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    <title>teddy's bookshelf: all</title>
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    <description><![CDATA[teddy's bookshelf: all]]></description>
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    <lastBuildDate>Thu, 31 Mar 2016 06:31:04 -0700</lastBuildDate>
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      <title>teddy's bookshelf: all</title>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258422?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 31 Mar 2016 06:31:04 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>A Confederacy of Dunces</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258422?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>24922</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Ignatius J Reilly of New Orleans is a noble crusader against a world of dunces. In magnificent revolt against the twentieth century, Ignatius propels his monstrous bulk amongst the flesh-pots of a fallen city, documenting life on his Big Chief tablets as he goes - until his maroon-haired mother decrees that he must work.]]></book_description>
    <book id="24922">
      <num_pages>397</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>John Kennedy Toole</author_name>
    <isbn>0140282688</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 31 Mar 2016 06:31:04 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:58:26 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.96</average_rating>
    <book_published>1980</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24922.A_Confederacy_of_Dunces?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="A Confederacy of Dunces" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1584533066l/24922._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: John Kennedy Toole<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.96<br/>
                                      book published: 1980<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2016/03/31<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258068?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 31 Jul 2014 04:25:37 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258068?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>54754</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Can't Stop Won't Stop is a powerful cultural and social history of the end of the American century, and a provocative look into the new world that the hip-hop generation created.<br /><br />Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview, and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style.<br /><br />Based on original interviews with DJs, b-boys, rappers, graffiti writers, activists, and gang members, with unforgettable portraits of many of hip-hop's forebears, founders, and mavericks, including DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D, and Ice Cube, Can't Stop Won't Stop chronicles the events, the ideas, the music, and the art that marked the hip-hop generation's rise from the ashes of the 60's into the new millennium.]]></book_description>
    <book id="54754">
      <num_pages>546</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jeff Chang</author_name>
    <isbn>0312425791</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Wed, 1 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 31 Jul 2014 04:25:37 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:25:02 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>currently-reading, in-limbo</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[academic tomes on hip-hop have a sobering tendency to come from artifice, revisionist histories written by out-of-touch scholars eager to stamp their name on uncharted territory. they pick landmarks and artists who, perhaps, are emblematic of the genre, but do not come from the perspective of a fan that's where jeff chang's "can't stop won't stop" is so successful.<br /><br />i'd say it's one of the first times i've read something scholarly about the genesis of -- arguably -- one of the world's most potent cultural forces that is actually written by a child of hip-hop. he comes with an appreciation and understanding about what it is to be an MC. chang delves into the socioeconomic conditions surrounding the music's advent, ranging from the political unrest that held jamaica stricken in poverty, to the unruly youth gangs of 1970's new york city. he finds time to interview everybody, piecing together a history that explains and appeals to even casual listeners of the music.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.14</average_rating>
    <book_published>2005</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54754.Can_t_Stop_Won_t_Stop?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Can&#39;t Stop Won&#39;t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1441757840l/54754._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Jeff Chang<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.14<br/>
                                      book published: 2005<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: 2006/11/01<br/>
                                      date added: 2014/07/31<br/>
                                      shelves: currently-reading, in-limbo<br/>
                                      review: <br/>academic tomes on hip-hop have a sobering tendency to come from artifice, revisionist histories written by out-of-touch scholars eager to stamp their name on uncharted territory. they pick landmarks and artists who, perhaps, are emblematic of the genre, but do not come from the perspective of a fan that's where jeff chang's "can't stop won't stop" is so successful.<br /><br />i'd say it's one of the first times i've read something scholarly about the genesis of -- arguably -- one of the world's most potent cultural forces that is actually written by a child of hip-hop. he comes with an appreciation and understanding about what it is to be an MC. chang delves into the socioeconomic conditions surrounding the music's advent, ranging from the political unrest that held jamaica stricken in poverty, to the unruly youth gangs of 1970's new york city. he finds time to interview everybody, piecing together a history that explains and appeals to even casual listeners of the music.<br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11406119?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:14:46 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Architecture of Happiness</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11406119?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>23418</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings and streets that surround us.<br /><br />And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. <i>The Architecture of Happiness</i> starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and it argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.<br /><br />Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, this book has at its center the large and naïve question: What is a beautiful building? It is a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture that aims to change the way we think about our homes, our streets and ourselves.]]></book_description>
    <book id="23418">
      <num_pages>288</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Alain de Botton</author_name>
    <isbn>0375424431</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:14:46 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:53:41 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>currently-reading</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.85</average_rating>
    <book_published>2006</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23418.The_Architecture_of_Happiness?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Architecture of Happiness" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320402527l/23418._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Alain de Botton<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.85<br/>
                                      book published: 2006<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2010/09/25<br/>
