kate's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:33:17 -0700 60 kate's bookshelf: all 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg And Her Soul Out Of Nothing 449323 112 Olena Kalytiak Davis 0299157148 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.20 1997 And Her Soul Out Of Nothing
author: Olena Kalytiak Davis
name: kate
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/09/19
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Fast Life: The Collected Poems]]> 9994817 632 Tim Dlugos 0984459839 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.54 1982 A Fast Life: The Collected Poems
author: Tim Dlugos
name: kate
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/09/19
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Armed Love (Wesleyan Poetry Series)]]> 3047799 64 Eleanor Lerman 0819510688 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.10 1973 Armed Love (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
author: Eleanor Lerman
name: kate
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/09/19
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> Mother Mary Comes to Me 248337297 A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer.

Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.”

“Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.

With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.]]> 352 Arundhati Roy 166809472X kate 0 to-read 4.59 2025 Mother Mary Comes to Me
author: Arundhati Roy
name: kate
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/09/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Passion According to G.H. 13082436 193 Clarice Lispector 0811219682 kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.16 1964 The Passion According to G.H.
author: Clarice Lispector
name: kate
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/09/02
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> After Dark 28355463 Alternate cover for ISBN 9780307278739

From internationally renowned literary phenomenon Haruki Murakami comes this enchanting novel set in Tokyo during the spooky hours between midnight and dawn.

Nineteen-year-old Mari is waiting out the night in an anonymous Denny’s when she meets a young man who insists he knows her older sister, thus setting her on an odyssey through the sleeping city. In the space of a single night, the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents—models, prostitutes, mobsters, and musicians—collide in a world suspended between fantasy and reality. Utterly enchanting and infused with surrealism, After Dark is a thrilling account of the magical hours separating midnight from dawn.]]> 244 Haruki Murakami kate 0 to-read 3.85 2004 After Dark
author: Haruki Murakami
name: kate
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Not Now Now 239037603
Praise for Not Now Now:

“[A] thinking thing is not a writer,” according to Sandra Doller, but Not Now Now is an assemblage of odd thinking things, of poems mid-thought, of baby speak beside Stein/Scalapino speak, of musings on motherhood, of pure pleasure experiments grounded in the freedom of abstraction. Every word is plucked and stretched, every self broken down. The speaker inside these poems is like a mechanic, tuning them up and tricking them out for our entertainment and bewilderment. What I do know now is that I loved being trapped inside the logic of these poems. PAOLA CAPÓ-GARCÍA

Not Now Now is the baby that won’t go to sleep. It’s the vibrating vibrator in the carry-on luggage, the alarm clock that keeps getting snoozed, the funhouse mirror that shows us ourselves, anew. An expansive, multifaceted take on contemporary times, Doller flips the script on our boring words and phrases—“Pray for me mister for I have thinned”—opening up language and speech patterns as a way to mine our commodified, patriarchal surroundings. This book will chew you up in its crunching gears, but it won’t spit you out. If Gertrude Stein, Bernadette Mayer, and Eileen Myles had a baby, they’d be lucky to have Sandra Doller. LAUREN SHAPIRO

Bio: Sandra Doller is the author of several books of poetry, prose, translation, and the in-between from the most valiant small presses. Her work has recently appeared in magazines such as Fence, Harp & Altar, Pamenar, and Action, Spectacle. Doller is the founder of an international literary arts journal and independent press, 1913 a journal of forms/1913 Press, where she remains l’éditrice-in-chief. She lives in the USA, for now.]]> 134 Sandra Doller kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.00 2025 Not Now Now
author: Sandra Doller
name: kate
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/30
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> Leave Your Body Behind 28417465 134 Sandra Doller 1934254576 kate 0 to-read, poetry 3.85 2015 Leave Your Body Behind
author: Sandra Doller
name: kate
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/30
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> The Country Life 437815 341 Rachel Cusk 0312198485 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.76 1997 The Country Life
author: Rachel Cusk
name: kate
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/28
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Saving Agnes 60213492 218 Rachel Cusk 0312252560 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.53 1993 Saving Agnes
author: Rachel Cusk
name: kate
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/28
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Outline 21400742
Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.

Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.]]> 249 Rachel Cusk 0571233627 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.67 2014 Outline
author: Rachel Cusk
name: kate
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/28
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)]]> 11650 Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)

In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.]]> 432 Philip Roth kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.93 1997 American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)
author: Philip Roth
name: kate
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/28
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Versed 4211145 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2010)
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award (2009)

Rae Armantrout has always organized her collections of poetry as though they were works in themselves. Versed brings two of these sequences together, offering readers an expanded view of the arc of her writing. The poems in the first section, Versed, play with vice and versa, the perversity of human consciousness. They flirt with error and delusion, skating on a thin ice that inevitably cracks: "Metaphor forms / a crust / beneath which / the crevasse of each experience." Dark Matter, the second section, alludes to more than the unseen substance thought to make up the majority of mass in the universe. The invisible and unknowable are confronted directly as Armantrout's experience with cancer marks these poems with a new austerity, shot through with her signature wit and stark unsentimental thinking. Together, the poems of Versed part us from our assumptions about reality, revealing the gaps and fissures in our emotional and linguistic constructs, showing us ourselves where we are most exposed. A reader's companion is available at http: //versedreader.site.wesleyan.edu/]]> 136 Rae Armantrout 0819568791 kate 0 to-read, poetry 3.82 Versed
author: Rae Armantrout
name: kate
average rating: 3.82
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/25
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> Short Talks 150256 57 Anne Carson 0919626580 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.21 1992 Short Talks
author: Anne Carson
name: kate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/23
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith]]> 243596102 The first all-encompassing biography of Elliott Smith, offering an intimate portrait of his life and musical legacy with brand-new interviews, lyrics, and correspondence from the people closest to him, many speaking for the first time

Nobody Broke Your Heart is a tender, nuanced narrative of Elliott Smith, one of the most influential and tragic musicians of the 1990s, whose records are deeply beloved to this day, written by New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker–published author Jamie Fisher.

Starting with his childhood in Texas, following him through his making as an artist in Portland and New York, and reckoning honestly with his unmaking in Los Angeles, Fisher has used never-before-seen archival evidence (unheard recordings, draft lyrics, photos, and correspondence) alongside extensive interviews with friends, family, girlfriends, and collaborators to shed light on the real Elliott Smith, in all his complexity.

