Yen's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 03 Sep 2026 05:03:20 -0700 60 Yen's bookshelf: all 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products]]> 22668729 How do successful companies create products people can’t put down?

Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us?
Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.


Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.


Eyal provides readers with:


• Practical insights to create user habits that stick.
• Actionable steps for building products people love.

• Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.]]> 256 Nir Eyal 1591847788 Yen 0 to-read 4.12 2013 Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
author: Nir Eyal
name: Yen
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> The Design of Everyday Things 205542246
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door.

The fault, argues this ingenious -- even liberating -- book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization.

The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time.

The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how -- and why -- some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.]]> 347 Donald A. Norman Yen 0 to-read 0.0 1988 The Design of Everyday Things
author: Donald A. Norman
name: Yen
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI]]> 222725518 From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed.]]> 501 Karen Hao 0593657519 Yen 0 currently-reading 4.01 2025 Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
author: Karen Hao
name: Yen
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love]]> 35249663
How do today's most successful tech companies–Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla–design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than most tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love–and that will work for your business.

With sections on assembling the right people and skillsets, discovering the right product, embracing an effective yet lightweight process, and creating a strong product culture, readers can take the information they learn and immediately leverage it within their own organizations–dramatically improving their own product efforts.

Whether you're an early-stage startup working to get to product/market fit, or a growth-stage company working to scale your product organization, or a large, long-established company trying to regain your ability to consistently deliver new value for your customers, INSPIRED will take you and your product organization to a new level of customer engagement, consistent innovation, and business success.

Filled with the author's own personal stories–and profiles of some of today's most-successful product managers and technology-powered product companies, including Adobe, Apple, BBC, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix–INSPIRED will show you how to turn up the dial of your own product efforts, creating technology products your customers love.

The first edition of INSPIRED, published ten years ago, established itself as the primary reference for technology product managers, and can be found on the shelves of nearly every successful technology product company worldwide. This thoroughly updated second edition shares the same objective of being the most valuable resource for technology product managers, yet it is completely new–sharing the latest practices and techniques of today's most-successful tech product companies, and the men and women behind every great product.]]> 349 Marty Cagan 1119387507 Yen 4 favorites 4.21 2008 Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
author: Marty Cagan
name: Yen
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2026/09/03
date added: 2026/09/03
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review:
Hands down, one of the best fundamental product books out there. So many quotable moments that I wanted to highlight the whole chapter. Super useful for any PMs in tech who want to move to the light and be in the light of proper product management =)) Bad product culture is everywhere and easily spreads like a disease.
]]> 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 Yen 0 currently-reading 4.30 1925 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Yen
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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]]> Thus Spoke Zarathustra 51893 Friedrich Nietzsche’s most accessible and influential philosophical work, misquoted, misrepresented, brilliantly original and enormously influential

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche’s utterance ‘God is dead’, his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free.]]> 327 Friedrich Nietzsche Yen 0 to-read 4.10 1883 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Yen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1883
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]]> Time Is a Mother 58582927 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
]]> 114 Ocean Vuong 0593300238 Yen 4 3.92 2022 Time Is a Mother
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Yen
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 4
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]]> The 48 Laws of Power 1303 Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature.

In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.

Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.]]> 452 Robert Greene 0140280197 Yen 1 did-not-finish 4.08 1999 The 48 Laws of Power
author: Robert Greene
name: Yen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1999
rating: 1
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]]> <![CDATA[Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect With the Present, and Expand the Future]]> 60564460  
A radically compassionate plan for turning inward and lifting the heaviness that prevents us from healing ourselves and the world, from the New York Times bestselling author of Clarity & Connection

“During the years when I had abandoned myself, my mind felt undeniably heavy. I knew I needed to find a clear way to help me feel lighter.”
 
yung pueblo’s path to deep healing began only after years of drug abuse had taken a toll on his mind and body. Searching for a way forward, he found that by honestly examining and addressing the anxieties and fears that he had been running away from, he no longer felt like a stranger inside of his heart and mind. And once he dedicated himself to meditation and trusting his intuition, he started to finally feel mentally lighter, with more love emerging from within. This was not an easy journey, and it's one that he is still on, but it showed him that real healing is possible.

In Lighter , yung pueblo demonstrates how we can all move forward in our healing, from learning self-compassion to letting go to becoming emotionally mature. As the heaviness falls away, our minds will finally stop feeling overburdened with tension and we’ll be able to reconnect with the present. And the world around us will hopefully become more inviting in crisp and newly vibrant ways. But these are just the first steps. As we grow stronger and expand our self-awareness, it’s our responsibility—and also part of the healing journey—to take actions to support the health and harmony of all people. The final section of Lighter shows how we can and must contribute to building a world that is no longer structurally harmful but, instead, structurally compassionate. 

yung pueblo’s hope is that as more of us heal, our actions will become more intentional, our decisions will become more compassionate, our thinking will become clearer, and the future will become brighter.]]> 288 Yung Pueblo 0593233174 Yen 3 did-not-finish 4.04 2022 Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect With the Present, and Expand the Future
author: Yung Pueblo
name: Yen
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 3
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]]> A Thousand Splendid Suns 128029
“Just as good, if not better, than Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling first book, The Kite Runner.”—Newsweek

New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Yen 5
I loved the sensory depiction of the culture/city, although its history remains deeply complex and polarized. In this fractured reality, progressive thinking and deeply rooted traditions were violently crushed by greed and extremism.

Such a contradiction makes historical fiction my favorite genre, though it leaves me wondering: is it fiction, or is it real? Perhaps we choose not to believe the truth because it is simply too painful to admit.

Talking about the lives of the female characters, they mirrored the tragic history of Afghanistan explicitly. The oppression on the streets always started first between the sheets, where patriarchal structures devalued girls compared to boys. Child marriage, rape, and domestic abuse became systematically normalized.

This day-to-day cruelty actually foreshadowed how the Taliban stripped Kabul bare, by inflicting pain, killing innocents, restricting women's rights, and silencing their voices to be heard. From the city to the household, their world shrank into mini prisons of burqas.

For generations already, patriarchy has successfully governed by maintaining power through policing women against one another. We saw this internalized misogyny passed from mothers to daughters, carrying the unfathomable expectation of being a flawless vessel for childbearing. And yet, under the ruins of the city, women who were once rivals found a profound friendship to support one another under a husband’s belt of vengeance.

When I asked my book club what they would do in this situation, the only answer we could all agree on was to survive by any means necessary. But survival is ugly, and you lose your identity along the way. Our characters showed us that when a woman's mind is valued and she is educated, it gives her a fierce sense of self-worth and freedom that no man could beat out of her. Ultimately, this intellectual strength becomes an act of defiance and endurance, nothing but a terrifying threat in the eyes of the oppressor.

With the quote from Ṣāʾib Tabrīzī, Kabul's lights shine over its buildings like a thousand splendid suns, but the true suns were the unbreakable spirits of Afghan women. Their resilience is an act of revolution. Even when they die, it is not without meaning. To dare to die so that others can dare to live is a triumphant sacrifice for the future of Afghan girls.

Although the book ended with a hopeful scene, the current reality of the country remains heartbreaking. Afghan women today face extreme isolation, stripped entirely of their right to education and healthcare, as we read this book to witness history collapsing in real time.

When someone asked me why women like to read about the suffering of other women, I realized it isn't that we enjoy the pain. Rather, we read to understand history, to understand the women beside us, and ultimately, to find ourselves through compassion. Because we cannot isolate ourselves from another woman’s pain, knowing well how easily any of us could be in her exact situation. It can be hard for those who have never had their fundamental rights targeted to understand why we seek out these stories.

Ultimately, we read to bridge the distance between our lives and theirs, to carry their names forward, and to bear witness to the fire that refuses to be put out.]]> 4.45 2007 A Thousand Splendid Suns
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Yen
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2026/09/01
date added: 2026/09/01
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review:
No words can fully describe this book. You just need to read it to feel the depth of buried dreams, hope, and the lives of women under oppression, war, and poverty. I was walking through these pages and imagining myself in Kabul, breathing the air, eating the food, and smelling the scent of cardamom.

I loved the sensory depiction of the culture/city, although its history remains deeply complex and polarized. In this fractured reality, progressive thinking and deeply rooted traditions were violently crushed by greed and extremism.

Such a contradiction makes historical fiction my favorite genre, though it leaves me wondering: is it fiction, or is it real? Perhaps we choose not to believe the truth because it is simply too painful to admit.

Talking about the lives of the female characters, they mirrored the tragic history of Afghanistan explicitly. The oppression on the streets always started first between the sheets, where patriarchal structures devalued girls compared to boys. Child marriage, rape, and domestic abuse became systematically normalized.

This day-to-day cruelty actually foreshadowed how the Taliban stripped Kabul bare, by inflicting pain, killing innocents, restricting women's rights, and silencing their voices to be heard. From the city to the household, their world shrank into mini prisons of burqas.

For generations already, patriarchy has successfully governed by maintaining power through policing women against one another. We saw this internalized misogyny passed from mothers to daughters, carrying the unfathomable expectation of being a flawless vessel for childbearing. And yet, under the ruins of the city, women who were once rivals found a profound friendship to support one another under a husband’s belt of vengeance.

When I asked my book club what they would do in this situation, the only answer we could all agree on was to survive by any means necessary. But survival is ugly, and you lose your identity along the way. Our characters showed us that when a woman's mind is valued and she is educated, it gives her a fierce sense of self-worth and freedom that no man could beat out of her. Ultimately, this intellectual strength becomes an act of defiance and endurance, nothing but a terrifying threat in the eyes of the oppressor.