                                      shelves: currently-reading<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/103446515?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 19 May 2010 12:02:25 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Tinkers</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/103446515?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>4957350</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[An old man lies dying. Propped up in his living room and surrounded by his children and grandchildren, George Washington Crosby drifts in and out of consciousness, back to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in Maine. As the clock repairer’s time winds down, his memories intertwine with those of his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler and his grandfather, a Methodist preacher beset by madness. <br /><br />At once heartbreaking and life affirming, <i>Tinkers</i> is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, illness, faith, and the fierce beauty of nature.]]></book_description>
    <book id="4957350">
      <num_pages>192</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Paul Harding</author_name>
    <isbn>1934137197</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 19 May 2010 12:02:25 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 19 May 2010 12:02:17 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>currently-reading</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.42</average_rating>
    <book_published>2009</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4957350-tinkers?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Tinkers" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1364258693l/4957350._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Paul Harding<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.42<br/>
                                      book published: 2009<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2010/05/19<br/>
                                      shelves: currently-reading<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/103446496?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 19 May 2010 12:02:09 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/103446496?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>4291946</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Viking marauders descend on a much-plundered island, hoping some mayhem will shake off the winter blahs. A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the print of a bare foot on the inside of his windshield doesn’t match her own. Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl.<br /><br />In the stories of Wells Tower, families fall apart and messily try to reassemble themselves. His version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons. Combining electric prose with savage wit, <i>Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned</i> is a major debut, announcing a voice we have not heard before.]]></book_description>
    <book id="4291946">
      <num_pages>238</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Wells Tower</author_name>
    <isbn>0374292191</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 19 May 2010 12:02:09 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 19 May 2010 12:02:09 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.88</average_rating>
    <book_published>2009</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4291946-everything-ravaged-everything-burned?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312001821l/4291946._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Wells Tower<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.88<br/>
                                      book published: 2009<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2010/05/19<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11406315?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:57:19 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Erasure</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11406315?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>355862</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Thelonious (Monk) Ellison has never allowed race to define his identity. But as both a writer and an African American, he is offended and angered by the success of <i>We's Lives in Da Ghetto</i>, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.<br /><br />Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by <i>We's Lives in Da Ghetto</i>. <br /><br />But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.]]></book_description>
    <book id="355862">
      <num_pages>280</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Percival Everett</author_name>
    <isbn>0786888156</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:57:19 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:57:14 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>currently-reading</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.16</average_rating>
    <book_published>2001</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/355862.Erasure?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Erasure" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1708274015l/355862._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Percival Everett<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.16<br/>
                                      book published: 2001<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2008/01/01<br/>
                                      shelves: currently-reading<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11387567?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:29:56 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11387567?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>33313</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>A deluxe, annotated edition of <i>Kitchen Confidential</i> to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts</b><br /><br />Over two decades ago, the <i>New Yorker</i> published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now iconic <i>Kitchen Confidential</i>, became an even bigger sensation and megabestseller. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.<br /><br />Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text.]]></book_description>
    <book id="33313">
      <num_pages>312</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Anthony Bourdain</author_name>
    <isbn>0060899220</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:29:56 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:29:56 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.19</average_rating>
    <book_published>2000</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33313.Kitchen_Confidential?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433739086l/33313._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Anthony Bourdain<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.19<br/>
                                      book published: 2000<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2008/01/01<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11387538?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:29:21 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Reach of a Chef: Professional Cooks in the Age of Celebrity]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/11387538?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>164431</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[The author of The Soul of a Chef looks at the new role of the chef in contemporary culture<br /><br />For his previous explorations into the restaurant kitchen and the men and women who call it home, Michael Ruhlman has been described by Anthony Bourdain as "the greatest living writer on the subject of chefs, and on the business of preparing food."  In The Reach of a Chef , Ruhlman examines the profound shift in American culture that has raised restaurant cooking to the level of performance art and the status of the chef to celebrity CEO. Bibliophiles and foodies alike will savor this intimate meeting with some of the most famous chefs in the kitchens of the hottest restaurants in the world.]]></book_description>
    <book id="164431">
      <num_pages>352</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Michael Ruhlman</author_name>