Vividly animating Elliott's world and analyzing his work and legacy in loving depth, Nobody Broke Your Heart is an essential book for anyone who loves Elliott Smith and his music—and anyone who’s loved someone grappling with addiction and mental illness.]]> 560 Jamie Fisher 0593475666 kate 0 to-read, memoir-biography 4.55 Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith
author: Jamie Fisher
name: kate
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/23
shelves: to-read, memoir-biography
review:

]]> Rent Boy 298753 128 Gary Indiana 1852423242 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.55 1993 Rent Boy
author: Gary Indiana
name: kate
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/23
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Rodham 50253429 From the New York Times bestselling author of American Wife and Eligible, a novel that imagines a deeply compelling what-might-have-been: What if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton?

In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise: Life magazine has covered her Wellesley commencement speech, she’s attending Yale Law School, and she’s on the forefront of student activism and the women’s rights movement. And then she meets Bill Clinton. A handsome, charismatic southerner and fellow law student, Bill is already planning his political career. In each other, the two find a profound intellectual, emotional, and physical connection that neither has previously experienced.

In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he proposed several times; although she said no more than once, as we all know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton.

But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s powerfully imagined tour-de-force of fiction, Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas. Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail—one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all of us must make in building a life.

Brilliantly weaving a riveting fictional tale into actual historical events, Curtis Sittenfeld delivers an uncannily astute and witty story for our times. In exploring the loneliness, moral ambivalence, and iron determination that characterize the quest for political power, as well as both the exhilaration and painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world still run mostly by men, Rodham is a singular and unforgettable novel.]]> 420 Curtis Sittenfeld 0399590919 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.81 2020 Rodham
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/23
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton]]> 116629 Life with Anne was a wild mixture of suicidal depression and manic happiness, inappropriate behavior, and midnight trips to the psychiatric ward. Anne taught Linda how to write, how to see, how to imagine--and only Linda could have written a book that captures so vividly the intimate details and lingering emotions of their life together. "Searching for Mercy Street" speaks to everyone who admires Anne Sexton and to every daughter or son who knows the pain of an imperfect childhood. This beautiful new trade paperback edition includes a new introduction by the author.]]> 340 Linda Gray Sexton 0316782084 kate 0 to-read, memoir-biography 3.93 1994 Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton
author: Linda Gray Sexton
name: kate
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/20
shelves: to-read, memoir-biography
review:

]]> To Bedlam and Part Way Back 197698
(synopsis generated by AI)

To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960) is Anne Sexton’s debut poetry collection, establishing her as a key figure in American confessional poetry. It offers a candid, raw, and often sardonic portrayal of her struggles with mental illness, hospitalization, and the challenging journey of returning to "normal" life.]]> 67 Anne Sexton 0395081793 kate 3 4.24 1960 To Bedlam and Part Way Back
author: Anne Sexton
name: kate
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1960
rating: 3
read at: 2026/08/20
date added: 2026/08/20
shelves:
review:

]]> Ways and Means 98653715 In Daniel Lefferts’s searing debut novel Ways and Means, a striving finance student confronts the line between ambition and greed, and the disordered politics of his era.

Alistair McCabe comes to New York with a plan. Young, handsome, intelligent, and gay, he hopes to escape his Rust Belt poverty and give his mother a better life by pursuing a career in high finance. But by the spring of 2016, Alistair’s plan has come undone: His fantasy banking job has eluded him and he’s mired in student debt. In his desperation, he’s gone to work for an enigmatic billionaire whose ambitions turn out to be far darker than any Alistair could have imagined. By the time Alistair uncovers his employer’s secret, his life is in danger and now he’s on the run.

Meanwhile, Alistair’s paramours, an older couple named Mark and Elijah, must face their own moral and financial dilemmas. Mark, nearing the end of his trust fund, takes a job with his father’s mobile-home empire, which forces him to confront the unsavory foundations of his family’s wealth, while Elijah, a failed painter, hitches his wagon to an artist-provocateur engaged on a project that makes the country’s political chaos into a thing of alluring, amoral beauty. As the nation hurtles toward a breaking point, Alistair, Mark, and Elijah must band together to save one another and themselves.

Propulsive, exuberant, and profoundly observed, Ways and Means is an indelible, deeply moving investigation of class and ambition, sex and art, and politics and power in 21st century America.]]> 400 Daniel Lefferts 1419768190 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.73 2024 Ways and Means
author: Daniel Lefferts
name: kate
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/20
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hard Damage (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)]]> 44294949
Invested in and suspicious of the pain of family and the shame of selfhood, the speakers of these richly evocative and musical poems mourn the magnitude of citizenship as a state of place and a state of mind. While Hard Damage is framed by free-verse poetry, the middle sections comprise a lyric essay in fragments and a long documentary poem. Aber explores Rilke in the original German, the urban melancholia of city life, inherited trauma, and displacement on both linguistic and environmental levels, while employing surrealist and eerily domestic imagery.
 ]]> 126 Aria Aber 1496215702 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.48 2019 Hard Damage (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)
author: Aria Aber
name: kate
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/18
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love]]> 58871
Groundbreaking rock musician. Award-winning actress. Perceptive songwriter and author. Mother. Wife of a rock god. Fashionista and trendsetter. Provocateur. In each and every one of these roles Courtney Love has demonstrated a wholehearted commitment to her art, and an intense drive and a lust for life that have made her a star and a celebrity icon—but have also led her into some unwise, uncharted, and even dangerous territory. Simultaneously candid and enigmatic, Love has a mordant wit and vivid intelligence matched in intensity only by the extraordinary life she has led, from a bleak early childhood through great fame and terrible heartbreak to the present day. By turns exhilarating and unsettling, this is a story told for the first time in Dirty Blonde.

Composed of an astonishing and eclectic collection of deeply personal artifacts including personal letters, childhood records, poetry, diary entries, song lyrics, fanzines, show flyers, other original writings, and never-before-seen photographs, Dirty Blonde leads us through the unimaginable highs and the despairing lows of one of the most compelling and creative figures in the world of popular culture. Through these diaries we see Love’s accomplishments, her mistakes, her history, and her bright future in a whole new light. From her upbringing in Oregon through her years living in Japan, New Zealand, and London, from her career highs with Hole and as a Hollywood leading lady to her personal heartbreak and struggle, Dirty Blonde is Love laid bare—a wholly fascinating portrait of a fierce and insightful woman with an unblinking worldview and a determination to express herself no matter the cost.]]> 304 Courtney Love 0865479593 kate 0 to-read, journals-letters 3.81 2006 Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love
author: Courtney Love
name: kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/18
shelves: to-read, journals-letters
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shooting Up and Making Out: A Memoir of My Life in LA and L7]]> 251792127 From Jennifer Finch (1966-2026), the bassist of L7, comes a disarmingly candid memoir that stands apart from the rest with its grounded perspective and bracing, edgy wisdom.