With the quote from Ṣāʾib Tabrīzī, Kabul's lights shine over its buildings like a thousand splendid suns, but the true suns were the unbreakable spirits of Afghan women. Their resilience is an act of revolution. Even when they die, it is not without meaning. To dare to die so that others can dare to live is a triumphant sacrifice for the future of Afghan girls.

Although the book ended with a hopeful scene, the current reality of the country remains heartbreaking. Afghan women today face extreme isolation, stripped entirely of their right to education and healthcare, as we read this book to witness history collapsing in real time.

When someone asked me why women like to read about the suffering of other women, I realized it isn't that we enjoy the pain. Rather, we read to understand history, to understand the women beside us, and ultimately, to find ourselves through compassion. Because we cannot isolate ourselves from another woman’s pain, knowing well how easily any of us could be in her exact situation. It can be hard for those who have never had their fundamental rights targeted to understand why we seek out these stories.

Ultimately, we read to bridge the distance between our lives and theirs, to carry their names forward, and to bear witness to the fire that refuses to be put out.
]]> <![CDATA[The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering]]> 13629 The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

]]> 322 Frederick P. Brooks Jr. 0201835959 Yen 0 to-read 4.00 1975 The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
author: Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
name: Yen
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship]]> 3735293 Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship . Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code on the fly into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer but only if you work at it.
What kind of work will you be doing? You'll be reading code - lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what's right about that code, and what's wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.
Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code - of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and "smells" gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.
Readers will come away from this book understanding

‣ How to tell the difference between good and bad code
‣ How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code
‣ How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes
‣ How to format code for maximum readability
‣ How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic
‣ How to unit test and practice test-driven development

This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.]]> 431 Robert C. Martin 0132350882 Yen 0 to-read 4.35 2007 Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
author: Robert C. Martin
name: Yen
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> The Vanishing Half 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, The Vanishing Half is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of of race, gender, and identity, and the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's desires and expectations.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Yen 3 did-not-finish 4.10 2020 The Vanishing Half
author: Brit Bennett
name: Yen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 3
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date added: 2026/08/31
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]]> <![CDATA[A Philosophy of Software Design]]> 39996759 190 John Ousterhout 1732102201 Yen 0 to-read 4.19 2018 A Philosophy of Software Design
author: John Ousterhout
name: Yen
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective]]> 25670869
Controversial at its heart, yet refreshingly provocative, this book challenges readers to consider life without a destination and discovery without a compass.]]> 154 Kenneth O. Stanley 3319155245 Yen 0 to-read 3.96 2015 Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective
author: Kenneth O. Stanley
name: Yen
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal]]> 29236540
Blending cutting-edge research in social psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics, The Science of Selling shows you how to align the way you sell with how our brains naturally form buying decisions, dramatically increasing your ability to earn more sales. Unlike other sales books, which primarily rely on anecdotal evidence and unproven advice, Hoffeld’s evidence-based approach connects the dots between science and situations salespeople and business leaders face every day to help you consistently succeed, including proven ways

- Engage buyers’ emotions to increase their receptiveness to you and your ideas
- Ask questions that line up with how the brain discloses information
- Lock in the incremental commitments that lead to a sale
- Create positive influence and reduce the sway of competitors
- Discover the underlying causes of objections and neutralize them
- Guide buyers through the necessary mental steps to make purchasing decisions

Packed with advice and anecdotes, The Science of Selling is an essential resource for anyone looking to succeed in today's cutthroat selling environment, advance their business goals, or boost their ability to influence others.

**Named one of The 20 Most Highly-Rated Sales Books of All Time by HubSpot]]> 288 David Hoffeld 0143129325 Yen 0 to-read 3.94 The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal
author: David Hoffeld
name: Yen
average rating: 3.94
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]]> <![CDATA[Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything]]> 43261127
When it comes to change, tiny is mighty. Start with two pushups a day, not a two-hour workout; or five deep breaths each morning rather than an hour of meditation. In Tiny Habits, B.J. Fogg brings his experience coaching more than 40,000 people to help you lose weight, de-stress, sleep better, or achieve any goal of your choice.  You just need Fogg’s behavior formula: make it easy, make it fit your life, and make it rewarding. Whenever you get in your car, take one yoga breath. Smile.  Whenever you get in bed, turn off your phone. Give yourself a high five. 

Change can be easy—once it starts, it grows.  Let B.J. Fogg show you exactly how.]]> 320 B.J. Fogg 0358003326 Yen 0 to-read 4.12 2019 Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything
author: B.J. Fogg
name: Yen
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Pearl 5308
A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man’s nature, greed, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.]]> 96 John Steinbeck 0142000698 Yen 0 to-read 3.56 1947 The Pearl
author: John Steinbeck
name: Yen
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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]]> The Federalist Papers 36166009
With nearly two-thirds of the essays written by Hamilton, this enduring classic is perfect for modern audiences passionate about his work or seeking a deeper understanding of one of the most important documents in US history.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from iconic authors. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or revisit an old favorite, these new editions open the door to the stories and ideas that have shaped our world.]]> 592 Alexander Hamilton 1542099420 Yen 0 to-read 4.20 1788 The Federalist Papers
author: Alexander Hamilton
name: Yen
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1788
rating: 0
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]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
 
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence – a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Yen 4 favorites
People's affection was never about how smart one was. It was about whether our protagonist fit neatly into the role they had assigned him. Shrink Charlie back into a shape everyone was already comfortable with and their warmth came easily. But once he grew past that shape, people started keeping their distance. Because he grew smart so quickly, he initially lacked the emotional maturity to understand the complex nuance of human relationships or build his own identity. He was like a mirror that reflected whom people really were and how they felt about themselves.

Charlie spent a huge chunk of the story chasing external approval, and that impulse never fully disappeared just because his circumstances changed. On the contrary, getting smarter just gave him better tools to notice how conditional that approval always was. For a long time, smart Charlie looked back at little Charlie with shame, fear, and a desperate urge to erase him. Young Charlie was like a shadow constantly haunting him. Once he stopped running from his past self and finally acknowledged that version with kindness, he no longer depended on the world for validation. It was only through self-acceptance that he found the peace to accept his fading intellect and ultimate fate without bitterness.

I felt genuinely sad reading this book..how hard it is to simply be loved and appreciated for one true self. Not for what one can offer, not for staying conveniently within the bounds of someone else's comfort zone, but just for existing. Yet, Charlie’s journey shows that even if the world fails to give you that unconditional love, the most critical acceptance is the one you give yourself.]]> 4.21 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Yen
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at: 2026/08/17
date added: 2026/08/17
shelves: favorites
review:
This is one of those books you need to read once in your life.

People's affection was never about how smart one was. It was about whether our protagonist fit neatly into the role they had assigned him. Shrink Charlie back into a shape everyone was already comfortable with and their warmth came easily. But once he grew past that shape, people started keeping their distance. Because he grew smart so quickly, he initially lacked the emotional maturity to understand the complex nuance of human relationships or build his own identity. He was like a mirror that reflected whom people really were and how they felt about themselves.

Charlie spent a huge chunk of the story chasing external approval, and that impulse never fully disappeared just because his circumstances changed. On the contrary, getting smarter just gave him better tools to notice how conditional that approval always was. For a long time, smart Charlie looked back at little Charlie with shame, fear, and a desperate urge to erase him. Young Charlie was like a shadow constantly haunting him. Once he stopped running from his past self and finally acknowledged that version with kindness, he no longer depended on the world for validation. It was only through self-acceptance that he found the peace to accept his fading intellect and ultimate fate without bitterness.

I felt genuinely sad reading this book..how hard it is to simply be loved and appreciated for one true self. Not for what one can offer, not for staying conveniently within the bounds of someone else's comfort zone, but just for existing. Yet, Charlie’s journey shows that even if the world fails to give you that unconditional love, the most critical acceptance is the one you give yourself.
]]> Max 15774122
Max est le prototype parfait du programme "Lebensborn" initié par Himmler. Des femmes sélectionnées par les nazis mettent au monde de purs représentants de la race aryenne, jeunesse idéale destinée à régénérer l'Allemagne puis l'Europe occupée par le Reich.
Une fable historique fascinante et dérangeante qu'on ne peut pas lâcher. Une lecture choc, remarquablement documentée, dont on ne sort pas indemne]]> 473 Sarah Cohen-Scali 2070643891 Yen 0 currently-reading 4.27 2012 Max
author: Sarah Cohen-Scali
name: Yen
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Watership Down (Watership Down, #1)]]> 76620 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN13 9780380395866 here.

Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of friends, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.]]> 478 Richard Adams 038039586X Yen 0 to-read 4.08 1972 Watership Down (Watership Down, #1)
author: Richard Adams
name: Yen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Of Mice and Men 890 “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.”

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. But George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own.

While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful.

A unique perspective on life's hardships, this story has achieved the status of timeless classic due to its remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.]]> 107 John Steinbeck 0142000671 Yen 0 to-read 3.89 1937 Of Mice and Men
author: John Steinbeck
name: Yen
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1937
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> No Bad Parts 55384168 Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind—and healing the many parts that make you who you are.

Is there just one “you”? We’ve been taught to believe we have a single identity, and to feel fear or shame when we can’t control the inner voices that don’t match the ideal of who we think we should be. Yet Dr. Richard Schwartz’s research now challenges this “mono-mind” theory. “All of us are born with many sub-minds—or parts,” says Dr. Schwartz. “These parts are not imaginary or symbolic. They are individuals who exist as an internal family within us—and the key to health and happiness is to honor, understand, and love every part.”

