchett
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1990
rating: 5
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]]> 17378527 439 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424984 vileidol 5 4.25 2016
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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]]> 17378508
Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel.]]> 391 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424968 vileidol 5 4.25 2014
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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]]> 17347389 439 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424941 vileidol 5 4.22 2013
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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]]> 17675462 “There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.]]> 409 Maggie Stiefvater 0545424925 vileidol 5 4.05 2012
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 vileidol 0 to-read 4.13 2022
author: R.F. Kuang
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2022
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]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar vileidol 5 currently-reading 3.82 2019
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/09/08
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 62991424
A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match. But the stranger is no stranger to this particular ghoul. Both women are undercover in their own way. And both have something to lose if their connection comes to light.]]> 59 Tamsyn Muir 1662509456 vileidol 0 to-read 3.95 2022
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: vileidol
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> 21532793 Crush, Yale Series of Younger Poets prize-winner Richard Siken turns toward the problems of making and representation, in an unrelenting interrogation of our world of doublings. In this restless, swerving book simple questions—such as, Why paint a bird?—are immediately complicated by concerns of morality, human capacity, and the ways we look to art for meaning and purpose while participating in its—and our own—invention.]]> 49 Richard Siken 1556594771 vileidol 5 4.15 2015
author: Richard Siken
name: vileidol
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]>