If overcoming obstacles makes for great art, then Jennifer Finch was the consummate artist. She was a recovering addict, a photographer, the co-founder of an influential pro-choice advocacy group, and the bassist for the groundbreaking all-female hard rock group L7. Driven to express herself despite neglect and abuse, Finch carved an artistic path and pulled herself out of a personal hell. This is the story of how she pulled it off and lived an extraordinary life, in her own words.

Finch was twelve when she dove into LA’s hardcore punk scene, fourteen when she first started shooting heroin, nineteen when she joined her first band with Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland, and in her early twenties when L7 got caught up in the maelstrom of the grunge phenomenon. She shared stages with bands like Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in between overdosing, dating Dave Grohl, and coping with the tragic, early deaths of some of her closest friends. And she re-defined herself through sobriety, photography, and her courage in the face of a deadly illness.

Jennifer Finch was a beloved pillar of strength and compassion in LA's creative community, and her death on July 18th, 2026, was an irreplaceable loss. Shooting Up and Making Out was completed just before her illness took hold, and every word of it–hard-hitting, funny, profane, and wise—is what she intended it to be.]]> 272 Jennifer Finch 0306837048 kate 0 to-read, memoir-biography 5.00 Shooting Up and Making Out: A Memoir of My Life in LA and L7
author: Jennifer Finch
name: kate
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/18
shelves: to-read, memoir-biography
review:

]]> <![CDATA[As Serious As Your Life: John Coltrane and Beyond]]> 564715 304 Val Wilmer 1852427302 kate 0 to-read, history 4.35 1977 As Serious As Your Life: John Coltrane and Beyond
author: Val Wilmer
name: kate
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/16
shelves: to-read, history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001]]> 145659 New and Collected Poems: 1931—2001 celebrates seven decades of Czeslaw Milosz’s exceptional career. Widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of our time, Milosz is a master of probing inquiry and graceful expression. His poetry is infused with a tireless spirit and penetrating insight into fundamental human dilemmas and the staggering yet simple truth that “to exist on the earth is beyond any power to name.”

Czeslaw Milosz worked with the Polish Resistance movement in Warsaw during World War II and defected to France in 1951. His work brings to bear the political awareness of an exile—most notably in A Treatise on Poetry, a forty-page exploration of the world wars that rocked the first half of the twentieth century. His later poems also reflect the sharp political focus through which this Nobel Laureate never fails to bear witness to the events that stir the world.

Digging among the rubble of the past, Milosz forges a vision that encompasses pain as well as joy. His work, wrote Edward Hirsch in the New York Times Book Review, is “one of the monumental splendors of poetry in our age.” With more than fifty poems from the end of Milosz’s career, this is an essential collection from one of the most important voices in contemporary poetry.]]> 800 Czesław Miłosz 0060514485 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.34 2001 New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001
author: Czesław Miłosz
name: kate
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/15
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems]]> 59662985  
Price’s cinematic approach to language and scene is on full display, as well as their dark humor and resilience. Within these pages, the surreal is familiar and grief is a national pastime. If the end is near, who among us would not put on Fleetwood Mac? Who would not clean up their eyeliner just a smidge? This collection pulses with the beat that follows destruction (whether human or natural), the moment the jaw unhinges. These poems are not for pearl clutchers. They are for those who have already felt their private apocalypse.]]> 136 C. Russell Price 0810145227 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.16 oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems
author: C. Russell Price
name: kate
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/15
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> The Sleep Thief 253042616 From Booker-longlisted Ibtisam Azem, a haunting odyssey where rest must be stolen at high price, and “Palestine” is a honeyed defiance on the tongue.

“Sleep thief is what the interrogator called me. I’ll never forget that. I would steal a few seconds of sleep so I could remain steadfast before them. The name stuck; I even dreamt about it, the same dream, night after night. I woke up not knowing what to do and drenched in sweat.”

The Sleep Thief follows the life of Gharib (“the Stranger”) Haifawi as he comes of age, is drawn into resistance, makes friends, meets lovers, pushes back against traditional values, longs to be free of the labels and expectations that burden him, rails against the commodification of suffering, and dreams of a Palestinian identity that will transcend sorrow.]]> Ibtisam Azem kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.00 2011 The Sleep Thief
author: Ibtisam Azem
name: kate
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/15
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Herakles 205186 Herakles, Euripides reveals with great subtlety and complexity the often brutal underpinnings of our social arrangements. The play enacts a thoroughly contemporary dilemma about the relationship between personal and state violence to civic order. Of all of Euripides' plays, this is his most skeptically subversive examination of myth, morality, and power.

Depicting Herakles slowly going mad by Hera, the wife of Zeus, this play continues to haunt and inspire readers. Hera hates Herakles because he is one of Zeus' children born of adultery, and in his madness, Herakles is driven to murder his own wife and children and is eventually exiled, by his own accord, to Athens. This new volume includes a fresh translation, an updated introduction, detailed notes on the text, and a thorough glossary.]]> 128 Euripides 0195131169 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.92 -416 Herakles
author: Euripides
name: kate
average rating: 3.92
book published: -416
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/15
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Orestes 1152977 Produced more frequently on the ancient stage than any other tragedy, Orestes retells with striking innovations the story of the young man who kills his mother to avenge her murder of his father. Though eventually exonerated, Orestes becomes a fugitive from the Furies (avenging spirits) of his mother's blood. On the brink of destruction, he is saved in the end by Apollo, who had commanded the matricide. Powerful and gripping, Orestes sweeps us along with a momentum that starting slowly, builds inevitably to one of the most spectacular climaxes in all Greek tragedy.]]> 128 Euripides 0195096592 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.94 -408 Orestes
author: Euripides
name: kate
average rating: 3.94
book published: -408
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/15
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Hecuba 413028 170 Euripides 0906515173 kate 0 to-read, drama 4.02 -424 Hecuba
author: Euripides
name: kate
average rating: 4.02
book published: -424
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/15
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Hippolytos 1508 Robert Bagg's profound translation of this Euripidean masterpiece is idiomatic, natural, and intensely lyrical, designed not only to be read but performed. Unlike most versions, Bagg's Hippolytos sustains the dramatic tome and dynamics to the very end--even after Phaidra's death--and the moving scenes between Hippolytos and Theseus, and later Hippolytos' death-scene with Artemis, receive here unprecedented plausibility and power.]]> 128 Euripides 0195072901 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.83 -428 Hippolytos
author: Euripides
name: kate
average rating: 3.83
book published: -428
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/15
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Hamlet 1420 289 William Shakespeare 0521618746 kate 0 drama, currently-reading 4.02 1601 Hamlet
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1601
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/12
shelves: drama, currently-reading
review:

]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.21 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: kate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/11
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History]]> 501579
In Unclaimed Experience, Cathy Caruth proposes that in the "widespread and bewildering experience of trauma" in our century—both in its occurrence and in our attempt to understand it—we can recognize the possibility of a history no longer based on simple models of straightforward experience and reference. Through the notion of trauma, she contends, we come to a new understanding that permits history to arise where immediate understanding is impossible. In her wide-ranging discussion, Caruth engages Freud's theory of trauma as outlined in Moses and Monotheism and Beyond the Pleasure Principle; the notion of reference and the figure of the falling body in de Man, Kleist, and Kant; the narratives of personal catastrophe in Hiroshima mon amour; and the traumatic address in Lecompte's reinterpretation of Freud's narrative of the dream of the burning child.]]> 168 Cathy Caruth 0801852471 kate 0 3.74 1996 Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History
author: Cathy Caruth
name: kate
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/11
shelves: to-read, book-research, criticism
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style]]> 91577
For no Jane Austen could ever appear in Jane Austen. Amid happy wives and pathetic old maids, we see no successfully unmarried woman, and, despite the multitude of girls seeking to acquire "accomplishments," no artist either. What does appear is a ghostly No One, a narrative voice unmarked by age, gender, marital status, all the particulars that make a person--and might make a person peculiar. The Austen heroine must suppress her wit to become the one and not the other, to become, that is, a person fit to be tied in a conjugal knot. But for herself, Austen refuses personhood, with all its constraints and needs, and disappears into the sourceless anonymity of her style. Though often treasured for its universality, that style marks the specific impasse of a writer whose self-representation is impossible without the prospect of shame.

D.A. Miller argues this case not only through the close reading that Austen's style always demands, but also through the close writing, the slavish imitation, that it sometimes inspires.]]> 128 D.A. Miller 069112387X kate 0 to-read, criticism 3.85 2003 Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style
author: D.A. Miller
name: kate
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/11
shelves: to-read, criticism
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Is the Rectum a Grave? And Other Essays]]> 7038758

Over the course of a distinguished career, critic Leo Bersani has tackled a range of issues in his writing, and this collection gathers together some of his finest work. Beginning with one of the foundations of queer theory—his famous meditation on how sex leads to a shattering of the self, “Is the Rectum a Grave?”—this volume charts the inspired connections Bersani has made between sexuality, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics.

 

Over the course of these essays, Bersani grapples with thinkers ranging from Plato to Descartes to Georg Simmel. Foucault and Freud recur as key figures, and although Foucault rejected psychoanalysis, Bersani contends that by considering his ideas alongside Freud’s, one gains a clearer understanding of human identity and how we relate to one another. For Bersani, art represents a crucial guide for conceiving new ways of connecting to the world, and so, in many of these essays, he stresses the importance of aesthetics, analyzing works by Genet, Caravaggio, Proust, Almodóvar, and Godard.

 

Documenting over two decades in the life of one of the best minds working in the humanities today, Is the Rectum a Grave? and Other Essays is a unique opportunity to explore the fruitful career of a formidable intellect.

]]> 224 Leo Bersani 0226043541 kate 0 to-read, criticism 4.04 2009 Is the Rectum a Grave? And Other Essays
author: Leo Bersani
name: kate
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/11
shelves: to-read, criticism
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism]]> 138378661
Contemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of "disintermediation": cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation. Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the economic imperative to intensify circulation when production stagnates. "Flow" is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword, but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub. And the bad news is that political turmoil and social challenges require more mediation. Collective will, inspiring ideas, and deliberate construction are the only way out, but our dominant style forgoes them. Considering original streaming TV, popular literature, artworld trends, and academic theories, Immediacy explains the recent obsession with immersion and today’s intolerance of representation, and points to alternative forms in photography, TV, novels, and constructive theory that prioritize distance, impersonality, and big ideas instead.]]> 240 Anna Kornbluh 180429134X kate 0 to-read, criticism 3.81 2024 Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism
author: Anna Kornbluh
name: kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/11
shelves: to-read, criticism
review:

]]> Fruit Fly 243596291 Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.
A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story.

Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast.

Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.

Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all.

But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story.

A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke’s The List.]]> 384 Josh Silver kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.18 2026 Fruit Fly
author: Josh Silver
name: kate
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/11
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Life of M 249937325
The film star M is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child.

With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away.

Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M’s life, in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths―about the very experience of living―might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? Is M to play a character in the book, or is it the writer who is acting the role of M?

In this astonishing, explosive novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for the nature of truth without ever swerving away into self-deceptions. She investigates who we are, and pretend to be, at this late stage of modern life when we are hypnotized, more and more effectively, by the images we see everywhere. She shows us that the real value of life might lie not in beauty but in ugliness; in having a self that has survived the violence of the world. Life of M is a beautiful piece of music, audible in a world of noise and spectacle.]]> 147 Rachel Cusk 0571399835 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.04 2026 Life of M
author: Rachel Cusk
name: kate
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/11
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All of it Singing: New and Selected Poems]]> 3381194
Worlds out of time still exist.
Worlds of achievement out of mind and remembering,
          just as the poem lasts.
In the concert of being present.
                                                          —from “Arriving”

Linda Gregg’s abiding presence in American poetry for more than thirty years is a testament to the longevity of art and the spirit. All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems for the first time collects the ongoing work of Gregg’s career in one book, including poetry from her six previous volumes and thirty remarkable new poems.
]]> 224 Linda Gregg 1555975070 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.30 2008 All of it Singing: New and Selected Poems
author: Linda Gregg
name: kate
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> The Great Fires 142978
The "far, stubborn, disastrous" course of Jack Gilbert's resolute journey--not one that would promise in time to bring him home to the consolations of Penelope and the comforts of Ithaca but one that would instead take him ever outward to the impossible blankness of the desert--could never have been achieved in the society of others. What has kept this great poet brave has been the difficult company of his poems--and now we have, in Gilbert's third and most silent book, what may be, what must be, the bravest of these imperial accomplishments.