Dr. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment—and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives. Here you’ll explore:

• The IFS revolution—how honoring and communicating with our parts changes our approach to mental wellness
• Overturning the cultural, scientific, and spiritual assumptions that reinforce an outdated mono-mind model
• The ego, the inner critic, the saboteur—making these often-maligned parts into powerful allies
• Burdens—why our parts become distorted and stuck in childhood traumas and cultural beliefs
• How IFS demonstrates human goodness by revealing that there are no bad parts
• The Self—discover your wise, compassionate essence of goodness that is the source of healing and harmony
• Exercises for mapping your parts, accessing the Self, working with a challenging protector, identifying each part’s triggers, and more

IFS is a paradigm-changing model because it gives us a powerful approach for healing ourselves, our culture, and our planet. As Dr. Schwartz teaches, “Our parts can sometimes be disruptive or harmful, but once they’re unburdened, they return to their essential goodness. When we learn to love all our parts, we can learn to love all people—and that will contribute to healing the world.”

]]> 199 Richard C. Schwartz 1683646681 Yen 4 currently-reading 4.07 2021 No Bad Parts
author: Richard C. Schwartz
name: Yen
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:
So much homework to do for this book 🙂‍↕️
]]> <![CDATA[Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day]]> 37880811 From the New York Times bestselling authors of Sprint, a simple 4-step system for improving focus, finding greater joy in your work, and getting more out of every day

Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, "The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings!" or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I'll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that's exactly what we do. Why?
In a world where information refreshes endlessly and the workday feels like a race to react to other people's priorities faster, frazzled and distracted has become our default position. But what if the exhaustion of constant busyness wasn't mandatory? What if you could step off the hamster wheel and start taking control of your time and attention? That's what this book is about.
As creators of Google Ventures' renowned "design sprint," Jake and John have helped hundreds of teams solve important problems by changing how they work. Building on the success of these sprints and their experience designing ubiquitous tech products from Gmail to YouTube, they spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines, looking for ways to help people optimize their energy, focus, and time. Now they've packaged the most effective tactics into a four-step daily framework that anyone can use to systematically design their days. Make Time is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, it offers a customizable menu of bite-size tips and strategies that can be tailored to individual habits and lifestyles.
Make Time isn't about productivity, or checking off more to-dos. Nor does it propose unrealistic solutions like throwing out your smartphone or swearing off social media. Making time isn't about radically overhauling your lifestyle; it's about making small shifts in your environment to liberate yourself from constant busyness and distraction.
A must-read for anyone who has ever thought, If only there were more hours in the day..., Make Time will help you stop passively reacting to the demands of the modern world and start intentionally making time for the things that matter.]]> 287 Jake Knapp 0525572422 Yen 0 to-read 4.04 2018 Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day
author: Jake Knapp
name: Yen
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Timeless Way of Building 106728 The Timeless Way of Building Christopher Alexander presents a new theory of architecture, building, and planning which has at its core that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being.

He writes, “There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.”

The Timeless Way of Building is the introductory volume to Alexander’s other works, A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment, in the Center for Environmental Structure series.
]]> 552 Christopher W. Alexander 0195024028 Yen 0 to-read 4.38 1978 The Timeless Way of Building
author: Christopher W. Alexander
name: Yen
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Hundred-Year-Old Man, #1)]]> 36578942 The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared has charmed readers across the world.]]> 396 Jonas Jonasson Yen 0 to-read 3.83 2009 The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Hundred-Year-Old Man, #1)
author: Jonas Jonasson
name: Yen
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ambigrammia: Between Creation and Discovery]]> 220714065 On the history and creation of ambigrams, by a pioneer of the practice
 
In the 1960s and 1970s, a trio of imaginative individuals independently discovered that ordinary words and phrases could be given double readings by playfully distorting the letters composing them. These doubly readable words and phrases, if designed by an artistic eye and hand, could possess great visual beauty. Douglas Hofstadter named such calligraphic creations “ambigrams,” and over the decades he has designed thousands of them, as have his friends Scott Kim and John Langdon, the other main pioneers of the subtle art form he calls ambigrammia. ABCD (Hofstadter’s informal title for this book) offers a sampler of hundreds of Hofstadter’s ambigrams, along with a few dozen by Kim, Langdon, and others.   

With deep links to cognitive science, ABCD exhibits ambigrams of many types and shows how ambigrammia can be extended in surprising directions. All along the way, Hofstadter discusses creativity and its alter ego, “discoverativity,” revealing how the “pocket sized creativity puzzles” that constitute the art form are pervaded by these complementary qualities. ABCD is also notably Hofstadter vividly recounts how his life has been intimately intertwined with the creation/discovery of ambigrams in many countries and in many languages.
]]> 320 Douglas R. Hofstadter 0300275439 Yen 0 to-read 4.14 Ambigrammia: Between Creation and Discovery
author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
name: Yen
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Yen 3 4.15 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Yen
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2026/08/08
date added: 2026/08/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship]]> 46681 I Love You, But I Don't Trust You), an international bestselling author and world-renowned therapist, draws on years of counseling experience to lead readers through relationship ambivalence. A careful line of 36 questions and self-analysis techniques designed to get to the heart of relationship and marriage problems.  This straightforward and practical advice is designed for newer and older relationships, and presents a plethora of information and experience in a clear, concise manner.]]> 304 Mira Kirshenbaum 0452275350 Yen 5
Update 28th July:

Finished it, still 5/5. I like the quote "Fun is the glue of love" ...if there is no longer joy, no matter how actively you tried to work out the differences between two people, it's still going to be an uphill battle.]]> 4.15 1996 Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship
author: Mira Kirshenbaum
name: Yen
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2026/07/28
date added: 2026/07/28
shelves:
review:
One of the best relationship books out there. Even if you’re not considering leaving your relationship, this book offers valuable insights into understanding your boundaries, communicating more clearly, and better understanding both yourself and your partner. It isn’t a guide about breaking up, it’s a book about hope and possibilities.

Update 28th July:

Finished it, still 5/5. I like the quote "Fun is the glue of love" ...if there is no longer joy, no matter how actively you tried to work out the differences between two people, it's still going to be an uphill battle.
]]> 1Q84 #1-2 (1Q84, #1-2) 12254379
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers]]> 805 Haruki Murakami Yen 4 4.08 2009 1Q84 #1-2 (1Q84, #1-2)
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Yen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2026/07/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Project Hail Mary 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]> 476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Yen 4
Overall, it took me a week and a half to finish it. I really enjoyed the space theme and how realistic the science was, the author’s writing was very comprehensive and persuasive. I liked that the way the science was explained was really easy to understand. Since he was a science teacher to younger children, it makes sense that the way he explains scientific concepts and communicates feels like a teacher guiding you through it all.

At my book club, the general sentiment was that most people enjoyed the book. I think it's a very cute book because I loved the relationship between Rocky and our main protagonist. However, there were a bit too many stereotypes about people from other countries. For example, Russian people only caring about alcohol, or Chinese people being portrayed as stoic and not talkative. Those stereotypes were a bit annoying, but I thought if it was meant for sarcasm or a light sense of humor, it was fine. Still, at the end of the day, I wish there could have been a bit more nuance and depth in terms of those characters.

Another point raised was that a lot of people thought our protagonist was a bit messy or acted like a coward at times. But I think that's just how humans react in extreme situations. He grew up being beaten down after his research papers weren't well-received, so his default mindset was just to be a nerdy researcher rather than a brave astronaut. When the moment of pressure comes, he naturally hesitates, so I think we should cut him some slack for that.

There were also a lot of comments comparing this to the author's other books, with people saying he doesn't know how to write distinct characters and that most of them feel similar. I haven't read his other books, so I can't really judge or form a strong opinion on that, but for this particular book, I thought the main character was pretty interesting. Even though he’s the protagonist, we actually don't know much about his past. Usually, there's a detailed backstory, but here the background is purely about how the mission was created. We don't know if he has family, or what his personal life was like before becoming a teacher. He doesn't even really talk about his future aspirations beyond teaching.

In a way, his character feels a bit vague, but I felt like that actually set him up perfectly to be an astronaut. Being an astronaut is all about being in the present. You have a mission right in front of you, and you just focus on that. You don't get stuck in melancholy, past regrets, or overthinking the future, you have one calling, and you move forward with it. I really enjoyed that mindset because sometimes we spend so much time overthinking things when the most important thing is simply the present. The fact that he finally found his purpose in the end and truly committed to it felt like a genuinely heroic moment.

I also really loved Rocky, a very funny character! It was amazing how quickly they were able to understand each other and build a shared language system, which shows how incredible communication can be. At the same time, there's always more to explore. I kept thinking about different scenarios, like what if Rocky's crew members hadn't died, and there were 23 of them instead? Imagine being the sole person from Earth having to meet a whole crew of 23 aliens! The premise of the book makes their dynamic a bit idealistic, especially since they are both technical, scientific minds: an engineer and a researcher, who share immediate similarities to bond over.

I also really enjoyed the quotable moments from Rocky. Humans are often stupidly complicated, we beat around the bush and don't say what we actually mean, so their straightforward dynamic made this such a comfortable book to read. Lastly, I really loved the ending. I think it was very realistic because, at the end of the day, it was a suicide mission. I definitely preferred this over a typical happy ending where he just returns to Earth. Even so, it felt like a very hopeful book. I was deeply invested in every moment, and the author was great at building up to those big discovery scenes. I was literally gasping in bed when he first made contact with Rocky's spaceship! Overall, it was a good read.]]> 4.50 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Yen
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2026/07/22
date added: 2026/07/22
shelves:
review:
I was a bit skeptical of starting this book since I have never been a big fan of sci-fi, plus there was a lot of hype around it during the time of the movie release. I haven't watched the movie yet, but after reading this, I definitely want to see Rocky come to life haha.