    <isbn>0143112074</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:29:21 -0800]]></user_date_added>
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    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.79</average_rating>
    <book_published>2006</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Michael Ruhlman<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.79<br/>
                                      book published: 2006<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2008/01/01<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2046155?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:17:37 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>No Country for Old Men</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2046155?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>12497</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN 9780375706677</i><br /><br />In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed <i>Border Trilogy</i>. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. <br /><br />One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law–in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell–can contain.<br /><br />As Moss tries to evade his pursuers–in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives–McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines. <br /><i>No Country for Old Men</i> is a triumph.]]></book_description>
    <book id="12497">
      <num_pages>309</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Cormac McCarthy</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:17:37 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:14:01 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.16</average_rating>
    <book_published>2005</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12497.No_Country_for_Old_Men?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="No Country for Old Men" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1443231179l/12497._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Cormac McCarthy<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.16<br/>
                                      book published: 2005<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/06/17<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2046189?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:16:58 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Black Swan Green</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2046189?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>14316</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.<br /><br />Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.<br /><br />Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s most subtlest and effective achievement to date.]]></book_description>
    <book id="14316">
      <num_pages>296</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>David  Mitchell</author_name>
    <isbn>0812974018</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:16:58 -0700]]></user_date_added>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.97</average_rating>
    <book_published>2006</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: David  Mitchell<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.97<br/>
                                      book published: 2006<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/06/17<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258438?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 03 Jun 2007 12:52:08 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>On Beauty</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258438?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>3679</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. <i>On Beauty</i> is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.]]></book_description>
    <book id="3679">
      <num_pages>445</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Zadie Smith</author_name>
    <isbn>0143037749</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 1 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 03 Jun 2007 12:52:08 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:59:43 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.79</average_rating>
    <book_published>2005</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3679.On_Beauty?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="On Beauty" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1598196388l/3679._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Zadie Smith<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.79<br/>
                                      book published: 2005<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2007/05/01<br/>
                                      date added: 2007/06/03<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469097?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:09:30 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Middlesex</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469097?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>2187</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[The astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl.<br /><br />In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.<br /><br />The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly a hermaphrodite.<br /><br />Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.]]></book_description>
    <book id="2187">
      <num_pages>529</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jeffrey Eugenides</author_name>
    <isbn>0312422156</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:09:30 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:09:30 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.03</average_rating>
    <book_published>2002</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Jeffrey Eugenides<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.03<br/>
                                      book published: 2002<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469095?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:09:17 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469095?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>3985</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic, beloved novel of two boy geniuses dreaming up superheroes in New York’s Golden Age of comics, now with special bonus material by the author<br /><br />“It's absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.”—The Washington Post Book World<br /><br />One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Decade • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century<br /><br />A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &amp; Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939.<br /><br />A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink.<br /><br />Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age.]]></book_description>
    <book id="3985">
      <num_pages>639</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Michael Chabon</author_name>
    <isbn>0312282990</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:09:17 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:09:15 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.18</average_rating>
    <book_published>2000</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3985.The_Amazing_Adventures_of_Kavalier_Clay?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &amp; Clay" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1503806495l/3985._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Michael Chabon<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.18<br/>
                                      book published: 2000<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469094?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:08:55 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Yiddish Policemen&apos;s Union</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469094?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>16703</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown. <br /><br />But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage—and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears. <br /><br />At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, <i>The Yiddish Policemen's Union</i> is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.<br />(front flap)]]></book_description>