 ]]> 96 Jack Gilbert 0679747672 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.31 1994 The Great Fires
author: Jack Gilbert
name: kate
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> The Brothers Karamazov 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.38 1879 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: kate
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1879
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> The Cherry Orchard 87346
In Chekhov's tragi-comedy - perhaps his most popular play - the Gayev family is torn by powerful forces, forces rooted deep in history, and in the society around them. Their estate is hopelessly in debt: urged to cut down their beautiful cherry orchard and sell the land for holiday cottages, they struggle to act decisively. Tom Murphy's fine vernacular version allows us to re-imagine the events of the play in the last days of Anglo-Irish colonialism. It gives this great play vivid new life within our own history and social consciousness.]]> 96 Anton Chekhov 0413774031 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.72 1903 The Cherry Orchard
author: Anton Chekhov
name: kate
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1903
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Ward No. 6 and Other Stories 23791
The cook's wedding --
The witch --
A dead body --
Easter Eve --
On the road --
The dependents --
Grisha --
The kiss --
Typhus --
The pipe --
The princess --
Neighbours --
The grasshopper --
In exile --
Ward No. 6 --
Rothschild's fiddle --
The student --
The darling --
A doctor's visit --
Gooseberries --
The Lady with the dog --
In the ravine --
The bishop.]]> 400 Anton Chekhov 1593080034 kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.37 1892 Ward No. 6 and Other Stories
author: Anton Chekhov
name: kate
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1892
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait]]> 91760
Published in its entirety, Frida Kahlo’s amazing, illustrated journal documents the last 10 years of her turbulent life. These passionate, often surprising, intimate records, kept under lock and key for some 40 years in Mexico, reveal many new dimensions in the complex personal life of this remarkable artist.

The 170-page journal contains the artist’s thoughts, poems, and dreams—many reflecting her stormy relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera—along with 70 mesmerizing watercolor illustrations. Her views of love, politics, and more come into sharp focus in a kaleidoscope of creativity and thought.

In his introduction, award-winner Carlos Fuentes, one of Mexico’s most important writers and critics, ties Kahlo’s images of pain, loss, mutilation, and transcendence to Mexico’s historic cycles of revolution and reaction. Sprinkled with irony, black humor, even gaiety, and augmented with translations of the diary entries plus commentaries and photographs, her diary stands as a reminder of not only Kahlo’s formidable talent, but also her resilience and courage.

The text entries, written in Frida’s round, full script in brightly colored inks, make the journal as captivating to look at as it is to read. Her writing reveals the artist’s political sensibilities, recollections of her childhood, and her enormous courage in the face of more than 35 operations to correct injuries she had sustained in an accident at the age of 18.

This intimate portal into her life is sure to fascinate fans of the artist, art historians, and women’s culturalists alike.]]> 296 Frida Kahlo 0810959542 kate 0 to-read, journals-letters 3.88 1995 The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
author: Frida Kahlo
name: kate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, journals-letters
review:

]]> Kink: Stories 54304256 Kink is a groundbreaking anthology of literary short fiction exploring love and desire, BDSM, and interests across the sexual spectrum, edited by lauded writers R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, and featuring a roster of all-star contributors including Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado, and more.

Kink is a dynamic anthology of literary fiction that opens an imaginative door into the world of desire. The stories within this collection portray love, desire, BDSM, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision. The collection includes works by renowned fiction writers such as Callum Angus, Alexander Chee, Vanessa Clark, Melissa Febos, Kim Fu, Roxane Gay, Cara Hoffman, Zeyn Joukhadar, Chris Kraus, Carmen Maria Machado, Peter Mountford, Larissa Pham, and Brandon Taylor, with Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon as editors.

The stories within explore bondage, power-play, and submissive-dominant relationships; we are taken to private estates, therapists’ offices, underground sex clubs, and even a sex theater in early-20th century Paris. While there are whips and chains, sure, the true power of these stories lies in their beautiful, moving dispatches from across the sexual spectrum of interest and desires, as portrayed by some of today’s most exciting writers.]]> 288 R.O. Kwon 198211021X kate 0 to-read, anthology 3.09 2021 Kink: Stories
author: R.O. Kwon
name: kate
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, anthology
review:

]]> Lighthead 6711397 Winner of the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry

In his fourth collection, Terrance Hayes investigates how we construct experience. With one foot firmly grounded in the everyday and the other hovering in the air, his poems braid dream and reality into a poetry that is both dark and buoyant. Cultural icons as diverse as Fela Kuti, Harriet Tubman, and Wallace Stevens appear with meditations on desire and history. We see Hayes testing the line between story and song in a series of stunning poems inspired by the Pecha Kucha, a Japanese presenta­tion format. This innovative collection presents the light- headedness of a mind trying to pull against gravity and time. Fueled by an imagination that enlightens, delights, and ignites, Lighthead leaves us illuminated and scorched.]]> 95 Terrance Hayes 0143116967 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.13 2010 Lighthead
author: Terrance Hayes
name: kate
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry]]> 62366360
From the National Book Award–winning author of Lighthead , Terrance Hayes, a fascinating collection of graphic reviews and illustrated prose addressing the last century of American poetry—to be published simultaneously with his latest poetry collection, So to Speak

Canonized, overlooked, and forgotten African American poets star in Terrance Hayes's brilliant contemplations of personal, canonical, and allegorical literary development. Proceeding from Toni Morrison's aim to expand the landscape of literary imagination in Playing in the Dark ("I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography"), Watch Your Language charts a lyrical geography of reading and influence in poetry. Illustrated micro-essays, graphic book reviews, biographical prose poems, and nonfiction sketches make reading an imaginative and critical act of watching your language. Hayes has made a kind of poetic guidebook with more questions than answers. "If you don't see suffering's potential as art, will it remain suffering?" he asks in one of the lively mock poetry exam questions of this musing, mercurial collection. Hayes's astonishing drawings and essays literally and figuratively map the acclaimed poet's routes, roots, and wanderings through the landscape of contemporary poetry.]]> 240 Terrance Hayes 0143137735 kate 0 to-read, criticism 4.23 Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry
author: Terrance Hayes
name: kate
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, criticism
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025]]> 212806694
Seamus Heaney, Dorothy Parker, Louise Bogan, Louise Glück, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Merwin, Czesław Miłosz, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Strand, E. E. Cummings, Sharon Olds, Franz Wright, John Ashbery, Sandra Cisneros, Amanda Gorman, Maggie Smith, Kaveh Akbar: these stellar names make up just a fraction of the wonderfulness that is present in this essential anthology.