Overall, it took me a week and a half to finish it. I really enjoyed the space theme and how realistic the science was, the author’s writing was very comprehensive and persuasive. I liked that the way the science was explained was really easy to understand. Since he was a science teacher to younger children, it makes sense that the way he explains scientific concepts and communicates feels like a teacher guiding you through it all.

At my book club, the general sentiment was that most people enjoyed the book. I think it's a very cute book because I loved the relationship between Rocky and our main protagonist. However, there were a bit too many stereotypes about people from other countries. For example, Russian people only caring about alcohol, or Chinese people being portrayed as stoic and not talkative. Those stereotypes were a bit annoying, but I thought if it was meant for sarcasm or a light sense of humor, it was fine. Still, at the end of the day, I wish there could have been a bit more nuance and depth in terms of those characters.

Another point raised was that a lot of people thought our protagonist was a bit messy or acted like a coward at times. But I think that's just how humans react in extreme situations. He grew up being beaten down after his research papers weren't well-received, so his default mindset was just to be a nerdy researcher rather than a brave astronaut. When the moment of pressure comes, he naturally hesitates, so I think we should cut him some slack for that.

There were also a lot of comments comparing this to the author's other books, with people saying he doesn't know how to write distinct characters and that most of them feel similar. I haven't read his other books, so I can't really judge or form a strong opinion on that, but for this particular book, I thought the main character was pretty interesting. Even though he’s the protagonist, we actually don't know much about his past. Usually, there's a detailed backstory, but here the background is purely about how the mission was created. We don't know if he has family, or what his personal life was like before becoming a teacher. He doesn't even really talk about his future aspirations beyond teaching.

In a way, his character feels a bit vague, but I felt like that actually set him up perfectly to be an astronaut. Being an astronaut is all about being in the present. You have a mission right in front of you, and you just focus on that. You don't get stuck in melancholy, past regrets, or overthinking the future, you have one calling, and you move forward with it. I really enjoyed that mindset because sometimes we spend so much time overthinking things when the most important thing is simply the present. The fact that he finally found his purpose in the end and truly committed to it felt like a genuinely heroic moment.

I also really loved Rocky, a very funny character! It was amazing how quickly they were able to understand each other and build a shared language system, which shows how incredible communication can be. At the same time, there's always more to explore. I kept thinking about different scenarios, like what if Rocky's crew members hadn't died, and there were 23 of them instead? Imagine being the sole person from Earth having to meet a whole crew of 23 aliens! The premise of the book makes their dynamic a bit idealistic, especially since they are both technical, scientific minds: an engineer and a researcher, who share immediate similarities to bond over.

I also really enjoyed the quotable moments from Rocky. Humans are often stupidly complicated, we beat around the bush and don't say what we actually mean, so their straightforward dynamic made this such a comfortable book to read. Lastly, I really loved the ending. I think it was very realistic because, at the end of the day, it was a suicide mission. I definitely preferred this over a typical happy ending where he just returns to Earth. Even so, it felt like a very hopeful book. I was deeply invested in every moment, and the author was great at building up to those big discovery scenes. I was literally gasping in bed when he first made contact with Rocky's spaceship! Overall, it was a good read.
]]> Em 55692516
Em, c'est celle qui aime.]]> 152 Kim Thúy 2764813295 Yen 0 to-read 4.09 2020 Em
author: Kim Thúy
name: Yen
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Definitive Book of Body Language]]> 262731
It is a scientific fact that people’s gestures give away their true intentions. Yet most of us don’t know how to read body language–and don’t realize how our own physical movements speak to others. Now the world’s foremost experts on the subject share their techniques for reading body language signals to achieve success in every area of life.

Drawing upon more than thirty years in the field, as well as cutting-edge research from evolutionary biology, psychology, and medical technologies that demonstrate what happens in the brain, the authors examine each component of body language and give you the basic vocabulary to read attitudes and emotions through behavior.

Discover:
• How palms and handshakes are used to gain control
• The most common gestures of liars
• How the legs reveal what the mind wants to do
• The most common male and female courtship gestures and signals
• The secret signals of cigarettes, glasses, and makeup
• The magic of smiles–including smiling advice for women
• How to use nonverbal cues and signals to communicate more effectively and get the reactions you want

Filled with fascinating insights, humorous observations, and simple strategies that you can apply to any situation, this intriguing book will enrich your communication with and understanding of others–as well as yourself.]]> 400 Allan Pease Yen 0 to-read 3.97 1981 The Definitive Book of Body Language
author: Allan Pease
name: Yen
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fight Club 36236124 Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.]]> 224 Chuck Palahniuk 0393355942 Yen 0 to-read 4.17 1996 Fight Club
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Yen
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dumb Luck 1362808 Dumb Luck--by the controversial and influential Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung--is a bitter satire of the rage for modernization in Vietnam during the late colonial era. First published in Hanoi during 1936, it follows the absurd and unexpected rise within colonial society of a street-smart vagabond named Red-haired Xuan. As it charts Xuan's fantastic social ascent, the novel provides a panoramic view of late colonial urban social order, from the filthy sidewalks of Hanoi's old commercial quarter to the gaudy mansions of the emergent Francophile northern upper classes. The transformation of traditional Vietnamese class and gender relations triggered by the growth of colonial capitalism represents a major theme of the novel.

Dumb Luck is the first translation of a major work by Vu Trong Phung, arguably the greatest Vietnamese writer of the twentieth century. The novel's clever plot, richly drawn characters and humorous tone and its preoccupation with sex, fashion and capitalism will appeal to a wide audience. It will appeal to students and scholars of Vietnam, comparative literature, colonial and postcolonial studies, and Southeast Asian civilization.

Vu Trong Phung died in Hanoi, in 1939 at the age of twenty-seven. He is the author of at least eight novels, seven plays, and several other works of fiction in addition to Dumb Luck.

Peter Zinoman is Associate Professor of Southeast Asian History, University of California, Berkeley. Nguyen Nguyet Cam is Vietnamese Language Instructor, University of California, Berkeley.]]> 189 Vũ Trọng Phụng 0472068040 Yen 5
His writing tone was blunt and direct, a mix of satirical realism. The judgment was implied, and we as readers were left to supply the reaction the narrator withheld. This helped the satire land as funny instead of preachy. Instead of condemning the protagonist, the neutral tone kept everyone fully complicit. It wasn't one con man who fooled everyone, it was that the system was built to reward this behavior.

The side characters were interesting, each one exaggerated just enough to expose a specific social hypocrisy. The language also felt heavily regional and colloquial, given the book's Northern setting, so I think the English translation probably lost some of that. And despite tackling heavy social issues, the writing stayed upbeat and lively throughout which kept me hooked.

The plot core was a street hustler climbing the social ladder with zero qualifications, and that was what drives the conflicts I found most fascinating:

1. Merit vs. success: The protagonist never earned anything he gained. Every institution he passed through validated him anyway, which said less about him and more about how easily those institutions could be gamed.

2. Modernity vs. tradition: VTP was criticizing the Europeanization movement that chased after progress in appearance, not substance. But he never suggested "tradition" as morally superior either. The real target was performative adoption of everything, not West vs. East argument.

3. Class and gender: This tangled into nearly every relationship in the book, where status and desire constantly blended into each other. The whole idea of "modern womanhood" in the book was built and sold by men, for men's benefit. Every relationship became a transaction, hidden behind a veil of modesty to mask a rotten core of insecurity, lost identity, and individualism.

Politically speaking, the novel was banned for most of its history in socialist Vietnam, officially over its depiction of sex. I won't go deep into that here since it was the part of the book club discussion that tended to eat all the airtime. That being said, there's a case to be made that the official reason wasn't the real one. Worth noting tho, the book was written in 1936, the same year the Popular Front coalition took power in France. The timing could be coincidental rather than causal, and I wouldn't say the book leaned heavily toward supporting that movement either way.

In the end, what makes the book still feel timeless is that our current social structure still runs on credibility built from appearance rather than substance. Confident delivery, the right vocabulary, the right social circle, and no one checking the credentials. With that combination, you could be anyone and get away with anything. Could this be a warning or an encouragement? ]]> 4.16 1936 Dumb Luck
author: Vũ Trọng Phụng
name: Yen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1936
rating: 5
read at: 2026/07/08
date added: 2026/07/10
shelves:
review:
I finished this book in a week, and it was a fun read. VTP was unconventional and ahead of his time. Back in high school, we only got a short snippet, so I had no idea how much of the actual book we were missing out on.

His writing tone was blunt and direct, a mix of satirical realism. The judgment was implied, and we as readers were left to supply the reaction the narrator withheld. This helped the satire land as funny instead of preachy. Instead of condemning the protagonist, the neutral tone kept everyone fully complicit. It wasn't one con man who fooled everyone, it was that the system was built to reward this behavior.

The side characters were interesting, each one exaggerated just enough to expose a specific social hypocrisy. The language also felt heavily regional and colloquial, given the book's Northern setting, so I think the English translation probably lost some of that. And despite tackling heavy social issues, the writing stayed upbeat and lively throughout which kept me hooked.

The plot core was a street hustler climbing the social ladder with zero qualifications, and that was what drives the conflicts I found most fascinating:

1. Merit vs. success: The protagonist never earned anything he gained. Every institution he passed through validated him anyway, which said less about him and more about how easily those institutions could be gamed.