    <book id="16703">
      <num_pages>414</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Michael Chabon</author_name>
    <isbn>0007149824</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
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    <average_rating>3.72</average_rating>
    <book_published>2007</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Michael Chabon<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.72<br/>
                                      book published: 2007<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469092?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:08:30 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469092?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>7588</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal imagination'. Both an insight into Joyce's life and childhood, and a unique work of modernist fiction, <i>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</i> is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to blossom fully into themselves.]]></book_description>
    <book id="7588">
      <num_pages>329</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>James Joyce</author_name>
    <isbn>0142437344</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.64</average_rating>
    <book_published>1916</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7588.A_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1756682478l/7588._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: James Joyce<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.64<br/>
                                      book published: 1916<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469087?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:07:44 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Watchmen</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469087?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>472331</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[¿Quién vigila a los vigilantes? Nueva York, 1985. El cruento asesinato de Edward Blake, el Comediante, deja tras de sí un smiley manchado de sangre y moviliza a los pocos justicieros que aúnviven. Uno de los más resolutivos e implacables, Rorschach (Walter J. Kovacs), emprende una investigación que le hará reencontrarse con el desengañado Búho Nocturno (Dan Dreiberg), el poderoso Dr. Manhattan (Jon Osterman), el multimillonario Ozymandias, considerado“el hombre más listo del mundo” (Adrian Veidt), y la renuente y atormentada Espectro de Seda (Laurie Juspeczyk). Juntos afrontarán un pasado terrible, bajo la sombra de los Minutemen, y tratarán de superarlo para salvar el futuro… si es que el fin, cada vez más cerca, no llega antes y destruye la Tierra por completo. Alan Moore y Dave Gibbons firman la que posiblemente sea la mejor historia de superhéroes de todos los tiempos, galardonada con premios tan prestigiosos como los Kirby, los Eisner, los Harvey e incluso el Hugo, jamás otorgado a ningún cómic hasta entonces.]]></book_description>
    <book id="472331">
      <num_pages>416</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Alan Moore</author_name>
    <isbn>0930289234</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 1 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:07:44 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:07:39 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>currently-reading, in-limbo</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.39</average_rating>
    <book_published>1987</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/472331.Watchmen?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Watchmen" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442239711l/472331._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Alan Moore<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.39<br/>
                                      book published: 1987<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2007/05/01<br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: currently-reading, in-limbo<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469085?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:07:25 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Love Story</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469085?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>99756</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1365659626l/99756._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[He is Oliver Barett IV, a rich jock from a stuffy WASP family on his way to a Harvard degree and a career in law.<br />She is Jenny Cavilleri, a wisecracking working-class beauty studying music at Radcliffe.<br />Opposites in nearly every way, Oliver and Jenny immediately attract, sharing a love that defies everything... yet will end too soon. Here is a love that will linger in your heart now and forever.]]></book_description>
    <book id="99756">
      <num_pages>131</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Erich Segal</author_name>
    <isbn>0060748095</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:07:25 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:07:20 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.71</average_rating>
    <book_published>1969</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99756.Love_Story?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Love Story" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1365659626l/99756._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Erich Segal<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.71<br/>
                                      book published: 1969<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469080?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:05:28 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Kingdom Come</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469080?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>16992</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385175050l/16992._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[In a future where metahumans run rampant and are a menace to society, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and other traditional superheroes attempt to contain the escalating disaster and prevent a metahuman war.]]></book_description>
    <book id="16992">
      <num_pages>231</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Mark Waid</author_name>
    <isbn>1563893304</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:05:28 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:05:24 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.26</average_rating>
    <book_published>1996</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16992.Kingdom_Come?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Kingdom Come" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385175050l/16992._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Mark Waid<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.26<br/>
                                      book published: 1996<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2008/01/01<br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469079?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:05:08 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Gravity’s Rainbow</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469079?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>415</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657594227l/415._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative, and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.]]></book_description>
    <book id="415">
      <num_pages>776</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Thomas Pynchon</author_name>
    <isbn>0143039946</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:05:08 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:04:55 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.02</average_rating>