The book is organized into sections honoring times of day (“Morning Bell,” “Lunch Break,” “After-Work Drinks,” “Night Shift”), allowing poets from different eras to talk back to one another in the same space, intertwined with chronological groupings from the decades as they march by: the frothy 1920s and 1930s (“despite the depression,” Young notes), the more serious ’40s and ’50s (introducing us to the early greats of our contemporary poetry, like Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Merwin, and Adrienne Rich), the political ’60s and ’70s, the lyrical ’80s and ’90s, and then the 2000s’ with their explosion of greater diversity in the magazine, greater depth and breadth. Inevitably, we see the high points when poems spoke directly into, about, or against the crises of their times—the war poetry of W. H. Auden and Karl Shapiro; the remarkable outpouring of verse after 9/11 (who can forget Adam Zagajewski’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”?); and more recently, stunning poems in response to the cataclysmic events of COVID and the murder of George Floyd.

The magazine’s poetic influence resides not just in this historical and cultural relevance but in sheer human connection, exemplified by the passing verses that became what Young calls “refrigerator poems”: the ones you tear out and affix to the fridge to read again and again over months and years. Our love for that singular Billy Collins or Ada Limón poem—or lines by a new writer you’ve never heard of but will hear much more from in the future—is what has made The New Yorker a great organ for poetry, a mouthpiece for our changing culture and way of life, even a mirror of our collective soul.]]> 1024 The New Yorker 0593801938 kate 0 to-read, anthology 4.35 2025 A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025
author: The New Yorker
name: kate
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, anthology
review:

]]> Little Birds 11036 148 Anaïs Nin 0156029049 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.72 1979 Little Birds
author: Anaïs Nin
name: kate
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Forever... 37743
It's the beginning of an intense and exclusive relationship, with a future all planned. Until Katherine's parents insist that she and Michael put their love to the test with a summer apart...

Forever is written for an older age group than Judy Blume's other novels for children. It caused a storm of controversy when it was first published because of its explicit sexual content.]]> 178 Judy Blume kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.63 1975 Forever...
author: Judy Blume
name: kate
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> The Ginger Man 127020
Set in Ireland just after World War II, The Ginger Man is J. P. Donleavy's wildly funny, picaresque classic novel of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne'er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Dangerfield's appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable--and he satisfies it with endless charm.]]> 347 J.P. Donleavy 0802137954 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.64 1955 The Ginger Man
author: J.P. Donleavy
name: kate
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> The Master and Margarita 117833 The first complete, annotated English Translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic masterpiece.

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.]]> 372 Mikhail Bulgakov 0679760806 kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.30 1925 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: kate
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Blue Lenses and Other Stories]]> 559585
The Blue Lenses: The terrifying post-operative nightmare of a woman who 'sees' anew.

Ganymede: A cameo of an ageing homosexual's experiences with a young boy and his predatory relatives.

The Alibi: A would-be murderer turned artist is hoist with his own petard.

The Pool: Delicately evokes the fantasy world of a young girl on the brink of puberty.

The Lordly Ones: A simple, poignant tale of a dumb child.

The Archduchess: An ironical fable about revolution and change in the perfect mini-duchy.

The Mendee and The Chamois: Each throw a different light on aspects of modern sexuality.]]> 288 Daphne du Maurier 0140030859 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.81 1959 The Blue Lenses and Other Stories
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away]]> 62220 131 Richard Brautigan 0385292872 kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.13 1982 So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away
author: Richard Brautigan
name: kate
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/09
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Speech 60065892 180 Jill Magi 164362007X kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.50 Speech
author: Jill Magi
name: kate
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/07
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> Doctor Faustus 34440
"Doctor Faustus is Mann's deepest artistic gesture. . . . Finely translated by John E. Woods." —The New Republic

Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man.

Leverkühn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound meditation on the German genius—both national and individual—and the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist.]]> 535 Thomas Mann 0375701168 kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.07 1947 Doctor Faustus
author: Thomas Mann
name: kate
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/06
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]> 464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 kate 0 to-read, book-research 4.32 2014 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: kate
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/05
shelves: to-read, book-research
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror]]> 542700 Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims.

In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large. Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context.

Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims’ own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, Trauma and Recovery is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking.]]> 247 Judith Lewis Herman 0465087302 kate 0 to-read, book-research 4.38 1992 Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
author: Judith Lewis Herman
name: kate
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/05
shelves: to-read, book-research
review:

]]> Switzy 244969690 A mesmerizing portrait of an aging man’s last pilgrimage, from the New York Times best selling author of The Girls and The Guest.

A private plane cuts through the winter night, somewhere over Greenland. David, a retired executive, sits back in his leather seat, playing solitaire on his phone. Click. Click. Drag. Click. The notebook in his jacket pocket is filled with familiar phrases, urgent reminders to himself, but he struggles to recognize his own handwriting.

A mystery, among many mysteries. The world, once so knowable, has been rendered inscrutable.

This is what David knows: Cody, his assistant, asleep in the seat next to him, will shepherd him along the voyage. A stopover in London. Dinner with his adult daughter. A meeting in France with an old friend, estranged for decades.

His final destination is Zurich.

David glides through hotel rooms and airports and foreign cities, running out the clock on his mortal life. His grasp on the present slips away, and the past rushes in: the Sunday roasts of childhood. The stiff clothes meant only for church. A summer at a school friend’s house. The losses and missteps that punctuate a life.