2. Modernity vs. tradition: VTP was criticizing the Europeanization movement that chased after progress in appearance, not substance. But he never suggested "tradition" as morally superior either. The real target was performative adoption of everything, not West vs. East argument.

3. Class and gender: This tangled into nearly every relationship in the book, where status and desire constantly blended into each other. The whole idea of "modern womanhood" in the book was built and sold by men, for men's benefit. Every relationship became a transaction, hidden behind a veil of modesty to mask a rotten core of insecurity, lost identity, and individualism.

Politically speaking, the novel was banned for most of its history in socialist Vietnam, officially over its depiction of sex. I won't go deep into that here since it was the part of the book club discussion that tended to eat all the airtime. That being said, there's a case to be made that the official reason wasn't the real one. Worth noting tho, the book was written in 1936, the same year the Popular Front coalition took power in France. The timing could be coincidental rather than causal, and I wouldn't say the book leaned heavily toward supporting that movement either way.

In the end, what makes the book still feel timeless is that our current social structure still runs on credibility built from appearance rather than substance. Confident delivery, the right vocabulary, the right social circle, and no one checking the credentials. With that combination, you could be anyone and get away with anything. Could this be a warning or an encouragement?
]]> <![CDATA[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]]> 223436601
Now you can read her award-winning story. Candid and entertaining, Wynn-Williams’ account pulls back the curtain on Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the global elite. She exposes the true cost of Silicon Valley’s ambition, from outrageous schemes cooked up on private jets to the alarming consequences of Facebook’s aggressive pursuit of global dominance.

Careless People is an ordinary woman's gripping and darkly funny memoir that will forever change how you view the technology that runs our lives – and the unchecked power of those who control it.]]> 382 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Yen 0 to-read 4.10 2025 Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Yen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Yen 0 to-read 4.02 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Yen
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Alchemist 18144590 The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, following our dreams.]]> 182 Paulo Coelho 0062315005 Yen 4 favorites 4.01 1988 The Alchemist
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Yen
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2026/06/19
shelves: favorites
review:
Finished this book for the 2nd time, funny how it always comes around when I need a little push and courage to fully embrace myself.
]]> Taiwan Travelogue 205363984
Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.]]> 298 Yáng Shuāng-zǐ 1644453150 Yen 0 to-read 3.94 2020 Taiwan Travelogue
author: Yáng Shuāng-zǐ
name: Yen
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love]]> 235993074 Fourteen beloved authors celebrate the life-changing bond with their canine companions in this heartwarming essay collection edited by New York Times bestselling author and lifelong dog lover Alice Hoffman.

Anyone who has ever been fortunate enough to share their life with a dog knows the experience is both profound and transformative. Here, in this charming collection of essays, fourteen celebrated authors share unforgettable tales of the dogs who left their pawprints on their hearts.

With contributions from Isabel Allende, Chris Bohjalian, Bonnie Garmus, Roxane Gay, Emily Henry, Ann Leary, Tova Mirvis, Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Strout, Amy Tan, Adriana Trigiani, Nick Trout, Paul Yoon, and Laura Zigman, The Best Dog in the World captures the full range of the canine-human connection, from the joy of welcoming a new puppy to the heartache of saying goodbye to a beloved friend.

A love letter to the loyal companions who enrich our lives and teach us about empathy, joy, and unconditional love, this anthology is the perfect gift for dog lovers everywhere, offering a blend of laughter, tears, and inspiration that will resonate with anyone who has been fur-ever touched by the love of a dog.]]> 218 Alice Hoffman 1668209020 Yen 0 to-read 4.30 2026 The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Yen
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage]]> 231108670 It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn’t.

In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume.

In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.

With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.]]> 241 Belle Burden 0593733312 Yen 0 to-read 4.02 2026 Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
author: Belle Burden
name: Yen
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Yen 4 favorites 4.07 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Yen
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories]]> 24885533
With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie. This mesmerizing collection features all of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).

A must-have for every science fiction and fantasy fan, this beautiful book is an anthology to savor.]]> 450 Ken Liu 1481442546 Yen 3 4.35 2016 The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
author: Ken Liu
name: Yen
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Demian 43609577
Emil Sinclair is a young boy raised in a bourgeois home, amidst what is described as a Scheinwelt, a play on words that means "world of light" as well as "world of illusion". Emil's entire existence can be summarized as a struggle between two worlds: the show world of illusion (related to the Hindu concept of maya) and the real world, the world of spiritual truth. In the course of the novel, accompanied and prompted by his mysterious classmate 'Max Demian', he detaches from and revolts against the superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into a realization of self.]]> 276 Hermann Hesse Yen 5 4.19 1919 Demian
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Yen
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1919
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
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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 Yen 0 to-read 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Yen
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Notes from Underground 49455 Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes — moral, religious, political and social — that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works. Notes from the Underground, then, aside from its own compelling qualities, offers readers an ideal introduction to the creative imagination, profundity and uncanny psychological penetration of one of the most influential novelists of the nineteenth century. Constance Garnett's authoritative translation is reprinted here, with a new introduction.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Yen 0 to-read 4.20 1864 Notes from Underground
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Yen
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1864
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Yen 0 to-read 4.11 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
name: Yen
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love]]> 9547888 Is there a science to love?

In this groundbreaking book, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel S. F. Heller reveal how an understanding of attachment theory-the most advanced relationship science in existence today-can help us find and sustain love. Attachment theory forms the basis for many bestselling books on the parent/child relationship, but there has yet to be an accessible guide to what this fascinating science has to tell us about adult romantic relationships-until now.

Attachment theory owes its inception to British psychologist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who in the 1950s examined the tremendous impact that our early relationships with our parents or caregivers has on the people we become. Also central to attachment theory is the discovery that our need to be in a close relationship with one or more individuals is embedded in our genes.

In Attached, Levine and Heller trace how these evolutionary influences continue to shape who we are in our relationships today. According to attachment theory, every person behaves in relationships in one of three distinct ways:

*ANXIOUS people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back.
*AVOIDANT people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.
*SECURE people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving.

Attached guides readers in determining what attachment style they and their mate (or potential mates) follow. It also offers readers a wealth of advice on how to navigate their relationships more wisely given their attachment style and that of their partner. An insightful look at the science behind love, Attached offers readers a road map for building stronger, more fulfilling connections.]]> 304 Amir Levine 1585428485 Yen 3 to-read 4.09 2010 Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love
author: Amir Levine
name: Yen
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kindred 60931 The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.]]> 288 Octavia E. Butler 0807083690 Yen 4 favorites
One concept my book club discussed was “convenient amnesia”, and I think that perfectly captures one of the book's biggest strengths. It constantly asks us who has the privilege of forgetting painful histories and who is forced to continue living with their consequences. Even though slavery is often treated as a thing of the past, its legacy still shapes race, identity, and power today.

I also appreciated how nuanced the book is when discussing complicity. It's easy to think that if we lived during that time, we would automatically do the right thing, but it shows how people are shaped by the systems around them. Cruelty becomes normalized, and people become comfortable benefiting from systems they didn't necessarily create. It also made me reflect on our own society and whether we distance ourselves from difficult conversations because they don't directly affect us.

The themes of family, kinship, and the role of women were also really interesting. The book shows how family could be a source of comfort, obligation, and pain all at once. It also highlighted how women, especially Black women, were expected to carry multiple burdens at the same time: surviving oppression while also acting as caretakers and emotional anchors for everyone else. The book reminded me that survival often looks very different from heroism.

One theme I appreciated was around interracial relationships. It made me think about how much empathy, understanding, and accountability we should expect from partners who may never fully understand our lived experiences. Good intentions are important, but they're not enough if someone can simply detach themselves from uncomfortable realities whenever they want.

On a personal level, this book resonated with some of my own experiences. As an Asian person, it made me reflect on how educated and open I am toward histories and struggles that don't directly affect my own community, and how we can acknowledge painful histories without allowing them to completely define future generations.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book because it raised more questions than answers. I'd probably give it a 3.8 because I wish some parts had been explored in more depth, but it's definitely a book I'd recommend because it continues to spark meaningful conversations long after you've finished reading it.]]> 4.30 1979 Kindred
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Yen
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at: 2026/06/11
date added: 2026/06/18
shelves: favorites
review:
I finished Kindred for my book club, and it was a very interesting experience because the book was much easier to read than I expected. Given the heavy subject matter, I thought the writing would be denser, but Butler used very simple language. At first, I even thought it was almost too straightforward, but the more I read, the more I realized how layered and profound it actually is. Even though it was written decades ago, it feels incredibly modern.

One concept my book club discussed was “convenient amnesia”, and I think that perfectly captures one of the book's biggest strengths. It constantly asks us who has the privilege of forgetting painful histories and who is forced to continue living with their consequences. Even though slavery is often treated as a thing of the past, its legacy still shapes race, identity, and power today.

I also appreciated how nuanced the book is when discussing complicity. It's easy to think that if we lived during that time, we would automatically do the right thing, but it shows how people are shaped by the systems around them. Cruelty becomes normalized, and people become comfortable benefiting from systems they didn't necessarily create. It also made me reflect on our own society and whether we distance ourselves from difficult conversations because they don't directly affect us.

The themes of family, kinship, and the role of women were also really interesting. The book shows how family could be a source of comfort, obligation, and pain all at once. It also highlighted how women, especially Black women, were expected to carry multiple burdens at the same time: surviving oppression while also acting as caretakers and emotional anchors for everyone else. The book reminded me that survival often looks very different from heroism.