    <book_published>1973</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/415.Gravity_s_Rainbow?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Gravity’s Rainbow" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657594227l/415._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Thomas Pynchon<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.02<br/>
                                      book published: 1973<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469077?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:04:11 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Fortress of Solitude</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469077?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>578777</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175968966l/578777._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It's a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. As Lethem follows the knitting and unraveling of their friendship, he creates an overwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race and class, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging, loyalty, and memory. The Fortress of Solitude is the first great urban coming of age novel to appear in years.<br />(back cover)]]></book_description>
    <book id="578777">
      <num_pages>528</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jonathan Lethem</author_name>
    <isbn>0375724885</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:04:11 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:04:02 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>in-limbo, currently-reading</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.74</average_rating>
    <book_published>2003</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/578777.The_Fortress_of_Solitude?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Fortress of Solitude" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175968966l/578777._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Jonathan Lethem<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.74<br/>
                                      book published: 2003<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2008/01/01<br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: in-limbo, currently-reading<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469072?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:02:38 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Cloud Atlas</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1469072?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>49628</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563042852l/49628._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles of genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian lore of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profund as it is playful. Now in his new novel, David Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity. <br /><br /><i>Cloud Atlas</i> begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . <br /><br />Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. <br /><br />But the story doesn't end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. <br /><br />As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, <i>Cloud Atlas</i> is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.]]></book_description>
    <book id="49628">
      <num_pages>509</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>David  Mitchell</author_name>
    <isbn>0375507256</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:02:38 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 27 May 2007 04:02:28 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>in-limbo, currently-reading</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.02</average_rating>
    <book_published>2004</book_published>
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                                      author: David  Mitchell<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.02<br/>
                                      book published: 2004<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2008/01/01<br/>
                                      date added: 2007/05/27<br/>
                                      shelves: in-limbo, currently-reading<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/293354?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:57:43 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/293354?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>34072</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[1893 This is the tragic autobiography of an office dogsbody in Chicago. One day he meets the father who abandoned him as a child. The first graphic novel to win a major British literary award took the <i>Guardian</i> First Book Award 2001.]]></book_description>
    <book id="34072">
      <num_pages>384</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Chris Ware</author_name>
    <isbn>0224063979</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:57:43 -0700]]></user_date_added>
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    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.08</average_rating>
    <book_published>2000</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Chris Ware<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.08<br/>
                                      book published: 2000<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/16<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263965?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:50 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Elephant Vanishes</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263965?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>9555</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679750536<br /><br />With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels <i>A Wild Sheep Chase</i> and <i>Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World</i>, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.<br /><br />By turns haunting and hilarious, <i>The Elephant Vanishes</i> is further proof of Murakami's ability to cross the border between separate realities -- and to come back bearing treasure.]]></book_description>
    <book id="9555">
      <num_pages>327</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Haruki Murakami</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:50 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:50 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.87</average_rating>
    <book_published>1993</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Haruki Murakami<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.87<br/>
                                      book published: 1993<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/14<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263964?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:45 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263964?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>11298</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[His life was like a recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a right-wing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic-depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep, that may or may not be running the world, and the upshot is another singular masterpiece from Japan's finest novelist.]]></book_description>
    <book id="11298">
      <num_pages>353</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Haruki Murakami</author_name>
    <isbn>037571894X</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:45 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:45 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.96</average_rating>
    <book_published>1982</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11298.A_Wild_Sheep_Chase?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1630485146l/11298._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Haruki Murakami<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.96<br/>