As David’s arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unraveling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving. Hypnotic and startlingly original, Switzy probes the depths of human consciousness, revealing what a man is left with when the accomplishments and compromises that have defined him, and the illusions he's relied on, vanish.]]> 352 Emma Cline 0593595246 kate 0 to-read 4.20 2026 Switzy
author: Emma Cline
name: kate
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Flesh 235992932
A collection of intimate moments over the course of decades, Flesh chronicles a man at odds with himself—estranged from and by the circumstances and demands of a life not entirely under his control and the roles that he is asked to play. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy. “Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it” (NPR), Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.]]> 368 David Szalay 1982122803 kate 0 to-read 3.66 2025 Flesh
author: David Szalay
name: kate
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pride and Prejudice 129915654 400 Jane Austen kate 4 4.35 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: kate
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1813
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Macbeth: Moment by Moment 43913694 214 William Shakespeare 0998809101 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.87 1623 Macbeth: Moment by Moment
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1623
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Love's Labour's Lost 332489 392 William Shakespeare kate 0 to-read, drama 3.56 1598 Love's Labour's Lost
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1598
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> The Merchant of Venice 24128 249 William Shakespeare 0743477561 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.77 1596 The Merchant of Venice
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1596
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Cymbeline 305510
Cymbeline displays unusually powerful emotions with a tremendous charge. Like some of Shakespeare’s other late work—especially The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest—it is an improbable story lifted into a nearly mythic realm.]]> 324 William Shakespeare 067172259X kate 0 to-read, drama 3.59 1610 Cymbeline
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1610
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> The Merry Wives of Windsor 104778 156 William Shakespeare 1419172662 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.55 1597 The Merry Wives of Windsor
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1597
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Troilus and Cressida 187518 343 William Shakespeare 0671669168 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.41 1601 Troilus and Cressida
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1601
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> The Two Gentlemen of Verona 82346 The Two Gentlemen of Verona is more intelligible if we think of them as boys, leaving home for the first time. One has a crush on a girl, Julia, though he hasn’t yet told her.

Sent to court to learn to be “perfect gentlemen,” Valentine and Proteus are derailed by their attraction to Sylvia, the ruler’s daughter. Valentine’s mental denseness does not deter Sylvia from returning his love, but he is caught, and banished, when he tries to elope with her. Proteus’s desire for Sylvia wipes out his former love, leading him into despicable acts that win scorn from Sylvia and wound Julia, who has pursued him disguised as a boy.

When Sylvia follows Valentine into banishment, Proteus follows Sylvia, and Julia follows Proteus, the stage is set for a disturbing ending. But the stage is also set for the “gentlemen” to take small steps toward maturity.

The authoritative edition of The Two Gentlemen of Verona from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Jeffrey Masten

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.]]> 245 William Shakespeare 0671722956 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.40 1594 The Two Gentlemen of Verona
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1594
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> All's Well That Ends Well 104790 282 William Shakespeare 0743484975 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.61 1604 All's Well That Ends Well
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1604
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Coriolanus 108171
Each volume features:
* Authoritative, reliable texts
* High quality introductions and notes
* New, more readable trade trim size
* An essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare and essays on Shakespeare's life and the selection of texts]]> 202 William Shakespeare 019832006X kate 0 to-read, drama 3.70 1608 Coriolanus
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1608
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Measure for Measure 91571 Measure for Measure is among the most passionately discussed of Shakespeare’s plays. In it, a duke temporarily removes himself from governing his city-state, deputizing a member of his administration, Angelo, to enforce the laws more rigorously. Angelo chooses as his first victim Claudio, condemning him to death because he impregnated Juliet before their marriage.

Claudio’s sister Isabella, who is entering a convent, pleads for her brother’s life. Angelo attempts to extort sex from her, but Isabella preserves her chastity. The duke, in disguise, eavesdrops as she tells her brother about Angelo’s behavior, then offers to ally himself with her against Angelo.]]> 278 William Shakespeare 0743484908 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.67 1604 Measure for Measure
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1604
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> The Comedy of Errors 82356 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Ros King provides a completely new Introduction to the existing text and commentary for this updated edition of The Comedy of Errors. She argues that the play cannot be regarded only as a farcical romp based on a classical model, but should be considered part of a critically misunderstood genre of tragi-comedy. Stressing the play's underlying seriousness, the Introduction pays special attention to its religious imagery. First Edition Hb (1988): 0-521-22153-6 First Edition Pb (1988): 0-521-29368-5]]> 112 William Shakespeare 1853262439 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.72 1594 The Comedy of Errors
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1594
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> The Winter's Tale 44133 You can find an alternative cover for this ISBN here.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems and an extensive introduction. The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. Much of the play's copiousness inheres in its generic intermingling of tragedy, comedy, romance, pastoral, and the history play. In addition to dates and sources, the introduction attends to iterative patterns, the nature and cause of Leontes' jealousy, the staging and meaning of the bear episode, and the thematic and structural implications of the figure of Time. Special attention is paid to the ending and its tempered happiness. Performance history is integrated throughout the introduction and commentary. Appendices include the theatrical practice of doubling.]]> 306 William Shakespeare 0521293731 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.70 1623 The Winter's Tale
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1623
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Antony and Cleopatra 104837 336 William Shakespeare 0743482859 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.70 1606 Antony and Cleopatra
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1606
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> As You Like It 42607 As You Like It with delight. Its characters are brilliant conversationalists, including the princesses Rosalind and Celia and their Fool, Touchstone. Soon after Rosalind and Orlando meet and fall in love, the princesses and Touchstone go into exile in the Forest of Arden, where they find new conversational partners. Duke Frederick, younger brother to Duke Senior, has overthrown his brother and forced him to live homeless in the forest with his courtiers, including the cynical Jaques. Orlando, whose older brother Oliver plotted his death, has fled there, too.

Recent scholars have also grounded the play in the issues of its time. These include primogeniture, passing property from a father to his oldest son. As You Like It depicts intense conflict between brothers, exposing the human suffering that primogeniture entails. Another perspective concerns cross-dressing. Most of Orlando’s courtship of Rosalind takes place while Rosalind is disguised as a man, “Ganymede.” At her urging, Orlando pretends that Ganymede is his beloved Rosalind. But as the epilogue reveals, the sixteenth-century actor playing Rosalind was male, following the practice of the time. In other words, a boy played a girl playing a boy pretending to be a girl.]]> 263 William Shakespeare 074348486X kate 0 to-read, drama 3.81 1599 As You Like It
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1599
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Julius Caesar 13006 Oxford School Shakespeare has become the preferred introduction to the literary legacy of the greatest playwright in the English language. This exclusive collection of the Bard's best works has been designed specifically for readers new to Shakespeare's rich literary legacy. Each play is
presented complete and unabridged, in large print. Every book is well illustrated, and starts with a commentary and character summary. Scene synopses and character summaries clarify confusing plots, while incisive essays explore the historical context and Shakespeare's sources. Each book ends with a complete list of Shakespeare's plays and a brief chronology of the Bard's life. The detailed explanatory notes are written clearly and positioned right next to the text--no more squinting at microscopic footnotes or flipping pages back and forth in search of endnotes!