One theme I appreciated was around interracial relationships. It made me think about how much empathy, understanding, and accountability we should expect from partners who may never fully understand our lived experiences. Good intentions are important, but they're not enough if someone can simply detach themselves from uncomfortable realities whenever they want.

On a personal level, this book resonated with some of my own experiences. As an Asian person, it made me reflect on how educated and open I am toward histories and struggles that don't directly affect my own community, and how we can acknowledge painful histories without allowing them to completely define future generations.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book because it raised more questions than answers. I'd probably give it a 3.8 because I wish some parts had been explored in more depth, but it's definitely a book I'd recommend because it continues to spark meaningful conversations long after you've finished reading it.
]]> The Symposium 81779
In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerges a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society and the sublimation of basic human instincts. The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato's mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of love--as a response to beauty, a cosmic force, a motive for social action and as a means of ethical education.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 90 Plato 0140449272 Yen 0 to-read 4.11 -380 The Symposium
author: Plato
name: Yen
average rating: 4.11
book published: -380
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Who Have Never Known Men 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.

As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 173 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Yen 0 to-read 3.99 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Yen
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts]]> 23878688 Over 20 million copies sold!

A perennial New York Times bestseller for over a decade!

Falling in love is easy. Staying in love—that’s the challenge. How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life?

In the #1 New York Times international bestseller The 5 Love Languages®, you’ll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today.

The 5 Love Languages® is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work.

Includes the Love Language assessment so you can discover your love language and that of your loved one.]]> 232 Gary Chapman 0802492401 Yen 2 did-not-finish 4.31 1990 The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts
author: Gary Chapman
name: Yen
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1990
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2026/06/11
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology]]> 19243347 364 Gayle Laakmann McDowell 0984782818 Yen 3 4.17 2013 Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology
author: Gayle Laakmann McDowell
name: Yen
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2026/06/11
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews]]> 20822143 Decode and Conquer is the world's first book focused exclusively on product management (PM) interview preparation. The author gives an industry insider's perspective on how to conquer the most difficult PM interview questions. Decode and Conquer will reveal:

Frameworks for tackling product design and metrics questions, including the CIRCLES Method™, AARM Method™, and DIGS Method™
Biggest mistakes PM candidates make at the interview
Decode what interviewers are looking for, why they're looking for it, and how to deliver it
Answers to the most important PM interview questions
]]> Lewis C. Lin Yen 3 4.05 2013 Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews
author: Lewis C. Lin
name: Yen
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2026/06/11
date added: 2026/06/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No BS. Just a 6-Week Program That Works]]> 40591670  
Buy as many lattes as you want. Choose the right accounts and investments so your money grows for you—automatically. Best of all, spend guilt-free on the things you love.
 
Personal finance expert Ramit Sethi has been called a “wealth wizard” by Forbes and the “new guru on the block” by Fortune . Now he’s updated and expanded his modern money classic for a new age, delivering a simple, powerful, no-BS 6-week program that just works.
 
I Will Teach You to Be Rich will show
• How to crush your debt and student loans faster than you thought possible
• How to set up no-fee, high-interest bank accounts that won’t gouge you for every penny
• How Ramit automates his finances so his money goes exactly where he wants it to—and how you can do it too
• How to talk your way out of late fees (with word-for-word scripts)
• How to save hundreds or even thousands per month (and still buy what you love)
• A set-it-and-forget-it investment strategy that’s dead simple and beats financial advisors at their own game
• How to handle buying a car or a house, paying for a wedding, having kids, and other big expenses—stress free
• The exact words to use to negotiate a big raise at work
 
Plus, this 10th anniversary edition features over 80 new pages,
• New tools
• New insights on money and psychology
• Amazing stories of how previous readers used the book to create their rich lives
 
Master your money—and then get on with your life.

 ]]> 342 Ramit Sethi 1523505745 Yen 0 to-read 4.23 2009 I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No BS. Just a 6-Week Program That Works
author: Ramit Sethi
name: Yen
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth]]> 347852 The Road Less Traveled. In the era of I'm OK, You're OK, Peck was courageous enough to suggest that "life is difficult" and personal growth is a "complex, arduous and lifelong task." His willingness to expose his own life stories as well as to share the intimate stories of his anonymous therapy clients creates a compelling and heartfelt narrative.]]> 320 M. Scott Peck Yen 0 to-read 4.07 1978 The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
author: M. Scott Peck
name: Yen
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse]]> 43708884
Here, you will find them together in this book of Charlie's most-loved drawings, adventuring into the Wild and exploring the thoughts and feelings that unite us all.]]> 128 Charlie Mackesy 1529105102 Yen 4 favorites 4.55 2019 The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
author: Charlie Mackesy
name: Yen
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2026/06/07
shelves: favorites
review:
Cute children book but reasonated for adults. Life lessons can come from such simple things.
]]> The Giving Tree 370493
So begins a story of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein.

Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk...and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave.

This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. Shel Silverstein has created a moving parable for readers of all ages that offers an affecting interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another's capacity to love in return.]]> 64 Shel Silverstein 0060256656 Yen 5 favorites 4.38 1964 The Giving Tree
author: Shel Silverstein
name: Yen
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1964
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2026/06/07
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> The Memory Police 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yōko Ogawa 1101870605 Yen 4 favorites 3.68 1994 The Memory Police
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Yen
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2026/06/07
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review:

]]> All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 531 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Yen 5 favorites 4.30 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Yen
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2026/06/07
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> The Complete Persepolis 991197
Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming—both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.

Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom—Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.]]> 341 Marjane Satrapi 0375714839 Yen 5 favorites 4.39 2007 The Complete Persepolis
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Yen
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2026/06/07
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> The Snowman (Harry Hole, #7) 9572203 383 Jo Nesbø 0307595862 Yen 4 4.02 2007 The Snowman (Harry Hole, #7)
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Yen
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2026/06/07
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review:
Nordic noir theme, would love to go to Norway and check out the cities.
]]> The Witch of Portobello 1252043 Librarian note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN-13: 9780061338816, ISBN-10/ASIN: 0061338818

How do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves—even if we are unsure of whom we are?

That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho's profound new work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well—or hardly at all.]]> 261 Paulo Coelho Yen 3 3.72 2006 The Witch of Portobello
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Yen
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2026/06/07
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[You're the Only One I've Told: The Stories Behind Abortion]]> 51074920
At a time where reproductive rights are at risk, these vital stories of diverse individuals serve as a reminder of the importance of empathy, finding community and motivating advocacy 

For a long time, when people asked Dr. Meera Shah, Chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, what she did, she would tell them she was a doctor and leave it at that. But when she started to be direct about her work as an abortion provider an interesting thing started to one by one, people would confide that they'd had an abortion themselves. The refrain was often the  You're the only one I've told. 

This book collects these stories as they've been told to Shah to humanize abortion and to combat myths that persist in the discourse that surrounds it. A wide range of ages, races, socioeconomic factors, and experiences shows that abortion always occurs in a unique context.  

Today, a healthcare issue that's so precious and foundational to reproductive, social, and economic freedom for millions of people is exploited by politicians who lack understanding or compassion about the context in which abortion occurs. Stories have the power to break down stigmas and help us to empathize with those whose experiences are unlike our own.  

A portion of proceeds will be donated to promote reproductive health access. ]]> 304 Meera Shah 1641603631 Yen 0 to-read 4.43 2020 You're the Only One I've Told: The Stories Behind Abortion
author: Meera Shah
name: Yen
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/07
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]]> Between the World and Me 25489625 “This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.”
 
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
 
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.]]> 152 Ta-Nehisi Coates Yen 0 to-read 4.40 2015 Between the World and Me
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Yen
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison]]> 54897810 An anthology of illustrated narratives about the prison and the lives it changed forever
 
In January 2002, the United States sent a group of Muslim men they suspected of terrorism to a prison in Guantánamo Bay. They were the first of roughly 780 prisoners who would be held there—and 40 inmates still remain. Eighteen years later, very few of them have been ever charged with a crime.
In Guantánamo Voices, journalist Sarah Mirk and her team of diverse, talented graphic novel artists tell the stories of ten people whose lives have been shaped and affected by the prison, including former prisoners, lawyers, social workers, and service members. This collection of illustrated interviews explores the history of Guantánamo and the world post-9/11, presenting this complicated partisan issue through a new lens.
 ]]> 208 Sarah Mirk 164700120X Yen 0 to-read 4.52 2020 Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison
author: Sarah Mirk
name: Yen
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds]]> 222850887 In this powerful reframing of the stories that make us, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec leads us into the borderlands of history, science, memoir, and fiction to What worlds do books written by marginalized people describe and invite us to inhabit?

When a friend asked what books could help them understand Indigenous lives, Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin, gave them a list. This list became a book club and then a podcast about a year of Indigenous reading, and then this book. The writers in Bad Indians Book Club refuse to let dominant stories displace their own and resist the way wemitigoozhiwag--European settlers--craft the prevailing narrative and decide who they are.

In Bad Indians Book Club, we examine works about history, science, and gender as well as fiction, all written from the perspective of "Bad Indians"--marginalized writers whose refusal to comply with dominant narratives opens up new worlds. Interlacing chapters with short stories about Deer Woman, who is on her own journey to decide who she is, Krawec leads us into a place of wisdom and medicine where the stories of marginalized writers help us imagine other ways of seeing the world. As Krawec did for her friend, she recommends a list of books to fill in the gaps on our own bookshelves and in our understanding.