                                      book published: 1982<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/14<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263963?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:40 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Kafka on the Shore</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263963?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>4929</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>Kafka on the Shore</i>, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. <br /><br />Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. <br /><br />There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle - yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]></book_description>
    <book id="4929">
      <num_pages>467</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Haruki Murakami</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>2</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:40 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:07:40 -0700]]></user_date_created>
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    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.13</average_rating>
    <book_published>2002</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Haruki Murakami<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.13<br/>
                                      book published: 2002<br/>
                                      rating: 2<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/14<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:04:20 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Ego Trip&apos;s Book of Rap Lists</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263953?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>180674</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists is more popular than racism!<br /><br />Hip hop is huge, and it's time someone wrote it all down. And got it all right. With over 25 aggregate years of interviews, and virtually every hip hop single, remix and album ever recorded at their disposal, the highly respected Ego Trip staff are the ones to do it. The Book of Rap Lists runs the gamut of hip hop information. This is an exhaustive, indispensable and completely irreverant bible of true hip hip knowledge.]]></book_description>
    <book id="180674">
      <num_pages>352</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Sacha Jenkins</author_name>
    <isbn>0312242980</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:04:20 -0700]]></user_date_added>
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    <average_rating>4.41</average_rating>
    <book_published>1999</book_published>
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                                      author: Sacha Jenkins<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.41<br/>
                                      book published: 1999<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/14<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:02:46 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Great Expectations</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263943?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>2627</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; and, the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens' haunting late novel depicts Pip's education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'.]]></book_description>
    <book id="2627">
      <num_pages>3</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Charles Dickens</author_name>
    <isbn>0141804483</isbn>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.86</average_rating>
    <book_published>1861</book_published>
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                                      author: Charles Dickens<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.86<br/>
                                      book published: 1861<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/14<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263937?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:00:51 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Birds of America: Stories</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/263937?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>19631</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[A long-awaited collection of stories--twelve in all--by one of the most exciting writers at work today, the acclaimed author of <i>Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?</i> and <i>Self-Help.</i> Stories remarkable in their range, emotional force, and dark laughter, and in the sheer beauty and power of their language.<br /><br />From the opening story, "Willing", about a second-rate movie actress in her thirties who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being, <i>Birds of America</i> unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. <br /><br />In the story "Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People" ("There is nothing as complex in the world--no flower or stone--as a single hello from a human being"), a woman newly separated from her husband is on a long-planned trip through Ireland with her mother. When they set out on an expedition to kiss the Blarney Stone, the image of wisdom and success that her mother has always put forth slips away to reveal the panicky woman she really is. <br /><br />In "Charades," a family game at Christmas is transformed into a hilarious and insightful (and fundamentally upsetting) revelation of crumbling family ties. <br /><br />In "Community Life,"a shy, almost reclusive, librarian, Transylvania-born and Vermont-bred, moves in with her boyfriend, the local anarchist in a small university town, and all hell breaks loose. And in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens," a woman who goes through the stages of grief as she mourns the death of her cat (Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Haagen Dazs, Rage) is seen by her friends as really mourning other issues: the impending death of her parents, the son she never had, Bosnia.<br /><br />In what may be her most stunning book yet, Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.<br /><br />Willing --<br />Which is more than I can say about some people --<br />Dance in America --<br />Community life --<br />Agnes of Iowa --<br />Charades --<br />Four calling birds, three French hens --<br />Beautiful grade --<br />What you want to do fine --<br />Real estate --<br />People like that are the only people here --<br />Terrific mother]]></book_description>
    <book id="19631">
      <num_pages>308</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Lorrie Moore</author_name>
    <isbn>0312241224</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.11</average_rating>
    <book_published>1998</book_published>
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                                      author: Lorrie Moore<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.11<br/>
                                      book published: 1998<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/14<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:09:03 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Know-It-All</title>
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    <book_id>28116</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[33,000 Pages<br />44 Million Words<br />10 Billion Years Of History<br />1 Obsessed Man<br /><br />Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), "The Know-It-All" chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z. <br /><br />To fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education, A.J. Jacobs sets for himself the daunting task of reading all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His wife, Julie, tells him it's a waste of time, his friends believe he is losing his mind, and his father, a brilliant attorney who had once attempted the same feat and quit somewhere around Borneo, is encouraging but unconvinced.<br /> <br />With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness, "The Know-It-All" recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs's life - from his newly minted marriage to his complicated relationship with his father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day job as an editor at "Esquire." Jacobs's project tests the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of intelligence as he endeavours to join Mensa, win a spot on Jeopardy!, and absorb 33,000 pages of learning. On his journey, he stumbles upon some of the strangest, funniest, and most profound facts about every topic under the sun, all while battling fatigue, ridicule, and the paralysing fear that attends his first real-life responsibility - the impending birth of his first child. <br /><br />"The Know-It-All" is an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.]]></book_description>