The new edition of the series features new covers and new illustrations, including both new drawings and photos from recent productions of Shakespeare's plays around the globe. In addition, the notes and the introductory material have been completely revised in line with new research and in order to
make them clearer and more accessible. Finally, the entire text has been redesigned and reset to enhance readability. The new edition achieves the feat of unprecedented clarity of presentation without any cuts to the original text or the detailed explanations.]]> 175 William Shakespeare 0198320272 kate 0 to-read, drama 3.70 1599 Julius Caesar
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1599
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> The Tempest 12985 • Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

• Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

• Scene-by-scene plot summaries

• A key to famous lines and phrases

• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

• An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

• Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books


Alternate Cover/publisher Edition ISBN 0743482832 (ISBN13: 9780743482837)]]> 218 William Shakespeare kate 0 to-read, drama 3.78 1611 The Tempest
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1611
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Much Ado About Nothing 12957 Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare includes two quite different stories of romantic love. Hero and Claudio fall in love almost at first sight, but an outsider, Don John, strikes out at their happiness. Beatrice and Benedick are kept apart by pride and mutual antagonism until others decide to play Cupid.]]> 249 William Shakespeare kate 0 to-read, drama 4.06 1598 Much Ado About Nothing
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1598
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Othello 12996 319 William Shakespeare kate 0 to-read, drama 3.89 1603 Othello
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1603
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> Romeo and Juliet 59926998 • Newly re-edited play text and revised commentary notes
• Scene-by-scene plot summaries
• A key to the play's famous lines and phrases
• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language
• An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
• Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books
• An up-to-date annotated guide to further reading]]> 304 William Shakespeare kate 0 to-read, drama 3.78 1590 Romeo and Juliet
author: William Shakespeare
name: kate
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1590
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> The Captive Mind 145660
The four chapters at the heart of the book then follow, each a portrayal of a gifted Polish man who capitulated, in some fashion, to the demands of the Communist state. They are identified only as Alpha, the Moralist; Beta, The Disappointed Lover; Gamma, the Slave of History; and Delta, the Troubadour. However, each of the four portraits were easily identifiable: Alpha is Jerzy Andrzejewski, Beta is Tadeusz Borowski, Gamma is Jerzy Putrament and Delta is Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński.

The book moves toward its climax with an elaboration of "enslavement through consciousness" in the penultimate chapter and closes with a pained and personal assessment of the fate of the Baltic nations in particular.]]> 272 Czesław Miłosz 0679728562 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.27 1953 The Captive Mind
author: Czesław Miłosz
name: kate
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> Astonishments: Selected Poems 317421 133 Anna Kamieńska 1557255288 kate 0 to-read, poetry 4.42 2007 Astonishments: Selected Poems
author: Anna Kamieńska
name: kate
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/04
shelves: to-read, poetry
review:

]]> Sarah Kane: Complete Plays 51742 Blasted, was staged at the Royal Court Theatre, London in 1995 it was hailed both as a "masterpiece" and as a "disgusting piece of filth" (Daily Mail). That play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world. This anthology includes Kane's never-before-published Channel 4 screenplay, Skin. Complete Plays include Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis, and Skin.]]> 286 Sarah Kane 0413742601 kate 0 to-read, drama 4.32 2000 Sarah Kane: Complete Plays
author: Sarah Kane
name: kate
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/03
shelves: to-read, drama
review:

]]> The Odyssey 1381 Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

So begins Robert Fagles's magnificent translation of the Odyssey.

If The Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, The Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of the everyman's journey through life. During his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, Odysseus relies on his wit and wiles for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces.

In the myths and legends retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom. It's a version to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles's translation.]]> 541 Homer 0143039954 kate 4 3.82 -800 The Odyssey
author: Homer
name: kate
average rating: 3.82
book published: -800
rating: 4
read at: 2026/07/29
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves:
review:
I don’t know, needs more Penelope
]]> Selected Essays: 1917-1932 309640 460 T.S. Eliot 0151803870 kate 0 to-read, criticism 4.13 1932 Selected Essays: 1917-1932
author: T.S. Eliot
name: kate
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1932
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, criticism
review:

]]> Selected Prose 79942 ]]> 320 T.S. Eliot 0156806541 kate 0 to-read 4.00 1953 Selected Prose
author: T.S. Eliot
name: kate
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Room with a View 3087
Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her, until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George.

Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?]]> 119 E.M. Forster 1420925431 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.91 1908 A Room with a View
author: E.M. Forster
name: kate
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1908
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Washington Square 133954 240 Henry James 0451528719 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.70 1880 Washington Square
author: Henry James
name: kate
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1880
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> The Turn of the Screw 12948
A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate... An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls. But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.

Excerpt:
I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days - found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house.]]> 121 Henry James 0140620613 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.41 1898 The Turn of the Screw
author: Henry James
name: kate
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1898
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> The Wings of the Dove 124272 The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale, a naïve, doomed American heiress, and a pair of lovers, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, who conspire to obtain her fortune. In this witty tragedy of treachery, self-deception, and betrayal, Henry James weaves together three ill-fated and wholly human destinies unexpectedly linked by desire, greed, and salvation. As Amy Bloom writes in her Introduction, “The Wings of the Dove is a novel of intimacy. . . . [James] gives us passion, he gives us love in its terrible and enchanting forms.”]]> 741 Henry James 0812967194 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.81 1902 The Wings of the Dove
author: Henry James
name: kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1902
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> To the Lighthouse 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.81 1927 To the Lighthouse
author: Virginia Woolf
name: kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> A Room of One’s Own 18521 A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.]]> 112 Virginia Woolf kate 0 to-read, criticism 4.22 1929 A Room of One’s Own
author: Virginia Woolf
name: kate
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, criticism
review:

]]> Catch-22 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.99 1961 Catch-22
author: Joseph Heller
name: kate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> As I Lay Dying 77013 As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.]]> 270 William Faulkner kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.71 1930 As I Lay Dying
author: William Faulkner
name: kate
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1930
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> The Sound and the Fury 10975 366 William Faulkner kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.86 1929 The Sound and the Fury
author: William Faulkner
name: kate
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist.]]> 288 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: kate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> Pale Fire 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: kate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
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. kate 0 to-read, fiction 4.11 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: kate
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]> The Sun Also Rises 3876 The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.]]> 189 Ernest Hemingway kate 0 to-read, fiction 3.80 1926 The Sun Also Rises
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: kate
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/29
shelves: to-read, fiction
review:

]]>