Becoming Kin, which novelist Omar El Akkad called a "searing spear of light," led readers to talk back to the histories they had received. Now, in Bad Indians Book Club comes a potent challenge to all the stories settler colonialism tells--stories that erase and appropriate, deny and deflect. Following Deer Woman, who is shaped by the profuse artistry of Krawec, we enter the multiple worlds Indigenous and other subaltern stories create. Together we venture to the edges of worlds waiting to be born.]]> 231 Patty Krawec 1506499120 Yen 0 to-read 4.08 2025 Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds
author: Patty Krawec
name: Yen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/07
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]]> <![CDATA[One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This]]> 213870084 From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human.

On Oct 25th, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed over 10 million times. 

One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture which has occurred for Black, brown, indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse. 

This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the west, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries—America, the UK, France and Germany.  It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we’re undergoing a shift in the so-called ‘rules-based order,’ a generation that understands the west can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar’s own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11. 

This book is his heartsick breakup letter with the west. It is a breakup we are watching all over the U.S., on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the west has served up. This is the book for our time.]]> 208 Omar El Akkad 0593804147 Yen 0 to-read 4.56 2025 One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
author: Omar El Akkad
name: Yen
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot]]> 36687229 267 Mikki Kendall Yen 0 to-read 4.36 2020 Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
author: Mikki Kendall
name: Yen
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/07
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]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett 0385550367 Yen 0 to-read 4.38 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Yen
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Cloud Cuckoo Land 56783258 When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:
An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:
An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:
With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.]]> 626 Anthony Doerr 1982168439 Yen 0 to-read 4.23 2021 Cloud Cuckoo Land
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Yen
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents]]> 51152447 The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.]]> 544 Isabel Wilkerson 0593230256 Yen 0 to-read 4.51 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Yen
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 303 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Yen 0 to-read 3.70 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Yen
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Is a River Alive? 218569826 Underland delivers a revelatory book that transforms how we look at the natural world—and life itself.

Hailed as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler” (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane’s dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.]]> 384 Robert Macfarlane 0393242137 Yen 3 did-not-finish
I didn't quite finish it, mostly because the structure and perspective felt a bit off for me. The writer’s POV sometimes felt like he was just on a sightseeing trip, and the way he described his companions felt a little stereotypical, which made it hard to relate to them as ordinary people. Structurally, it also felt a bit unbalanced...he dedicated so much focus to the first river but less to the others, so it felt like he had a clear favorite. He was definitely ambitious, even bringing in legislation, but it was just hard to weave all those themes together. It might have been stronger if he had focused on just one river.

Overall, it’s still an interesting read, especially for a Western audience. For many of us in Asia or other parts of the world, rivers are already such a spiritual and social part of daily life, so the core concept feels familiar ..but it’s still great that he’s bringing this conversation to light.]]> 4.15 2025 Is a River Alive?
author: Robert Macfarlane
name: Yen
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2026/06/06
shelves: did-not-finish
review:
I actually found the beginning of the book really eye-opening, especially the history of how we humanized rivers and how deeply our lives connect with nature. It really makes you reflect on how we've abandoned our roots in a way, and I definitely appreciate the author for raising awareness about that.

I didn't quite finish it, mostly because the structure and perspective felt a bit off for me. The writer’s POV sometimes felt like he was just on a sightseeing trip, and the way he described his companions felt a little stereotypical, which made it hard to relate to them as ordinary people. Structurally, it also felt a bit unbalanced...he dedicated so much focus to the first river but less to the others, so it felt like he had a clear favorite. He was definitely ambitious, even bringing in legislation, but it was just hard to weave all those themes together. It might have been stronger if he had focused on just one river.

Overall, it’s still an interesting read, especially for a Western audience. For many of us in Asia or other parts of the world, rivers are already such a spiritual and social part of daily life, so the core concept feels familiar ..but it’s still great that he’s bringing this conversation to light.
]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life]]> 104909 Quince secretos que te llevarán hacia el camino de la iluminación: una síntesis cristalina del pensamiento y la sabiduría de uno de los guías espirituales más importantes de nuestra era.

En este libro, Deepak Chopra te acerca a diversas respuestas, para que alcances el autodescubrimiento que siempre has anhelado.

Todos queremos saber quién es nuestra alma gemela, qué carrera es la más gratificante, cómo educar a nuestros hijos, cuál es el sentido de la vida... Buscamos una revelación que nos muestre el significado de las cosas y de nuestra existencia.

La vida es un libro de secretos, listo para ser abierto. El secreto del amor perfecto se encuentra allí, al igual que los secretos para sanar, para tener más esperanza, para aprender a ser compasivos... Somos un misterio para nosotros mismos, sin importar cuán cerca estén las respuestas que añoramos, pues aquello que más deseamos saber se encuentra oculto en las profundidades de nuestro ser.

Otros autores han opinado:

"El libro más profundo y sobresaliente de Deepak Chopra." -Ken Wilber, autor de Breve historia de todas las cosas-
]]> 279 Deepak Chopra 1400098343 Yen 0 to-read 3.98 2004 The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life
author: Deepak Chopra
name: Yen
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle]]> 42397849
Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body” when every magazine cover has ten diet tips for becoming “your best self”? How do you “lean in” at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?

Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back. In these pages you’ll learn

• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation
• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout

With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in these pages—and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all.” Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are—and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach.]]> 277 Emily Nagoski 198481706X Yen 0 to-read 3.90 2019 Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
author: Emily Nagoski
name: Yen
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/04/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> Wandering Souls 60741794 One of Time Magazine's Must-Read Books of the Year
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Fiction 2024
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023

“A deeply humane and genre-defying work of love and uncompromising hope.” —Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Time Is a Mother

There are the goodbyes and then the fishing out of the bodies—everything in between is speculation.

After the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Minh, and Thanh journey to Hong Kong with the promise that their parents and younger siblings will soon follow. But when tragedy strikes, the three children are left orphaned, and sixteen-year-old Anh becomes the caretaker for her two younger brothers overnight.

In the years that follow, Anh and her brothers immigrate to the UK, living first in overcrowded camps and resettlement centers and then, later, in a modernizing London plagued by social inequality. Anh works in a factory to pay the bills. Minh loiters about with fellow high school dropouts. Thanh, the youngest, plays soccer with his friends after class. As they mature, each sibling reckons with survivor’s guilt, unmoored by their parents’ absence. And with every choice, their paths diverge further, until it’s unclear if love alone can keep them together.

Told through lyrical narrative threads, historical research, voices from lost family, and notes by an unnamed narrator determined to chart these siblings’ fates, Wandering Souls captures the lives of a family marked by loss yet relentless in the pursuit of a better future. With urgency and precision, it affirms that the most important stories are those we claim for ourselves, establishing Cecile Pin as a masterful new literary voice.]]> 240 Cecile Pin 1250863465 Yen 3 4.10 2023 Wandering Souls
author: Cecile Pin
name: Yen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2026/04/30
shelves:
review:
Finished this in an afternoon, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The first part was great, and I wished the book could have been longer, so that many unresolved traumas and conflicts from the war and the refugee experience could have been elaborated on more. The books centered around the three siblings, and I wish we could learn about the younger brothers' perspectives as well. Halfway through, and it felt rushed, the ending wasn't very satisfying. I actually wouldn't care much about Anh's children. As a Vietnamese, I think it was important to focus on the experience of the refugee families and the aftermath of building a life in a foreign land. We folks, don't talk about it enough, and I wanted desperately for the book to just dig deeper. The ending was a bit cliché, a happy family with mixed children in a colonial country. I guess I wanted the raw materials. I don't want our characters to just bury the pain deep down and move on with life, maybe one day, their happy ending is to just let it all out. To formalize and shape the pain into existence, and then we can see a path forward.
]]> Accelerando 17863
Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.

For something is systemically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form.]]> 415 Charles Stross 0441014151 Yen 0 to-read 3.88 2005 Accelerando
author: Charles Stross
name: Yen
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/04/29
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]]> Letters to Milena 88340 Letters to Milena, which begin essentially as a business correspondence but soon develop into a passionate "letter love." Milena Jesenská was a gifted and charismatic woman of twenty-three. Kafka's Czech translator, she was uniquely able to recognize his complex genius and his even more complex character. For the thirty-six-year-old Kafka, she was "a living fire, such as I have never seen." It was to her that he revealed his most intimate self. It was to her that, after the end of the affair, he entrusted the safekeeping of his diaries.

Newly translated, revised, and expanded, this edition contains material previously omitted because of its extreme sensitivity. Also included for the first time are letters and essays by Milena Jesenská, herself a talented writer as well as the recipient of these documents of Kafka's love, anxiety, and despair.]]> 298 Franz Kafka 0805208852 Yen 0 to-read 4.08 1952 Letters to Milena
author: Franz Kafka
name: Yen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality]]> 94318 Awareness in a grand synthesis.

In short chapters for reading in quiet moments at home or at the office, he cajoles and challenges: We must leave this go-go-go world of illusion and become aware. And this only happens, he insists, by becoming alive to the needs and potential of others, whether at home or in the workplace.

Here, then, is a masterful book of the spirit, challenging us to wake up in every aspect of our lives.]]> 184 Anthony de Mello 0385249373 Yen 0 to-read 4.30 1990 Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
author: Anthony de Mello
name: Yen
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life]]> 124950497
In researching this book, the authors interviewed the residents of the Japanese village with the highest percentage of 100-year-olds—one of the world’s Blue Zones. Ikigai reveals the secrets to their longevity and happiness: how they eat, how they move, how they work, how they foster collaboration and community, and—their best-kept secret—how they find the ikigai that brings satisfaction to their lives. And it provides practical tools to help you discover your own ikigai. Because who doesn’t want to find happiness in every day?]]> 208 Héctor García Yen 4 3.69 2016 Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life
author: Héctor García
name: Yen
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2026/04/12
date added: 2026/04/12
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Great book, I think sometimes the secrets are so obviously in front of us but we chose to ignore them and end up miserable.
]]> Atonement 6867 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385721790

Ian McEwan's symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.