    <book id="28116">
      <num_pages>388</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>A.J. Jacobs</author_name>
    <isbn>0743250621</isbn>
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    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>3.76</average_rating>
    <book_published>2004</book_published>
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                                      author: A.J. Jacobs<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.76<br/>
                                      book published: 2004<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2007/03/01<br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/13<br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:05:23 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Motherless Brooklyn</title>
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    <book_id>9818</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>
  <b>'A detective novel of winning humour and exhilarating originality.'</b>
</i> - Sunday Times<br /><br />Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourette's Disease drives him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for mobster Frank Minna. But when Frank is fatally stabbed and his widow skips town, Lionel attempts to untangle the threads of the case.]]></book_description>
    <book id="9818">
      <num_pages>311</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jonathan Lethem</author_name>
    <isbn>0571226329</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>3.91</average_rating>
    <book_published>1999</book_published>
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                                      author: Jonathan Lethem<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.91<br/>
                                      book published: 1999<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/13<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:04:33 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Our Town</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258506?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>205476</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<strong>“Wilder’s unfashionable insistence on embracing wonders as well as woe is both gallant and exhilarating. . . . [<em>Our Town</em>] leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth.”—<em>New Yorker</em></strong><strong></strong><br /><br /><strong> </strong><strong>A beautiful new edition of Thornton Wilder's most renowned play, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American classic, <em>Our Town.</em></strong><br /><br />This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—an allegorical representation of all life—has become an American classic. It is the simple story of a love affair that asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life and death.<br /><br /><em>Our Town</em> explores the relationship between two young Grover’s Corners neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life in childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts—childhood, adulthood, and death—is fully realized.<br /><br />Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play, <em>Our Town</em>, was first performed on Broadway in 1938 to wide acclaim and continues to appear on stages all around the world.]]></book_description>
    <book id="205476">
      <num_pages>181</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Thornton Wilder</author_name>
    <isbn>0060512636</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>3.74</average_rating>
    <book_published>1938</book_published>
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                                      author: Thornton Wilder<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.74<br/>
                                      book published: 1938<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/13<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:03:20 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Wu-Tang Manual</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258484?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>237449</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[The Wu-Tang Manual is The RZA’s first written introduction to the philosophy and history of Hip-Hop’s original Dynasty, the Wu-Tang Clan. Written in a style that is at once personal and philosophical, The Wu-Tang Manual unravels the intricate web of personalities (and alter egos), warrior codes, numerological systems, and Eastern spiritual ethics that define the Wu-Tang dynasty. Packed with information that reflects the breadth and depth of the RZA’s — and rest of the Clan’s — intellectual interests and passions, The Wu-Tang Manual is divided into four books of nine chambers each, for a total of 36 chambers. All together, the book provides the breakdown of essential Wu-Tang components, from basic information about each of the nine core members of Wu-Tang Clan to deeper explorations of the key themes of the Wu-Tang universe, a dictionary-like Wu-Slang lexicon, and an entire section of Wu-Tang lyrics with densely annotated explanations of what they mean. For the hardcore Wu-Tang disciple and the recent initiate alike, The Wu-Tang Manual is the definitive guide to the essence of Wu, one of the most innovative hip-hop groups of all time. The RZA's most recent book, The Tao of Wu , is also available from Riverhead Books.]]></book_description>
    <book id="237449">
      <num_pages>256</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>The RZA</author_name>
    <isbn>1594480184</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.07</average_rating>
    <book_published>2004</book_published>
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                                      author: The RZA<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.07<br/>
                                      book published: 2004<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/13<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:00:47 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The White Boy Shuffle</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/258459?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>77789</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[White Boy Shuffle is Man Booker-winner Paul Beatty’s electrifying debut novel about teenage-surf-bum Gunnar Kaufman who is forced to wise up when his mother moves from suburban Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighbourhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a ‘divided, downtrodden people’. <br /><br />A bombastic coming-of-age novel that has the uncanny ability to make readers want to laugh and cry at the same time,Beatty mingles horrific reality with wild fancy in this outlandish, laugh-out-loud funny and poignant vision of contemporary America.]]></book_description>
    <book id="77789">
      <num_pages>240</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Paul Beatty</author_name>
    <isbn>031228019X</isbn>
    <user_name>teddy</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:00:47 -0700]]></user_date_added>
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    <average_rating>4.12</average_rating>
    <book_published>1996</book_published>
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                                      author: Paul Beatty<br/>
                                      name: teddy<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.12<br/>
                                      book published: 1996<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2007/03/13<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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