As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.]]> 351 Ian McEwan Yen 3 3.95 2001 Atonement
author: Ian McEwan
name: Yen
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
rating: 3
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The book itself clearly led people on a bit. A book in a book where I really don't like how the ending was made. And the younger sister' narration truly became redundant and exhausting.
]]> <![CDATA[The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm in a Busy World]]> 30780006
“Wise advice on how to reflect and slow down.” — Elle

Is it the world that’s busy, or is it my mind?

The world moves fast, but that doesn’t mean we have to. This bestselling mindfulness guide by Haemin Sunim (which means “spontaneous wisdom”), a renowned Buddhist meditation teacher born in Korea and educated in the United States, illuminates a path to inner peace and balance amid the overwhelming demands of everyday life.

By offering guideposts to well-being and happiness in eight areas—including relationships, love, and spirituality—Haemin Sunim emphasizes the importance of forging a deeper connection with others and being compassionate and forgiving toward ourselves. The more than twenty full-color illustrations that accompany his teachings serve as calming visual interludes, encouraging us to notice that when you slow down, the world slows down with you.]]> 288 Haemin Sunim 0143130773 Yen 4 favorites 4.04 2012 The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm in a Busy World
author: Haemin Sunim
name: Yen
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2026/04/11
date added: 2026/04/11
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Just like the title of the book, the things I can appreciate only when I slow down and apply the book's lessons in real life. Every chapter was very profound and easy to digest. I like the tone of the author, where he combined both of his Buddhist teachings and modern ways of thinking into those stories.
]]> <![CDATA[Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus]]> 1274 368 John Gray 0060574216 Yen 0 to-read 3.59 2008 Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
author: John Gray
name: Yen
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/04/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change]]> 36072 372 Stephen R. Covey 0743269519 Yen 5 4.16 1989 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
author: Stephen R. Covey
name: Yen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1989
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism]]> 1237300 The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.]]> 558 Naomi Klein 0805079831 Yen 0 to-read 4.30 2007 The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
author: Naomi Klein
name: Yen
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> Ishmael (Ishmael, #1) 40611328 338 Daniel Quinn Yen 0 to-read 4.08 1992 Ishmael (Ishmael, #1)
author: Daniel Quinn
name: Yen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail]]> 52962238
A few years ago, Ray Dalio noticed a confluence of political and economic conditions he hadn’t encountered before. They included huge debts and zero or near-zero interest rates that led to massive printing of money in the world’s three major reserve currencies; big political and social conflicts within countries, especially the US, due to the largest wealth, political, and values disparities in more than 100 years; and the rising of a world power (China) to challenge the existing world power (US) and the existing world order. The last time that this confluence occurred was between 1930 and 1945. This realization sent Dalio on a search for the repeating patterns and cause/effect relationships underlying all major changes in wealth and power over the last 500 years.

In this remarkable and timely addition to his Principles series, Dalio brings readers along for his study of the major empires—including the Dutch, the British, and the American—putting into perspective the “Big Cycle” that has driven the successes and failures of all the world’s major countries throughout history. He reveals the timeless and universal forces behind these shifts and uses them to look into the future, offering practical principles for positioning oneself for what’s ahead.]]> 576 Ray Dalio 1982160276 Yen 0 to-read 4.24 2021 Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail
author: Ray Dalio
name: Yen
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam]]> 10302 447 Barbara W. Tuchman 0345308239 Yen 0 to-read 4.02 1984 The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: Yen
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity]]> 56269264
For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.]]> 692 David Graeber 0374157359 Yen 0 to-read 4.19 2021 The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
author: David Graeber
name: Yen
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark]]> 17349
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.]]> 459 Carl Sagan 0345409469 Yen 0 to-read 4.27 1995 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
author: Carl Sagan
name: Yen
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1995
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age]]> 82256
The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization.

Few observers of the late twentieth century have their fingers so presciently on the pulse of the global political and economic realignment ushering in the new millennium as do James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Their bold prediction of disaster on Wall Street in Blood in the Streets was borne out by Black Tuesday. In their ensuing bestseller, The Great Reckoning, published just weeks before the coup attempt against Gorbachev, they analyzed the pending collapse of the Soviet Union and foretold the civil war in Yugoslavia and other events that have proved to be among the most searing developments of the past few years.

In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries—the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed "the fourth stage of human society," will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government. This outstanding book will replace false hopes and fictions with new understanding and clarified values.]]> 448 James Dale Davidson 0684832720 Yen 0 to-read 4.16 1997 The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
author: James Dale Davidson
name: Yen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression]]> 320403
The revised edition of The Great Reckoning provides hundreds of investment tips and forecasts as well as fifteen ways to build a solid financial foundation.]]> 608 James Dale Davidson 0671885286 Yen 0 to-read 3.94 The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression
author: James Dale Davidson
name: Yen
average rating: 3.94
book published:
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]]> Bright Young Women 101124639 A Richard & Judy Book Club Pick
New York Times Bestseller
A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist

Bright Young Women is an unflinching thriller based on Ted Bundy's heinous crimes, as two women search for justice in the wake of his brutal murders. From Jessica Knoll, author of the New York Times bestseller and #1 Netflix movie Luckiest Girl Alive.

'A compelling, almost hypnotic read' - Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of None of This is True

Tallahassee, 1978. Sorority president Pamela Schumacher wakes to a shocking scene of implausible violence and death, and is drawn into a mystifying crime that grips the nation for decades . . .

In Seattle, Tina Cannon connects her best friend's disappearance to the Tallahassee tragedy, and is convinced that a single man is responsible.

Determined to find justice, the two join forces as their search for answers leads to a final, shocking confrontation . . .

'Knoll deconstructs the myth of a criminal mastermind, revealing the women he seeks to destroy as the truly brilliant ones' – Flynn Berry, author of Northern Spy

'A sharp examination of our culture's obsession with serial killers and true crime' – Harper's Bazaar, Best Books of the Year

'Knoll sets about dismantling every last Bundy myth with a controlled but palpable rage' – Catherine Ryan Howard, author of Run Time]]> 384 Jessica Knoll 1501153226 Yen 3 3.97 2023 Bright Young Women
author: Jessica Knoll
name: Yen
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2026/03/27
date added: 2026/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Bad Friend: How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship]]> 217387999 A smart and thought-provoking memoir, history, and cultural critique about the turmoil and complexity of female friendship

Our culture today is inundated with narratives about the strength of female friendship, whether through images of girl power, BFFs, or work wives. Yet cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith has always found her own life much messier. She has had dramatic friend breakups, friendships that felt like too much or not enough, friendships that drifted into silence, and friendships built on convenience rather than a meeting of minds. And there are older cultural scripts to contend the competitive rival, the jealous backstabber, the underminer, the fair-weather friend.

We have all been bad friends. It’s impossible to be a perfect one; as Watt Smith points out, women’s friendships have long been magnified, scrutinized, praised, and admonished, creating a legacy of impossible ideals. In Bad Friend, Watt Smith reflects on her own experience and thoroughly mines the rich cultural history of female friendship to look for a new paradigm that might encompass the struggles along with the joy.]]> 304 Tiffany Watt Smith 1250870216 Yen 3 did-not-finish 3.39 2025 Bad Friend: How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship
author: Tiffany Watt Smith
name: Yen
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2025
rating: 3
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date added: 2026/03/26
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]]> Gone Girl 19288043 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Who are you?
What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 415 Gillian Flynn 0307588378 Yen 3 did-not-finish 4.22 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Yen
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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date added: 2026/03/26
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]]> Tomb of Sand 58703758
At the older woman's insistence they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist.

Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree's playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.]]> 739 Geetanjali Shree Yen 3 did-not-finish 3.63 2018 Tomb of Sand
author: Geetanjali Shree
name: Yen
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/10/12
date added: 2026/03/26
shelves: did-not-finish
review:
I think my mind couldn't catchup with all the plot twists and bizarre events that happened in this book. Too many characters were introduced and it was hard to grasp the hidden meanings and messages the author wanted to deliver. Overall, a very detailed and spectacular depiction of Indian society and its people.
]]> Never Let Me Go 6334
And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed – even comforted – by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham's nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood – and about their lives now.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Yen 2 did-not-finish 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Yen
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 2
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]]> The Year of Magical Thinking 7815 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • A landmark work about grief, love, and survival from one of America’s most iconic writers

One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Guardian’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Joan Didion delivers a searing portrait of a marriage and a life – in good times and bad – that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost a husband or wife or child. In a work of electric honesty and passion, Didion explores how we all, somehow, will ourselves to survive. “An utterly shattering portrait of loss and grief.” –The New York Times

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana Roo, fall ill with septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later, the Dunnes were sitting down to dinner after visiting their daughter in the hospital when John suffered a fatal heart attack. In that one moment, their partnership of forty years came to an end.

This powerful narrative is Didion's “attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness…about marriage and children and memory…about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”

“Didion has transformed grief into literature.” —The Guardian]]> 227 Joan Didion 1400078431 Yen 2 did-not-finish 3.93 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking
author: Joan Didion
name: Yen
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2026/01/13
date added: 2026/03/26
shelves: did-not-finish
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]]>